China - The Lost Province

Chapter 13 - Guizhou province

Our first night in Guizhou was spent in the provincial capital of Guiyang in a 4 star hotel. We met Marie and Henri for breakfast the next morning, this being a buffet with a mixture of western and Chinese food, we stuffed ourselves like christmas turkeys!

On leaving Guiyang with our driver and guide, Zhou, we were confronted with a karstic landscape of limestone peaks. An ethnic minority called Bouyei lived in the first village we visited. Here we saw people bringing in the harvest. Everyone was taking part, from the children aged 5 to the eldest villagers of 80 years old. Whether old or young, the villagers found our attempts at harvesting hilarious. As we headed further south towards Luodian, the limestone peaks appeared more and more dramatic. In Luodian we stayed in a comfortable hotel where Laure and I drifted to sleep in front of a subtitled, melodramatic chinese war movie.

On the second day of the tour we visited the village of Dajin where we played ping pong with the children and drifted along the nearby river on bamboo rafts. After scrabbling around on some rocks to view a cave where ther river dropped into a sinkhole, Marie became overwhelmed by the beautiful surroundings and to the exclamation of "C'est trop beau!" plunged into the water feet first! Fortunately she only suffered wet shoes, socks and trousers! Laure broke the heart of a 20 year old village man who must have been 1m tall and refused to leave her side, before waving goodbye as the van pulled away.

The next week passed in a pleasant blur of villages sporting minorities as diverse as the Miao, Shui and Dong. The Miao are split into several cultural branches, each with their own appearances e.g. Miao with seashells, Miao with short skirts, Miao with hornshaped hair, and Miao of little flowers (Miao people call themselves Hmong). The Shui and Dong women also have easily identifiable clothing, however the men tend to wear just trousers and pullovers. Most of the minority people have broad faces, wide smiles and eyes spaced further apart than the Han Chinese (majority at 92% of the population) people. Apart from clothing they each have their own language (Shui have their own writing as well), ceremonies, customs, music and cultural history. Their houses are generally large wooden structures that hold animals such as pigs, buffalo, chickens and ducks downstairs and the people live upstairs (often enjoying satellite on an evening!). Almost all of the villages we came across were devoid of teenagers and young adult males who tend to go to the cities to find work. The children, like all children, love to play. They varied between extremely shy to extremely cheeky and all could pronounce english words and phrases perfectly, and loved doing so - a teacher's dream!

The route of the tour took us through the cities of Pingtang, Sandu, Congjiang, Rongjiang, Xijiang, Kaili, Qinghe and back to Guiyang - a broad circle taking in the southern and eastern parts of Guizhou. The landscape constantly changed throughout the journey. It ranged from the limestone peaks to alpine valleys bisected by turquoise rivers. Due to Guizhou's mountainous area, it is hard to eke out a living. Historically Guizhou has been a crossroads of many peoples (there are 17 minority groups in this province) and the mountains have helped to keep them isolated from the rest of modern day China. In at least one village (Gaowu) and possibly two, we were the first white people to be seen by the locals. The children flocked around us and were amazed at everything we did. They repeated what we were saying and followed us half way down the hill, throwing cheeky comments we didn't understand!

The people were generally very hospitable and would invite us inside their houses to drink rice wine (we all got a little tipsy in one Shui village) or to sit and attempt to chat with each other- don't ask how! In one Miao restaurant the waitresses would sing to us while holding out bowls of rice wine, and insisted that we drink at the end of each song. This continued until a large jug was emptied. On trying to escape, they would block the exit and insist on even morew alcohol consumption - drop us a line if you want the address!

Our journey climaxed in an evening at Shuitouzhai (Water Source village), being filmed by local journalists working for the Bureau of Tourism. The village has recently being opened to tourism, and with a great riverside location it looks set to succeed with the right amount of publicity. We were the first foreign guests to stay there and the local government wanted to publicise the visit in a drive to promote tourism in Guizhou Province. Our guide Zhou had also bought a piece of land in the village to use as a guesthouse and had worked hard with his colleagues to make Shuitouzhai tourist friendly. We were treated to a banquet of local fod and some Great Wall and Dynasty bottles of chinese red wine.

On the final day of the journey we saw a very high and beautiful waterfall, before we headed back to Guiyang. In Guiyang, Laure and I said goodbye to Marie, Henri, Zhou and the driver. It was an emotional moment for Laure and Marie. Our destination was now Chengdu again to collect tickets and catch the train to Lhasa and the Roof of the World!