The Last Piece in the Southwest China Jigsaw

I just arrived back from a little five day trip to fill in the last missing piece of my travels round the southwest of China. Guizhou province, a little visited place, had been out of my reach on previous trips around the southwest, but remained on my 'to do' list and, after a little research, had been elevated right up to the top. So, when an unexpected holiday turned up this week, I took the plunge and made the most of what little time I had to see a tiny bit of this amazing area.

The Senior 3 students had their university entrance exams this week, which are the most important of their lives. No cheating in this one, and all the other students are booted out of the school for the duration so the Senior 3s can have some peace and quiet to revise in. Unnecessary traffic and business is diverted away from the exam halls and health officials even come in to make sure the food they are given is nutritious enough in the last few days, when the students are even allowed seconds. It all sounds a bit 'too little, too late', but it gave me some time off, so I'm not complaining.
On Tuesday I set off on my journey. It was always going to be a little difficult to get where I wanted in such a short time, but with five days, I reckoned I could manage it. All that travel was exhausting though, as almost all of it seemed to involve the worst roads I have ever seen. What is it with me and bad roads? Everywhere I ever want to go seems to be at the end of a road that may, at some point in the future, actually exist and be worthy of the title 'road', but for now almost certainly does not exist and is best described as 'linear potholed mudbath'. First leg was Lanshan to Guilin, or it would have been, if for some reason the bus had actually been there. It wasn't. Instead I had a trip to Dao Xian, where I luckily met up with my friend Aaron for an hour before finally heading on to Guilin. This road had not improved since last time, although the five men had moved their tent and were now asleep alongside a different portion of the excuse-for-a-road. I was chatting to the bus conductor lad later on my way home (in Chinese! Get me!) and he told me it would not be finished for another two whole years yet. Unbelievable.

As soon as I arrived in Guilin I immediately caught another bus to Sanjiang in northern Guangxi. That was another long one. After two hours the road disappeared and we were rocking and rolling the rest of the way through the steep river valleys. As it got dark the moonlight lit up the flooded rice terraces like a carpet of shattered mirrors...which was nice and all that, but I was bloody starving by then so was absolutely ecstatic when we finally arrived.The next morning it was a 6am start and a cold shower but I was finally on my way to Zhaoxing, a small Dong minority village in Guizhou and my final destination. That bus ride counts as one of the most spectacular so far, if again along a very poor road. We wound around cliffsides bordering broad rivers where fishermen on bamboo rafts were fishing with Cormorants, bumped through tiny, wooden, tumbledown villages, and climbed high into the cloud lined, terraced mountains along roads excavated from steep hillsides extremely prone to landslides, several of which we passed over and through. The views were breathtaking, especially the last two hours, as we rode up the side of one deep valley, crossed the ridge and dropped down into the next, even more beautiful than before, at the bottom of which lay Zhaoxing.
China has around 55 different minority groups, and some information on the Dong minority who inhabit this area (and other minorities) is here. They traditionally wear dark blue or black clothing with the women gathering their long hair on top of their heads in a knot held by a comb. They're farmers in a wooded landscape and live in wooden houses, which are sometimes built on stilts against a hillside. All this was much in evidence in Zhaoxing, as the pictures above all show. There were five Drum towers like the one above and a couple of covered wooden bridges called Wind and Rain bridges. All these are built completely without nails. It was a cool little place to wander around, but is going a little bit Yangshuo. In other words, a bit tourist focussed. There are many English signs about the place advertising 'Dong Speciality Food' and 'Traditional Dong Gifts' along the main street, but on the whole it wasn't touristy in an oppressive, greedy way that some places have been, and was pretty laid back. I only had time to stay one night (in a wooden hostel, which smelt and looked great but was as noisy as all hell) so got to exploring straight away. After looking round Zhaoxing itself, which doesn't take long as it's so small, I started walking out along the road back up the way I'd arrived earlier to visit the small village of Tang'an. Along the way I bumped into a group of American students who were on a study tour and they kindly gave me a lift up to Tang'an.

This place was somewhere special. Untouched. Here life was continuing in much the same way as it probably has done for hundreds of years, just with the addition of satellite TV. Tucked up high in the mountains, I took dozens of photos of the place, and have just a few below for you to see.
It was amazing to wander around but even more amazing was the view down across the valley. This was what I'd seen from the bus but at last I had a chance to take some good pictures. They still don't do the view any justice though. Truly mesmerising. I walked down from Tang'an along the road back to Zhaoxing. It was a good walk and for the first time in a long time I could appreciate silence.Not half an hour after I got back into Zhaoxing the heavens opened, and didn't close again. It rained heavily all that night and was still raining in the morning. With another 6am start and my third cold shower in as many days, I ate a quick breakfast and went hunting for some flip-flops. In this weather, they're the only sensible things to have on your feet. I wasn't having much luck, as a lot of shops were still shut and I didn't know the word for 'flip-flop'. The closest I had come so far was from an old man who thought I wanted to buy the shoes off his feet when I stopped by one old Dong woman's shop and asked her where I might be able to buy some. She took pity on me, and even offered to help me out. She left her own shop and took me off to another woman's shop and, despite it still being shut, got the woman down to find me some decent footwear. I bought a great pair and went back to the old woman's shop to shelter from the rain until my bus arrived. She was really friendly and we soon started chatting while I looked over her hand-embroidered textiles. I bought one piece off her as a way to say thanks for the help and didn't bother haggling. That was a really nice experience, someone going out of their way especially to help you. You don't get that so often in life, and despite how I moan about some aspects of China sometimes, I have to say that it happens more often here than anywhere else I've lived. The friendliness and generosity of the Chinese is not to be downplayed.
I took a couple more pictures while I was waiting, as there was something atmospheric about the place in the early morning mist and rain, then got on my bus for a five hour trip back to Sanjiang. While the mist and cloud hanging in the hills served to make the views even more special, the additional water was doing nothing for the roads. We passed several new landslides that had definitely not been there the day before and as we passed others I could still see mud trickling down. Another exhausting trip, but once in Sanjiang I had just a 45 minute ride to my next port of call, Chengyang.