Hello folks. Yesterday we left the city of Guilin at 8am to go to Longshen county and in particular a village in the hills called Ping'An. I will post pictures and movies soon of that. Tommorow we jump on a boat and head 4hours down the Li River to a place called Yanshuo. We'll be there 4 nights, coming to the end of things gradually as after this we'll be on a train to Hong Kong which is our last major destination apart from a night in Singapore on the way back to NZ. Heres a few shots of guilin.
Woke up at 5am hoping to catch the sunrise over the rice terraces but unfortunately it was raining. The village must be quite high as we are within the clouds. Zero visibility so we called it off. I caught a few more hours sleep then got up and took a wander around the village to get some pics and video. The village was nice and quite - tourists other than me either hadnt arrived or were staying in.
The cloud started to thin a bit offering some nice views so I dashed up to the highest point of the village. By this point several bus loads of Chinese tourists had arrived so it offered the chance to get some video of them in action for you. Their enthusiasm for the views was well justified - some dramatic views of surrounding villages, hills and mountains with clouds swirling about. We didnt get the famous views of the miles of rice terraces, however wasnt too disappointed as we've seen similar sites in Vietnam (Sapa), and what we saw today was something totally different.
Ping'An village is in the hills about 3 hours from Guilin, Guangxi province. Was a small hike up stone staircases and paths up to the village from where the bus dropped us. Zhuan is the name of the ethnic minority living here. The Women are distinguished by flouro headgear wrapped around their hair. Yellow, pink, green or blue. Not sure if the colour is of significance. We decided to stay the night in the village and got a cheap room - about $12 for the night. 3 story wooden structure. Large restaurant on the bottom floor. Food speciality of the area is food cooked in bamboo. For lunch I had bamboo chicken and bamboo rice. The food item is stuffed inside a large section of bamboo, and cooked over flames. The ends of the bamboo are corked with a piece of corn cob. The bamboo is split apart and served as is. The chicken had large pieces of ginger and other herbs and was very tasty, slightly smokey and woody in flavour. The rice had pumpkin and pork with it, and was a very stick and glutinous variety. Also delicious.
We met a Woman from San Fransisco, Coleen, who had befriended another Woman from Shanghai, english name Kelly, who spoke very good english. We sat and spoke into the night at a cafe, and also decided to rise in time to see sunrise over the rice terraces. Unlike the two guys we conversed with in Chengdu, Kelly was not comfortable discussing anything political about China, other than general noncontroversial issues. Its interesting trying to get the tone of things here.
We bought a ticket for a tour to two villages in the hills about 3 hours from Guilin. The first village is inhabited by people of the Yao ethnic group. The Yao women grow their hair long, and have customs related to this. The part of the village we visited is geared to tourists and we saw a show demonstrating the customs, music and dance.
The women only ever cut their hair twice in their life. It is grown long but hidden from view under a hat until they are married. Their husband is the first to see their hair and it is cut. They keep the cut hair and wear it with their growing hair. I didnt catch what the second hair cutting occassion is. A group of married women demonstrated the unfurling of their hair - 2 long cut sections plus their own hair - extremely long, and very well kept. They wash their hair with rice water.
I am often cynical about the use of the ethnic minorities for tourism here in China, and in SEAsia (Thailand and Vietnam), however on this trip I got a different perspective on this. The operations were run by the locals by the look of things. In the two villages we visited (more on the second one soon), there was an obvious area where the tourism takes place - restaurants, shops, hotels (the majority seemed to be run by locals). You only had to walk down 1 or 2 paths to get away from that and see that normal life was taking place in the village also. Tourism has become I would guess a healthy supplement to the traditional agriculture and other sources of income, much like in many societies. Hopefully it ensures improved health conditions, education and so on. I do know that minorities in many parts of Asia are exploited and often trafficked for tourism - even in Thailand for example - so it was nice to see what to my eyes appeared to be a healthy balance. Always hard to tell who is benefiting how much of course.
We didnt spend long in this Village, and I have forgotten its name. We jumped back on the bus and headed to the next village - Ping'An.
Literally just checked into our guesthouse in Guilin, South China. Free wireless seems to be everywhere in this country. Originally were only staying one night here, but have decided to make it 2 because it looks really nice.
Hi folks, we had an awesome day today including the Panda wrangling. Tonight is our last night in Chengdu. Tomorrow evening we fly to Guilin which is much further South and a bit to the East. It's in Guangxi province and has a much smaller population of something like 1.3 million. I think we're only there 1 or 2 nights then we go a bit further South to a town called Yangshuo.This part of the trip will be much quieter probably than anything in China so far which will be a nice change, and good considering we'll be spending 4 or 5 days in the futuristic madness of Hong Kong following. Hard to believe there's still 2 weeks to go, seems like we've been gone a couple months. Thanks for all your comments - please feel free to comment more.
This morning, we did a tour to the Panda breeding and research centre - only a 30min ride from our guesthouse. The pictures tell most the story.
This is a 2 year old Giant Panda by the name of Yuanda. He was more interested in chomping his apple, than being at all concerned about us.
We didnt get the name of the red panda, but he was also intent on chomping apples. Was a 2 or so hour visit to the centre. We saw babies (a few months) in a crib, 1 year olds, 2 year olds, and 3 year olds. As well as the red pandas. The 1 year olds were very active frolicking about their enclosure, but apparently pandas are only active in the morning for a few hours then they sleep the rest of the day and night. We arrived just as they were waking up which was perfect. They went straight for the bamboo.
