Ping'An Village

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.






Ping'An 01 from tgoodwin on Vimeo.

Yao Village - Longshen County

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.








Yao Village from tgoodwin on Vimeo.