Rice Terraces and Yao People

Just a quick post while sit in a beer garden at an Irish pub with John Denver's "Coutry Roads" playing in the background. The bottled water is way over priced but the shade is divine and the street remarkably quiet. Well, China is still just a few feet away. From time to time I'll run across these ex pat establishments designed to provide the westerner with some of the familiaties of home. In one way its kind of nice but in another way it kind of feels like I'm kind of cheating. After all, I'm here to experience China. Oh, and the wi-fi is pretty good.

For the last two days I've been up in the hills visiting an area known as the Dragons Backbone rice terraces. Tourism is taking off and visitors are bused in by the masses to Ping An village to see the terraces and to experience the traditional local life. I booked a one way ticket with a tour group originating in Yangshuo and left the group upon entering the area. It cost a little more than taking local but made for a very easy and much quicker trip.

Just about everyone is dropped off at Ping An village which is a lovely mountainside village turned into a mess of tourism. However, there are several other villages and Ping An is the main draw. I was most interested in walking a path 4 to 5 hours to a cluster of un-spoiled villages with basic facilities to accomodate the more adverturous.

While stopping for lunch, in Ping An, I met a young French Woman who was also a bit put off by the crowds of tourist. I told her about the walk to the other villages and she expressed interest. We were both a little concerned about taking a wrong turn as our maps are rubbish and I expeted signage to be poor if existant at all. We solved the issue by hiring a local Yao woman to walk with us. The Yao are a minority group that have been farming rice on the mountains near Longsheng for hundreds of years but now they're not only keeping up a traditional lifestyle but are happy to embrace the tourist dollar.

It didn't take long at all to leave the tourist masses in Ping An. From Ping An we passed through the completely unspoiled village of Zhongliu as we climbed and traversed extremely picturesqe rice terraces. We for the night above Tiantou Village where the views are sublime and divine. This morning I walked out through the village of Dazhai and caught a local bus in Guilin. That is where I am now. In less than 3 hours I'll board a train for an 18 hour rice to Kunming. I see much more hiking in the near future.