Boy, after returning from May Day holiday it has been hard to get back on track. This is a big reason why we are delinquent in posting this blog entry. Nevertheless, we wanted to share our experiences during the International Labor Day 2009.The holiday began for us late Wednesday night. We were given Thursday and Friday off from school, but we saw it as being advantageous to fly out as early as possible. We left by bus to the Guangzhou airport. It is a quick hour and twenty minute ride. From there we boarded a plane to Guiyang , the capital of Guizhou province, and planned on staying at a convenient hotel nearby. When we arrived it was amazing for us to see such a small airport. In all honesty there was maybe ten gates for flights in the terminal. This place made our Boise airport seem huge.
Our friend Bill came with us again on this trip and booked us a nice low budget hotel. It was so great that we ended up staying at the same hotel three of the four nights we were in Guizhou. The first night we settled in and got as much rest as we could for our first day was going to be a jam-packed tour of natural landmarks west of Guiyang city. We planned to see waterfalls, mountains, and animals.
Day one started at 7:30 am. We got up and noticed that we were in for a long, wet weekend. Around the corner from our hotel was a neat little food street with all kinds of vendors selling breads, dumplings, and noodles. We ended up grabbing a few things to chow on and quickly grabbed a taxi. We were unsure of what would be the best way to get to our main destination of Huangguoshu Falls. We decided to seek the services of a driver and this search took us on a long and frustrating carousel of uncompromising people. Finally, after staying patient we found a very fair man that was willing to charge us about what we wanted and give us a lot in return. After figuring that out we were on our way to the immensely popular Chinese national park.
Since the location was about two hours away we spent some time on the road. Let us tell you that we have never had quite an experience like this. The expressway in Guizhou is very old and outdated. Road work has not been done in years so ruts and potholes are everywhere. Plus, Chinese drivers are incredible. They never slow down, not for anything or any person! So we were bouncing up and down from start to finish on our way to the park.
When we reached our destination, we learned that the park was broken into three sections. It cost us a bit more than we had anticipated, however we came too far to turn around. The interesting part about our experience here was that in total just a few hundred people visited the park the day we were there. The staff told us that summer months brought in ten times more people so we picked a good time to avoid crowds. A good indicator of how low tourism was this weekend was our bus transportation for the excursion. The price ticket included a bus pass to get to all three park areas that are separated with gaps of 3-5kilometers in between. On two of our three rides, not a single person but us and the bus driver were on board! We loved riding in style.
The first park was small and a good introductory site for tourists. The entrance is filled with beautiful peacocks for tourists to take snapshots of. We did this for about fifteen minutes and then made our way to the first section of the Sanche River. This area had a nice small scene with the Doupotang Falls being the centerpiece. This waterfall was impressive in that it was 105 meters (340 feet) wide! As we mentioned, the foot traffic from tourists was low so we were able to take pictures at will of this very nice cascade.
The next section of the park, Tianxing, we enjoyed almost as much as the big waterfall. The design was unique of this area. A walking/hiking trail was set up for this location. First, we had to walk in water taking 365 steps on rocks strategically placed throughout the park. Each rock represented a day of the year. The views were incredible as we saw karst-like mountains covered in green blankets of trees. Pazi was very excited because she was also able to experience going into a cave for the first time here at this site. Lastly, a tumbling waterfall can be seen here made up of a network of streams between rocky islets. This part of the park had a great set up.
Lastly, we saw the granddaddy of them all. Huangguoshu Falls is an amazing 68 meter (223 ft.) tall waterfall with great opportunities for taking pictures. Due to its unique design, we were able to take pictures 360 degrees around the cascades. This is all made possible due to nicely designed walkways and Shuilian Dong , a 134 meter (440 foot) long tunnel that runs directly behind the falls. This cool feature provided us with a natural "window" for viewing the curtain cascades before us. We must also mention that the experience did leave us a little wet but it was well worth it.From here we had spent roughly seven hours checking out this awesome park. We tried to visit another location on our way back, the town of Anshun, but it was a lost cause as our driver had no knowledge of this location and it was getting dark fast. Therefore, we made the decision to head back to Guiyang for a good dinner and rest. The next day was to be filled with even more adventure as before.
Day two started just as the first day with breakfast at the street vendor location before 8:00am. We ate our food quickly and were off to the bus station to find our way to the city of Kaili. This city is the main hub for getting to the natural wonders of eastern Guizhou province. The station was an outdated building dark and damp. We purchased our tickets but noticed that we had about an hour to kill before departure time so we decided to go out on the street side and see what photo ops were available to us.
The area we were in was a very old part of town, but rich with character. The best example of this was the neat street market that filled the narrow, almost alley-like roads. Here the people were selling an array of fruits, vegetables, meats, and snack foods. Their attire was different than other Chinese we had come across. The females all had a head dress of some type. Some ladies wore a simple wash cloth over their heads while others had a more decorative covering. Also, some workers wore large hats made of bamboo and other wood to protect them from the elements of sun and heavy rain. These things were very large (check out the photo).
Before we knew it the time had come to take our bus to Xijiang, our destination in the Miao Villages. The Miao people are an ethnic minority group of China and parts of southeast Asia. Sometimes they are referred to as the Hmong. These people are rich in culture. They prefer living in mountainous areas. Each village has its own unique attire such as the fantastic silver ornaments the young women wear to show their unmarried status to males. Additionally, they pride themselves on their festivals where they sing, dance, and perform numerous rituals.
Our stay in Xijiang, the largest Miao village at 1,200 homes, was very eventful. The scenery was very rustic. The homes are all handmade and entirely of wood giving it a "cabin" or "farm" type feel. The streets are narrow and lined with shops selling food, clothing, and lots of jewelery. We also ran into a great street market while we were there. The people in this village were extremely friendly and gave us so many chances to take pictures of them in their natural setting.The highlight of our visit in Xijiang was our stay at an actual Miao family's home. You see, we noticed early upon arriving that this town has far more visitors than hotel rooms. In fact a dozen hotels were being constructed during our visit to accommodate tourists. Learning this, we started to look for a place to sleep relatively early in the day. Well, we found two locations, one was a half finished room with stiff beds, and the other was an extremely expensive room right by a bar. We really did not like either option but after spending over an hour searching for another room we had no choice. We went back to one and then the other and received the news that no rooms were available any longer. Tired and dejected, we tried one last place. Here the man quickly got on his phone. It turned out that he did not have a room but a family he knew did.
The man took us two buildings over to a very tired looking home. As we approached the entrance to the home, a nine year old boy came out to greet us. After a couple minutes it was obvious that this slick kid was trying to sell us on renting his family's spare bedrooms for the night. He was cute and we were tired so we agreed. Also, we learned that his father was the English teacher for the village and that appealed to us. The family also offered to make us a traditional Miao dinner for a very small fee. The father was telephoned to buy supplies and while we waited for supper, we went down to explore the city more.After seeing a couple of the city's traditional Miao performances and shopping, we headed back to the home for dinner. Here we met Mr. Hou. He was a nice man, very proud of the fact that he taught English and knew about four foreign people. He was honored for us to stay with him and gave us a feast to eat. We had traditional smoked pork meat, peas, peanuts, stewed cabbage, and rice. The meal was actually pretty good. The kicker of it all was the jiu, or homemade rice wine, he forced us to drink repeatedly. We read up on this and it said that the Miao are very proud of their rice wine and traditions of celebrating by drinking it profusely. Adan got out of drinking too much by having a couple quick shots with Mr. Hou.
Another interesting story to share about the Hou family's house was the tradition of guests sleeping in the home. Because the Miao believe it is wrong form man and wife to sleep together as guests in another's home, Pazi was not allowed to sleep in the same bedroom as Adan. They believe this arrangement will ward off the evil spirits. Anyways, Pazi was terrified to sleep alone, but did and both Adan and Pazi slept lightly that evening.
The next day we spent the morning having breakfast and shopping in the town square. We took it a bit easier after two intense mornings. We also took more photos of some of the natural scenes that surrounded us. Then without much warning Bill told us that we needed to hurry and catch a bus to the nearby town of Langde to catch a glimpse of the traditional ox fighting. We thought it might be a neat cultural experience so we took off. Once we arrived at the arena, it was mud up to our knees. The rain was coming down steady most of the morning so the ground was soaked. Even though the weather us difficult, we still managed to get some great shots and enjoyed ourselves a lot.
From here we headed about to Kaili. We had lunch here and waited for the next bus to Guiyang. This whole process took up most of our afternoon. We checked back into our same hotel and went out for a great Korean barbecue dinner. From here we walked the streets of Guiyang to let our food go down. The next day we spent the morning and early afternoon visiting a fairly mundane Guiyang city. Just a few sites to really see and then we hopped on the plane to Guangzhou before making our way back to Dongguan. Wow, all that in a matter of a few days!
