Anshun: largest waterfall in China

Student ‘homecoming’ train

I arrived with the night train from Chengdu, hard sleeper. While not uncomfortable, space is very limited for a tall Dutch guy such as myself. Because of the upcoming Chinese New Year lots of students are traveling home and thus the average age of the Chinese traveler was much lower than normal. China being China, a train full of students didn't become a party train but staid quiet and orderly. It didn’t take long before I was chatting with two students: Tom (his English name) and LiJing. They’re both studying in Chengdu and their hometown is Anshun so they had the same destination as I did. When we got out of the train the next morning I was given their phone numbers should I have any trouble in Anshun. Even if I did I’d hesitate to call since they were about to see their families for the first time in half a year!

Heat or electricity?

Directly after arrival, I walked to a building that was seemingly a hotel. Construction workers everywhere inside; and they were there to work and not to sleep. So on to the next one, and they had plenty of rooms available for 130RMB. Not the cheapest, but it’s a nice hotel and after a night on a train bunk my body was aching for comfort. Especially when I saw that they had a spa inside! The hotel name is Jun Gong Rui Qi Jiu Dian and it’s opposite the entrance of the train station. During the stay a few electrical problems though: the heater in my first room broke down and after I was replaced to another room it didn’t have electricity. That was quickly solved though. During the evening though the heater in the new room decided to quit on me as well… Since it was already late enough I just wore some extra clothes and crawled under the blankets.

Largest waterfall in China!

Within Anshun there are two temples: Donglin Temple and Wen Miao. Having seen more than my share of temples in my lifetime, I decided to check out only the latter. Wen Miao is a temple dedicated to Confucious. It was nice to walk around, especially since I was the only person inside. More interesting than the temples are the backstreets of Anshun. It’s a rapidly modernizing town and between nice old buildings and decaying other ones already a few huge business towers have arisen. That combined with the karst valley Anshun is in makes for some pretty interesting sights.

Outside of Anshun are some of Guiyang’s most famous sights: Huangguoshu Falls, Zhijin Cave and Longgong Caves. Despite the rainy weather I chose not to go down under and chose the first. Huangguoshu Falls are China’s premier waterfalls, with the most impressive having a width of 81 meter and dropping 74 meter. It’s very noticeable that tourism isn’t booming in Guiyang: I saw only 6 other tourists in the whole park, all Chinese. The park reminded me of a small version of Jiuzhai Gou in Sichuan province but with only a fraction of the tourists, so even though it’s much smaller I enjoyed it more. The steep entrance price of 160RMB also included entrance to two other touristic sites in the close vicinity. I would have loved to see the others but there was no public transportation going there at all... It’s a shame the tourism board forces you to buy a ticket to three places without providing a decent option for transportation, thus forcing you to use taxis for vast distances.

Dogs: Pets or

Wen Miao

Food?

Before I came to Anshun I was warned that lots and lots of dogs are eaten in this part of China. I was willing to try it… but that changed when I saw a very young puppy during my last Sichuan lunch in Chengdu. Suddenly, dog meat didn’t sound as interesting anymore. During my stay in Anshun I never saw the Dog carcasses that are supposed to hang outside the restaurants serving dog meat, nor did I see anything on the menu. I ordered some dumplings with a strange flavor, but after asking the serving lady it just was pork. Maybe Anshun’s taste for dogs has diminished, or maybe they ran out of them (is January outside the Dog season?). Talking about food, street snacks in Anshun are great. I noticed that a lot are potato-based, for 1RMB you can buy a portion of ‘french fries’ with the appropriate Chinese herbs and spices! A great snack if you’re exploring the city.

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