Their hometown is in the dream

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I told my friend, I might go to Guizhou to run a small café in a lovely Dong village. They treated it as a ‘day dream’. Who will be your consumers? Are there enough foreign visitors? Well, their points may be correct. But according to this website, various people have been there. Any way, if I have enough money to run my café, it will not be for earning money. It is just a way of enjoying life.



Why did I speak too much on my ‘day dream’? I just want to express that how I love this region. I love it, so I am concerned about it. It is not just a place in my dream. It is also a place in natives’ dreams, since most of them have left there to work outside far away.



Beautiful places always hide in mountains. Guizhou is described as ‘no more than three days for sunshine, no more than three miles for flat’. Mountains and hills occupy 92.5% of fields in this province. Not enough filed is for farming. Traffic system is not good enough to connect every village, especially the minority ethic groups. All these conditions constrict the development of economics. But people need to improve their life conditions. They want their next generation can have better life. So they go out to earn money.



Every Dong village is beautiful and peaceful; some are too quite to let me believe that some people are living there. It is a little bit scary. You might think you are really in a dream. Young people are not easy to meet. The most common picture is that some children are playing around some old ladies.



For some popular villages, there are some young girl and boys who offer performance to visitors when off their class, such as Sanbao and Zhaoxing. Sanbao is near the town so it is easy to be reached and Zhaoxing is famous because it is the biggest Dong village.



15^th August, according to the Luna calendar, the moon shows its most beautiful face during the whole year. Outside the village of Sanbao, Duliujiang River is flowing quietly. We were sitting on the riverside – a Dong young man, two other visitors and me. The Dong was singing with guitar, under the beautiful moon……I never regretted to travel alone. But if there is one more person can share this nice feeling with me, it is also fine…



Yintan, a village inside the mountains, but gets a road, although it is a narrow and tough way. Several trucks were parking on the road, so the space left seemed just could be for two wheels in one side of the car. The driver had a look at the road then to speed up. I stopped him and got off. I must admit that I was scared. I walked along and got on again when he passed all trucks.



When I entered in the village, the feeling was like coming into a dream. It was not real. There were wooden houses, streets, Towers, just as a normal Dong village…but there was no people. Finally some children appeared. They were playing and laughing, which made the place even more liked an illusion. Then old men appeared. They were sitting together inside the tower, smoking. (I continued with the feeling of dreaming till) All of them, young and old stopped their business and began staring at me. But they were friendly. They showed nice smile to me.



Going inside, the whole village was having the nap in this warm afternoon. Dogs were sleeping on the road everywhere. Cats were better; they were resting in the corners. An old woman was dyeing her new cloths besides two big jars of Landian Cao (Baphicacanthus cusia), which were her magical blue dye.



Then my feeling of illusion came back again. The world was too quite.



The village is a dream, not just for me but also for those who are working far away. They can’t go back their hometown unless in the dream…

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