Blogs from Yuanyang, Yunnan, China, Asia - page 3

The Yuanyang rice terraces in southern China near the Laos/VietNam border are huge. The stretch for miles and have 350 levels in places that stretch up the mountains from the valley floors. There are an awesome sight. Four of us, who made the bus trip down from Kunming together, hired a minivan for the day to take us around to the 8 different places. At 4:30 AM, there were clouds, but we could see stars shining. By the 5 departure, the village was completely fogged in. It was really eerie driving through with shadows of people walking along the side of the road, all coming to the village Saturday market. The fog lifted once we got to the next mountain. But by sunrise, it had come back and there were no terraces to be seen. So ... read more

This super-long foggy weather finally over yesterday. Through the miserable golden week holiday without much tourists, compared with what I heard from the news,"this year the number of tourist had been increased in Lijiang... Transportation in peak level...."seem like everywhere were blooming with tourism business except Yuanyang. I like it this way but on the other hand I was worry about our handicrafts in the center. With no customers, no sale, no work for the women in the villages, and this project has no future. Anyway...the town wasn't quiet as the locals business kept alive, by what? I could never find out. Where the money come from? No industry here, but look at the town...blooming! New house had been erected everyday, new shop front come and go, renew and renew, more consumer goods, price went up, ... read more

Began to read my diary on my birthday, it was addictive as one of my friend had quoted it, even the diary was written by myself. Just couldn't stop it although it was well over 1am. Bloody amazing! Especially on your own birthday when you got nothing better to do. And also find out it no worsened than any other birthday for the last few years. Got myself more involved in the project than before. I always tried to be an observer from the outside, and urged the NGO to hired better people to run the project. But after 3 different candidates in a year, all of them were trying to run it as a mass tourism business. I didn't want to see my creation got ruined like this, so I better handle it myself even ... read more

ENGLISH Our journey to Yuanyang in deep Yunnan took us through the meandering roads and valleys of Honghe prefecture and up into the hills. Our bus driver must have O.D.'ed on or something. After 5 hours our nerves were shot by a combination of incessant claxon use and erratic accelerating, swerving and blind bend overtaking. As a wise women once said "It was as if he was worried about missing his own funeral". You also had to be wary of errant flob and spittle from the lady in front catching you in the face as she gobbed haphazardly out the window every 5 minutes. Aside from the transport worries the landscape we passed through was beautiful. Banana trees, lush green fields, red earth, water buffalo and reed hats. In Yuanyang most of the town stopped dead ... read more