A surreal wonderland

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Day 420: Sunday 23rd August - Arriving in Longji Rice Terraces

In my last post, I had just arrived in the town of Ping’ An 36 hours after commencing my journey from Lijiang. Needless to say on my arrival, I take the first reasonably priced accommodation. I can’t be bothered to look around. Thankfully this gives me my own room to get a good night’s sleep. On closer inspection, naturally after I’ve agreed to take the room, I find the bed is rock hard. It hasn’t got what the average person would describe as a mattress, it only being an inch thick. Tonight I’m going to have to grin and bear it, which shouldn’t be too hard in my present weary state but I’m already making mental preparations to see the rice terraces and move on by the end of tomorrow.

I get a shower which is a hair-raising experience. The hot water is provided by a gas boiler which is fed from a gas cylinder outside the shower door. The gas boiler is in the shower room which is my first concern. The shower unit’s instructions are all in Chinese and when I don’t get any hot water I start fiddling with the dials. All of a sudden when I turn one, flames from the boiler start licking the shower unit. Thankfully, it is soon extinguished when I turn the knob back to where it was and no damage is done, save a little bit of melted plastic. This isn’t the place you’d want to start a fire as all of the houses are wooden buildings.

The owners of the hotel invite me to share a family meal of duck, fish and chicken. The meal is okay, twice the price of Mama Naxi’s feast and only half as tasty. It is however interesting to see the Chinese eat a meal noisily at close quarters. What is also of interest is the family have two daughters, unusual in sense that China has had a one child policy in force since 1980. One of the girls in Lijiang mentioned it doesn’t apply to minorities, and 75% of Guangxi province is classed as minority peoples. I have an interesting discussion on this very topic the following day. Clearly, China had to do something to check it’s rapidly increasing population but one could argue it is a breach of a fundamental human right to reproduce and with boys being favoured over girls, China has a ‘bathelor bomb’ with millions upon millions of men unable to find a partner. China, like many developed countries is also going to be faced with the problem of an ageing population and too small a workforce to support its elderly. But, China had to do something, whether it chose the right solution I don’t know, but if it had allowed its population to grow unchecked it may have been unable to feed so many mouths resulting in mass starvation, which you could argue is the worst case scenario.

Day 421: Monday 24th August - A surreal wonderland of rice terraces

I seem to have been blessed with good fortune to date in China and this continues whilst having breakfast when I bump into Jimmy and Maria, a Swedish couple who were on my bus up to Ping’ An from Longsheng. They are planning to walk to Dazhai which is at least 4 hours away. This was also my plan for the day, and when they invite me to join them on the walk, I jump at the chance. They’ve also been travelling a long time - 9 months in their case - and they are good company to share the walk to Dazhai. They worked at the hostel I stayed at when I visited Milford Sound in New Zealand and we have quite a lot of common ground to discuss regarding our respective travels.

The walk to Dazhai must be approaching 20 kilometres and it takes us six hours but what a six hours. Words alone can’t really describe the scenery, it is so beautiful that I think I’m walking through a fantasy land. I use the comparison of Hobbiton from Lord of the Rings, Jimmy says it reminds him of the Japanese anime films. Neither is wholly accurate, but their suggestion that the scenery has an element of fantasy and a touch of the surreal is very true. It is so incredibly beautiful, and more than once I just don’t know which direction to point my camera. This is like nothing else I’ve ever seen before and I have seen many rice terraces.

Longji is 66 square kilometres of amazing rice terraces scenery with minority villages scattered amongst it. We start the walk in the mid morning sunshine in the Zhuang village of Ping’ An. We climb through the village until we are looking down on the interesting architecture of Ping’ An village, which is surrounded on all sides by rice fields. It is a simply stunning sight. Longji rice terraces may not be rated as the world’s best - that honour is frequently given to Banaue in the Phillipines, but I have never seen rice terraces as impressive as these. I’ve seen some impressive terracing; the Inca inspired terraces in Peru, many in Southeast Asia - those around Sapa probably being the best, but none can compete with Longji.

On the way up to the viewpoints above Ping’ An we pass a Chinese tourist being carried up the mountain by two local men. After the Stone Forest and Lijiang, I have learnt that Chinese tourists are to be avoided due to their sheer weight of numbers which is overwhelming and definitely spoils any ambience. In Ping’ An there aren’t too many of them, but those I do see affirm my opinion that they are a lazy bunch. Walking Tiger Leaping Gorge virtually none to be seen as it requires a reasonable amount of physical exertion, here many are too lazy to even bother walking. Chinese tourists, an increasing middle class of the country seem to want to show this new found wealth at every opportunity whilst on holiday and if that means being carried like a king whilst two poor, local men are burdened with an unfair weight then so be it.

Our walk from Ping’ An takes us to Zhongliu, a two hour walk away first. For half the journey we are joined by some local Yao women. Yao women have the longest hair in the world as they never cut it. Instead, they wrap the hair in a bun above their head in a style resembling an Indian turban. It would be nice to get a picture, but you have to pay 10 Yuan (£1) for the privilege. Minority women are often the best sales people and these women are no exception. When we arrive in Zhongliu they try and take us to one of their houses for food, despite us not being hungry. They also try to sell us numerous handicrafts and postcards and offer to walk us to Dazhai, of course for a price. We manage to shake them off though and continue on to Dazhai alone.

Our walk from Zhongliu to Dazhai takes us through yet more stupendous vistas over the rice terraces. It is a feat of farm engineering that must have taken years to build as the terraces reach all the way up to a string of 800 metre peaks. There is not only the terracing to look at as we walk, every time we reach a village, and we pass a few on the way from Ping’ An to Dazhai, the unique style of traditional houses provide an interesting distraction. They are built largely from timber and are up to three stories high, relatively large and covered in roof tiles.

Once we reach Dazhai we take the bus down to the valley floor where we have to wait about an hour to take the bus up the hill to Ping’ An. We get talking to a Swiss couple and we all discover that despite staying in three different hotels, we all have hard beds! It makes me feel a little better about my choice of accommodation. After a couple of hours rest, I get dinner with Jimmy and Maria. I pass a few tips on about Lijiang and Tiger Leaping Gorge and they return the favour by giving me the lowdown on Yangshuo where they stayed a month to climb and where I am heading later in the week. We’re all tired after a long but immensely satisfying walk and it isn’t long until I’m tucked up in bed, back in the normal world, and reflecting on my day walking through a fantasy world.

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