China 2013 Day 9

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We are up early. We are heading today to a 700-year old mountain village named Ping'an, in the Longsheng area. It is inaccessible to motorized vehicles, so we repack for two days into backpacks. Our other bags will go without us to Guilin.

As an aside, our Chinese guides have all used the wonderful euphemism "happy room" for washrooms ("Anybody need use happy room?"). The washrooms in the big hotels are all excellent and western-oriented. The top-end restaurants where we have been eating are typically quite clean but with only one western toilet and the rest "squatters." This is quite challenging for the women, who need to squat to do any kind of business. Public washrooms on the street have been hit and miss, mostly miss. The most important washroom rule in China is: Remember to collect toilet paper from the dispensers outside before you enter the stall, because there's no paper inside. The other interesting thing is that the wash-up area is typically shared by men and women.

Anyway, I'm mentioning all this because on our long bus trip today, we have to make a stop at a gas station for a bio-break, and there we have to deal with a "not-so-happy room." The men's offers a long common trough for #1 and basically a bunch of holes in the ground for #2. The women won't even talk about what they found in theirs.

En route, Tracy gives us some background information on the Yao ethnic group, who are the residents of Ping'an. Their clothes are traditionally black with colorful decorations. The women cut their hair only once in their lives, at 18, and wear their long locks coiled on top of their heads. Not only that, they save the hair from their haircut at 18 and all the hairs that fall from their heads when combing, and coil all that hair on top of the attached, creating a tall, tightly woven bun. In the old days, only husbands would see their unbound hair, but now they unwrap it for tourists. Apparently, the women also rule the household in Yao families and take the lead in choosing mates.

The area we are entering, Longji, is famous for its terraced rice paddies. I've already mentioned how the people have developed techniques for terracing steep slopes to make them cultivable. These techniques are pushed to the extreme in these high, mountainous areas.

After 3 1/2 hours, our bus reaches a terminus where we switch to a narrower bus that can negotiate the switchback mountain roads ahead. The ride up is thrilling, because the road snakes back and forth up the mountains with sheer cliffs on the outside–and no rail. At every switchback turn, the driver sounds his horn, because meeting a descending bus at that point would not have a happy ending.

After about 45 minutes, we reach the end of the road. At this point, we must proceed on foot. There are locals able and willing to carry our bags and even us in sedan chairs. Violet opts for the sedan chair and Tracy helps negotiate the price: 240¥ one way. And off we go.

It's a long trek. The steps are generally good but uneven, basically pieces of stone fashioned into stairs. There are some very steep sections. There are also flat sections where our complaining calf muscles get a break. Here we find little shops selling handicrafts and trinkets of all kinds. The sedan-chair porters keep an amazing pace. There are two of them per chair, front and back. Each has a wooden board that spans their shoulders, which is attached by ropes to the two bamboo poles supporting the chair. They then grasp the poles in each hand and lift. Violet's porters stop three times. The older man in front smiles and jokes a lot; the younger man in back scowls most of the way and is clearly complaining on breaks.

As we climb higher, the views become increasingly spectacular. The mist is gradually receding, revealing more and more of the upper mountains and the terraced paddies that undulate across them. The houses along the flat parts of the path are marvelously constructed of bricks and bamboo. Horses and donkeys also share the path, bringing up heavy loads of food and materials. People are beasts of burden as well, often shouldering heavy loads directly on their backs or in woven baskets.

After about an hour, we reach the village proper. It hugs the cliffs on either side of a gulley created by a small stream careening down the mountain, linked by a bridge. There is one main path, with many steep paths spidering away up and down from it. Our hotel and the restaurant for lunch is on the far side of the gulley. Lunch is quite tasty. We especially like the egg plant, spicy tofu and steamed bamboo rice. The latter deserves some explanation. Hollow bamboo tubes are stuffed with rice and various other things, perhaps ham or bacon, corn or other vegetables and spices. The bamboo are stopped up by corn cobs, then roasted in hot fires. The bamboo burns on the surface and comes out black, but the rice inside is cooked to perfection. It is served with the bamboo split lengthwise so the rice can be scooped out.

After lunch, we check into our hotel, which is a short distance from the restaurant down a steep path. Accommodations are rustic but comfortable. Violet and I luck into a corner room and the view of the village and surrounding mountains is absolutely fantastic.

Violet decides to recuperate from the terrors of being lugged like baggage up the mountain, but I join some other members of our group and climb to the very top of the mountain. It's about another 30 minutes of effort but well worth it. As we ascend beyond the village we get spectacular views of the terraced paddies. The locals call this view "7 stars and the moon," because there is a crescent-shaped lake surrounded by paddies sculptured into seven high spots, vaguely patterned like the seven stars of the Big Dipper. At the summit, there is a small store offering a ginger drink that purchasers claim is fantastic. There is also a shop that will dress you up in traditional costumes and produce high-quality pictures of you posed against the scene I described above. Several of our party take advantage of this opportunity and are pleased with the results.

Back in the village, we have some much-needed down time before dinner, which is similar to lunch and includes a variation on the bamboo rice recipe. Some people go out after dinner to browse the shops. One of our number has discovered a cafe that serves western-oriented food. Pretty much everyone decides to come along and we pack the small place, probably cleaning the owner out of chocolate cake and banana splits. We do see him run out to get more bananas from somewhere. Back at the hotel, we shower and go to bed early. The bed is rock-hard, but we don't don't care a bit.

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