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Published: December 9th 2008
That morning as the train jolted me from my slumber, I woke to spectacular chartreuse light which filled the carriage. Everyone was already up sipping green tea from glass jars, highlighted in the dazzle and staring out the windows. Our train came to rest on a viaduct and from beneath it yellowing green autumnal rice, illuminated in the rising sun, stretched to the horizon.
There was no fanfare on our arrival that morning in Kaili, and not a solitary taxi driver awaits us as we exit the train station. We hop on bus #2 and trundle into town. Judging by the intrigue of the local passengers not many little blonde baby boys make it out here.
Like most small cities in contemporary China, Kaili is a fairly dull, nondescript place, devoid of tourist sites and growing fast. No doubt due to lack of demand, backpacker hostels have yet to emerge on the scene, and we find ourselves standing across the street from our choice of hotel Shiyou Binguan, feeling a little apprehensive when we discover this translates to “THE PETROLEUM HOTEL”.
The reason we chose to haul all the way out to this remote and exotic region is
its strategic location at the heart of eastern Guizhou’s diverse mixture of minority peoples, and after tossing our bags we head out to the state-run China International Travel Service (CITS) located just around the corner, to find out what’s to be seen in the surrounding hill country.
The informative and very friendly lady dished out answers to our probing questions whilst bouncing Kiva off her knee, equipping us with a detailed list of market days, destinations and transport tips for almost the entire region (placing added emphasis on destinations described as authentic by passing western tourists).
After an extended nap to catch up on the sleep lost on our overnight train journey, by the time we’ve arrived at our first destination, the sun has descended into the hills, casting the lower reaches of the valley in shadow. With some 2 kilometers still to travel on foot to Langde, we opt for the services of a waiting motorcyclist, who delivers the three of us there in little over a minute, for little over a dollar.
Langde is set in a steep forested valley alongside a suspiciously new-looking Wind and Rain Bridge, which spans a clear river dividing it from
Finale
Langdea smaller village higher up on the opposite slope. I was a little apprehensive about coming here for what, even the women at the CTS, had described as a bit of a staged spectacle. But with only a short amount of time at our disposal that afternoon we thought, if anything this village would provide us with a comparison point for the more authentic places we planned to visit in the region.
A tour coach was parked outside, and a line of Chinese tourists are making their way up a pathway to the entrance. They’re met at intervals along the path by extravagantly dressed Miao women. The village men, dressed in blue-black, who were gathered at the top of the path, are disappearing inside, having just finished playing some kind of bamboo musical instrument.
We’re told we must buy a ticket costing $3US before entering the village. After paying and receiving a ticket I approach a woman on the path, dressed in full festival regalia, complete with a wonderfully intricate silver crown atop her head. She flashes me a hearty smile, and offers me a small bowl of rice wine. I knock it back politely and swiftly, eager
to discover what awaits us inside the village as the throng of Chinese tourists has now disappeared behind the Miao-style “Diaojiaolou” wooden houses, together with the majority of the village welcoming party.
My eagerness to drink results in instantaneous refills and with at least half a dozen more women dotted along the route and everyone going all gooey for Kiva, our ascent is further slowed. I’ve easily consumed a liter of this potent Miao brew by the time we’ve navigated the path to the top, and when we eventually enter the village with Kiva’s fan club entourage, I’m feeling a little hazier of judgment, and thoroughly welcomed.
In the main square a swirl of men and women dance and sing, more wine is offered up and consumed, serving to sweep everyone up in the energy of it all. By now Kiva has been whisked away, newly discovered by the Chinese tourists who fight for custody of him with the Miao villagers. Volleys of cameras click in his direction wherever he turns; a routine he and we are thoroughly accustomed to after 3 weeks in China. Women swirl around, men dance and sing. I take pictures and drink
whatever I’m offered, fully immersed in the revelry.
After the grand finale we say our goodbyes and leave filled with a genuine feeling of warmth and hospitality. Hitching a ride with the Chinese tourists back to Kaili in their tour bus, the partying continues onboard with a round of impromptu karaoke.
The following morning we leave Kaili to the west, passing a coal-fired power station set deep down in a river valley, which the city has grown out to meet. The road on which we travel is lined with houses and apartment blocks located at the same height as the top of the power plant’s chimneys. Further on, the valley has been gouged out and scarred; nature torn from its face to make way for coal mining quarries and building materials, presumably to feed the growth of this city. I look down at the river and the water runs a thick orangey red, staining the rocks and river banks it passes over, now unquestionably devoid of life.
Further down the valley it meets a larger cleaner river. The colors mix and blend, before the orange slurry is seemingly diluted without trace. Processed by nature it would appear.
But how efficient has she been, how many chemicals remain, and how long can she continue to clean up our mess?
We’ve come to Chongan for market day. The temperature is already high and many people are starting to leave. It seems the old riverside city’s minority market we had anticipated has also been diluted and processed, as it were, by development.
After a cursory cruise around, we decide we’ve already seen enough of fake western sports brands, DVD’s and the like and hire a boat across the river to take refuge in a small village with its smattering of wooden buildings and watch as residents return home by boat with their wares.
When the town’s weekly gridlock has eased enough for our departure we board a bus back up the polluted river valley before jumping off at the junction to another fairly well visited minority village, Matang.
Unlike Langde there is no entrance fee here, and no cultural performances are put on for tourists. The Gejia Miao, who inhabit this village are, however, renowned artisans and almost immediately we were approached by a gaggle of women welcoming us into their homes where we were plied
with all manner of embroidered this, and batik that. This being the only means by which they can benefit economically from tourism.
Shidong Market was purportedly the ‘best’ of the lot. So the next day we took the long ride out there, though as with Chongan it was certainly nothing to write home about. I guess we’d assumed travelling as far as we had from Kaili, we wouldn’t be standing in the midst of a generic Chinese market town that showed no real insights into the minority cultures of the surrounding areas.
Traditionally local people would journey to these market towns on a specified day and trade their goods with others. No economy existed beyond the local level. But better transportation and communication links have fueled these local economies, and today these small market towns are growing along with the rest of China, with the goods on offer increasingly from farther and farther afield.
The previous two days having served as diversions not originally on our schedule, we were keen to get back to travelling, and finally leave Kaili, which I have to admit we’d grown rather fond of. From here we had a long journey south
The hunter is the hunted!
Kiva's fanclub, Zhaoxing (he's on my back!) east if we were to village hop our way through Dong territory and eventually into Guangxi province.
With our initial bus journey destined to be at least seven hours we set off early, travelling into a region considerably lower and warmer than the areas inhabited by the Miao. The Dong who inhabit these areas have traditionally built their villages near the larger rivers and have thus been historically less isolated from the rest of China than the Miao.
Yet with modern transport connecting this once extremely isolated region of China, it’s the Miao who are coming into increased contact with the outside world and the Dong, down on the river, who have become isolated. The villages we passed on our way to Congjiang left me pining to get off the bus and explore. As we hit the fast-moving Duliu River, we passed Dong villages on the opposite bank, perched on stilts clinging to the steep muddy banks which rise sheer from the canoe-lined river’s edge, surrounded by the trees and rice paddies that provide their sustenance.
Congjiang was a predictably uninspiring little Chinese town set by the river with a few old wooden houses hiding in and
behind the concrete blocks that signal economic growth and Hanification. Exiting the bus station we were flagged down by a woman offering food in her restaurant and a place to sleep. In China tourists are obligated to stay at officially recognized hotels, so this was bound to be cheap; however, it is quite possible the woman was the worst cook in China.
Mid-meal we were keenly informed her son owned a minivan. So with a couple hours’ daylight left, we decided we may as well employ his services to ferry us the 10kms or so up into the hills to the village of Basha for a taster.
Historic isolation has led to the perception of the Miao as backwards and uncivilized. Yet it is this very isolation and lack of interconnection with other groups which has led to the myriad variations in customs seen in the same peoples from village to village, town to town. Basha has a (male) dress code dating back to the 16th century Ming dynasty; the men wear black period clothing and their hair in a top knot. A rarity, as in most minority aboriginal communities around the world, it is invariably the males
who adopt western garb long before the women do.
The centre of the village was on the ridge of a hill, with the houses falling away on either side, to rice paddies which stretched to the bottom of the valley and up the opposite side. ‘Biasha’ in the Miao language translates to ‘a place where trees flourish’; and they surround the village, protected as carriers of ancestors’ spirits.
When we arrived the village girls were hanging out at the main square, dressed in all their regalia. Their hair, which is left uncut until the age of sixteen, is bound around their heads.
We made our way down a narrow path past wooden houses with bark roofs and large wooden rafts outside them, upon which hung the newly harvested unhusked rice, which was carried on people’s shoulders, slung over either end of poles. A man stopped to say hi, a machete tied around his waist and an old rifle slung over his shoulder, this being the only tribe in China ‘allowed’ to carry guns.
An uprising between 1734 and 1737 resulted in 12,000 villages being burnt and the death of some 500,000 Miao. Then the ‘Miao Rebellion’
against the Qing government between 1840 and 1870 resulted in the death of over half their population. Many hundreds of thousands fled south to escape, where they ended up in northern Laos, Vietnam, and eventually Thailand, where they are known as the Hmong.
During the Vietnam War the CIA were able to rope them into a secret US-backed army to fight the communists in Laos. When the Americans were defeated, the Hmong were left to face retribution and persecution. Many fled to refugee camps in Thailand, where they spent many years in limbo until the US government, which had previously denied any involvement in their plight, were forced to concede, and today Hmong can be found living in as diverse places as Wisconsin, California and French Guiana.
A cool fine rain fell most of the following day in Basha, which if anything added to its ambiance. Our new location enabled us to witness a day in the life of the main square; and when we first heard the music I rushed out onto our balcony to see what was happening.
A Chinese tour group had arrived, and the cultural tourism concept we’d experienced in Langde was being
cutie
Langde played out here too. As we went down to join the festivities, I began to wonder if there were two separate classes of people in the village; those that continued with their daily chores in timeless fashion and those who entertained.
Another batch of tourists came in late afternoon. The dances and songs were all the same, yet this time the actors were different. Now I wasn’t certain if there were two separate shifts or whether it is more complicated than that. How was the income from tourism distributed, and how much of it was given over in ‘tax’ to the state? All I know is that the performance had all the energy of the first time I saw it, and all those that partook seemed to thoroughly enjoy what they were doing.
Exploring the village it was evident changes had occurred since the Qing Dynasty, in the form of TV aerials, a grocery store and a state-run school where children are taught the Han language and social system. There was also evidence of a concerted effort to mask any signs of change, with construction underway to mask a concrete building on the main square with a traditional
wooden façade. And upon closer scrutiny it was clear some other prominent buildings had also had this facelift.
When China first opened up its doors to international tourism it naturally assumed, like most of us new to tourism, that natural and historical landscapes - not cultural customs - were their most highly valued tourism resources. Increasingly however, the state has been encouraging cultural tourism as a tool of local economic development in these lesser visited regions. This offers locals the chance to directly benefit, because although scenic sites do offer places for locals to sell souvenirs and other services, they also take away from them large areas of land, on which their livelihoods have been traditionally based.
After years of experience, minority villages on the tourist circuit seem to be well aware of the need to meet the expectations of their visitors. But the idea of a contradiction between authenticity and economic development is a fine line, which the government assumes is beyond their understanding. So they are ‘advised’ in the form of the prefectural cultural bureau, exactly which changes they are allowed to make in order to maintain their authenticity.
We’d arranged for our trusty driver
Maize
Matang to pick us up after our stay in Basha and transport us onto our next destination of Zhaoxing. Some thirty minutes into a journey we make a stop in the driving rain at the Wind and Rain Bridge entrance to Gaozeng. Chinese domestic tourists used to flock to Gaozeng. Our anxious driver convinced us it wasn’t even worth a flyby visit, insisting we could just view from above as we drove on to Zhaoxing.
Traditionally, minority groups in these areas build their own homes from trees in the surrounding forests, leaving these villages extremely susceptible to fire. In 1988 two-thirds of the village and two of the three drum towers were destroyed. And with the fire, Gaozeng's privileged position in the hierarchy of state recognition and cultural preservation was lost.
Though the towers had been protected relics, once they were destroyed the state saw no point in providing funds to rebuild them since it was deemed they would no longer have any value as traditional antiques. And furthermore, because the village had ‘lost’ its authenticity, tourism dwindled as travel agencies and tourism authorities no longer promoted the village, and attention began to focus, instead, on Zhaoxing.
Winding
along in this mountainous region, it is ironically the smaller villages of this ‘autonomous prefecture’, where tourism never treads, that the villages show the starkest contrasts. Towering over a collection of timber-made houses nestled into the nooks of hillsides is invariably a single cuboid concrete Chinese administrative building, starkly white, with a red flag flying over head; the antithesis of its surroundings, and no attempt made to ‘authenticate’ its appearance.
Sitting at the bottom of a deep three sided basin, with the surrounding forested ridges rising nearly one thousand meters, viewing Zhaoxing on our approach from above it certainly has an enclosed and hidden quality. One of the largest Dong ethnic communities in China, Zhaoxing is said to offer examples of "pure" Dong culture.
There are no white administrative buildings here, all buildings along the main street have long since been ‘authenticated’ with wooden facades, and it has to be said, to great effect. As we’re dropped off I’m totally smitten; we find a locally run hotel and get out and explore til the sun goes down.
It was harvest time in Zhaoxing with people busy threshing and setting out rice to be dried in the sun,
which required a full-scale community effort to cover them up every time the rains came and went.
The main draw of Zhaoxing is the drum towers, which are the societal center of Dong culture: serving religious and social roles (the town hall, clubhouse, and retirement home all in one). Each of the five drum towers and covered bridges was built by a different village clan to a slightly different design. Ironically, these towers were all destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, but have since been rebuilt and given county-level protected status.
The bridges were mostly frequented by elderly men, who hung out there smoking pipes. Whilst the women washed clothes in the indigo, traditionally worn by the Dong, or gathered under the shelter of the drum towers, chatting.
Par for the course, we also witnessed more traditional singing and dancing, and discovered groups from neighboring provinces are sent here to learn ´authentic´ songs and dances; which instills in the community a sense of pride in their culture sorely lost during the Cultural Revolution.
Ultimately it is the Chinese state that arbitrates the relationship between tourism, development and cultural preservation. But if tourism deems a place to be
worthy of visiting the local minorities have a forum for making claims for cultural preservation.
On our last night, I thought I’d take the chance to check my email. I was directed down the river, past a bridge and through a little door to be confronted by a wall of cigarette smoke and two dozen teenage boys glued to PC monitors in the midst of some online, hook me up, shoot me up, combat mission.
Televisions with Chinese state programming are in most homes. Internet cafes (despite the ‘Great Firewall of China’) are springing up everywhere, and their choice of ‘Made in China’ products has brought these minority peoples into direct contact with virtually everything available in the wider global market place. But is it arrogant to presume these forms of modernity are necessarily pollutants?
Should these people and others like them be cut off from the modernizations that have raised our own standards of living, so that their cultures can be preserved the temptations of a global consumerist world. I’d have to answer yes; for how else will we know how to live in harmony with this planet once our own civilization comes crashing down around
us.
After years of travelling I’ve developed certain theories on the subject, one of those being that tourists can serve as the shock troops of change; who in unearthing a previously undiscovered location, inadvertently bring about negative changes.
My experience in Guizhou has made me revaluate the belief that tourism is simply another cog in the wheel of modernization, but in some cases, can provide a break.
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Stephen Paul
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Tourists
Great post! Some really good shots here. Favorites: Wind and Rain Bridge Zhaoxing, harvest time Zhaoxing, early morning Zhaoxing, Bridge and Drum Tower Zhaoxing, Wind and Rain Bridge Zhaoxing, Kiva Zhaoxing