9/8 In the evening there was a sweet lightning storm in the distance
that was lighting up the karst mountains, so we sat on top of the roof
of the hostel before movie night and drank 40 cent beers and watched
the show. Earlier in the evening we had been invited by chinese
students to practice english and play games with them (free beer
included), so we did this and it turned out to be quite cool.
That night, one of the movies we watched was Kung Fu panda. A quite
hilarious movie that does an amazing job of highlighting china from
the dumplings to the hats to the trees to the karst scenery to the
mountains to the stairs (china has more stairs than I have evern seen
whether climbing the temples of beijing or climbing the mountains of
huang shan or the rice terraces in longji) to the noodles.
9/9 I relaxed around yangshuo a bit in the morning and then took a
bus to guilin, from where I took a bus to longsheng from where I got
on a bus going to the village of Dhazai. However, at the entrance to
the longji terraces I was told I had to get off the bus and could not
go any further up by the people collecting the entrance fees. There
was another british couple who had been booted off the last bus. We
were quite confused and at first assumed it must have been some sort
of landslide as this is common in the steep and wet mountains around
here, but considering the bus was still going up, it couldn't be that.
They told us we had to instead catch a different bus to Ping'an,
which is not where I wanted to go at first. Finally we got an
explanation that the villagers of Dhazai were fighting the villagers
of Tiataou! This was crazy! I was assuming guns and such as I guess
that is what I picture when I think of fighting between villagers
these days. As we were waiting for the bus, someone came to us and
said that the fighting was over for the evening as it was getting dark
so we could go up. Of course we were a bit skeptical of this. I mean
they were just fighting right? But she said it was ok. So we took
the last bus up to Dhazai. The two brits stayed in Dhazai, but I
wanted to get up to the more remote village of Tiatou. It was
starting to get dark and pouring rain, but it opened my umbrella and
went for the steep hour long hike up to Tiatou. I passed the bridge
where supposedly the fighting had been going on, but it was quiet
except for a few vendors. When I got to my guesthouse (a surprise of
a place b/c since I was trekking in minority villages i was expecting
to sleep on the floor, have no shower or electricity or none of that,
just like in SE asia, but this place had a hot shower, tv,
electricity, nice beds...that's china for you, though it was quite
nice as I was drenched in sweat) the lady, who spoke good English,
told me that the village of tiatou had decided to build a road up to
it, which means the majority of tourists (which are mostly chinese)
would now skip staying in Dhazai which has views not near as good as
Tiatou and instead go to Tiatou. Since chinese tourists travel by the
tour bus and aren't very active (they take cable cars to the top of
mountains and the great wall) Tiatou mainly saw a trickling of western
tourists and Dhazai got fat off the chinese tourists. So basically
Dhazai was "fighting" them about this. The fighting consisted of not
letting tourists walk up to Tiatou and also lots of arguing. I guess
it would be the equivalent of if the road from Loveland went only to
drake and glen haven and you had to walk the rest of the way to estes
park. Not many tourists would go to estes, but once they opened a
road, few tourists would stay in the less spectacular drake and gh.
9/10 The next morning (well up until 2pm) I explored the
Dhazhai/Tiatou rice terrace area. It was truly spectacular. The
terraces rose 3000 feet from top to bottom and were in a huge area.
The scope was impressive. The rice terraces in batad were impressive
in their age and stonework, but this one was just so much bigger in
scale. I hiked to some different viewpoints such as "music of
paradise" "thousand layers to heaven" and "heavenly buddha" This time
of year the rice is tall and green as harvest is coming soon.
Unfortunately it was a bit hazy (due to extremely high humidity) so
you couldn't see as far off in the distance, but the terraces were
still impressive. Equally interesting were the tiny villages
scattered around the terraces. They were just really quaint and truly
had that minority tribe feel. I think here they are a lot like how
they are supposed to be in Sapa, Vietnam, though I never made it
there, so I was quite happy to experience it here. The people lived
in these cool wooden houses (look a lot like ski chalets) and the
women all wear unique and brightly colored outfits. There are tiny
stone paths linking the villages and areas around the terraces and
horses do the work of carrying things. I first early in the morning
went up to music of paradise to see the sunrise, though it didn't
really rise b/c of clouds, so then I walked down to dhazai to access a
viewpoint from there. By the time i got to this viewpoint, to go back
down to dhazai might be trouble to try and cross the arguing bridge,
so I hired an old lady to take me for a couple dollars on a back way
through the woods and the top of the terraces to get to the music of
paradise which are on the tiatou side, so that was a fun adventure.
Around 2pm, I left Tiatou to hike to the village of zhongliu along
more scenic terraces and cool tiny villages and then from zhongliu on
to Ping'an, the more touristy and less real and rustic village where
most of the chinese tourists stay. I got to the top of the terraces
above ping'an around 6pm and in a torrential downpour. Luckily there
was som shelter up there and I waited out the storm. Eventually it
cleared and I could see down to the sweet view of ping'an. From here
I walked to a couple more viewpoints: "7 stars and a moon over heaven"
and some equally neat name. The terraces here again, were quite as
impressive, though not as cool as the other side. That night I had
the famous sticky rice bbq'ed in bamboo with pork. Obviously rice in
these parts was not hard to find.
9/11 I woke up early to the sounds of a pig right below my guesthouse
being slaughtered. That's a good way to make you jump right out of
bed to see what is going on below. I hiked back up to the viewpoints
to see the sunrise, but no luck again. I spent a couple more hours
exploring around the gorgeous rice terraces around ping'an before
catching a bus back to longsheng, where I had one of the best clay pot
meals I have had. Yum! I then caught the bus to Guilin where I would
board the 18 hour train bound for Kunming.
I really enjoyed the rice terraces though. Really, really impressive.
The scale was just sooo huge, and it is amazing how they can build
those terraces on such steep terrain. The curves of the terraces seem
to be like artwork. Really just beautiful. And the fact that it was
in really rural, minority village china, added to the intrigue of the
area.
Search longji rice terraces or dhazhai rice terraces or ping'an rice
terraces on google images to get an idea if you want.
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