Qiandongnan’s dongnan is Yangshuo
Well, this title might look weird to you. “dongnan” means southeast in Chinese, qiandongnan is an autonomous prefecture located in southeast of Guizhou province of China. Yangshuo is a county lies to the southeast of qiandongnan. OK, let’s forget all about that and see some places in today’s China where still remain something special.
Miao
The Miao is one of the 55 minority groups in China who live primarily in southern China’s mountains. This is the largest Miao village in China even in the world. There’re about 1,288 families, 6000 people living here.
Street in the village. This is built for tourists, you need to climb on the mountain if you want to see what local people’s lives are truly like. For me, that’s the more interesting part.
The people living here are mostly either old or kids. You wonder where’d the others go?
I like this hat!
When local people get married. Good day for the new couple. Not so good…for the poor pig.
Some local people (well, maybe not local) open a shop like this cause the village has a lot of tourists visiting nowadays. So when your parents open a boring shop, the good news is, you can do this.
The plaque says: “On the way” (在路上)
Don’t think I took an out of focus picture and put it here. This is called “Mao” Tofu. Well…Mao is not for that guy you’re thinking about right now, it’s more like a fungus thing grown on Tofu which actually makes the Tofu pretty delicious! Or maybe something makes you want to throw up, wait, you mean Mao, or Mao?
Local people use horses for transportation in the mountains.
It seems all families here raise chickens. Chicken is the world’s most steady system. No kidding.
Here they come. Miao’s traditional clothing! They’re famous for silver crafting. And one thing I don’t know the exact reason is they are all pretty short.
Show me way home.
Dong
Dong is another ethnic minority in China. This is a drum tower in Zhaoxing Dong village. There’re five of these in this village. Each of them stands for 仁, 智, 礼, 义, 信. So what do they mean? Basically they mean something today’s China society lacks of.
Met 2 kids in the village. You know what they said to me when we first met? It was “give me candies”. Sweet~But “I don’t have any”. Then they said “give me money”. I asked “what do you want the money for?”. “Buy candies”. All right…But I didn’t give them any. You know my reason.
Traditional dyeing.
She was pretty shy but laughed when I took a picture of her.
Zhenyuan
Zhenyuan is a very old town which has more than 2,220 years of history. Wait, what year is it now?
Night view in Zhenyuan is pretty amazing. It’s said Zhang Sanfeng helped to build one famous bridge in Zhenyuan. You don’t know who he is? Well in the novel, this guy created Tai Chi Chuan. You don’t know what that is? Watch Ang Lee’s Pushing Hands which is a great movie by the way.
The biggest mistake I made for this trip was I forgot to take my tripod with me. So I just put my camera on the ground to take these night pictures, nailed it.
This place is called 青龙(Azure Dragon)洞(Cave). The fun fact is it has temples for all of buddhism, taoism AND confucianism. How does this work? Pretty unusual huh?
Good night, Zhenyuan.
Yangshuo
Yangshuo is a small county surrounded by karst mountains and winding rivers near Guilin. Cormorant fishing is a traditional fishing method in which fishermen use trained cormorants to fish in rivers. When the cute grandpa found I was taking a picture of him. He did this pose and started to sing a folk song. Ah, I like this guy!
You know I was using a Ricoh GR shooting this shot. You can imagine how close I was to this cool bird!
That person, that mountain, that dog.
That year, that road, that life.
Xingping is an old town near Yangshuo. A great place to get lost in time.
And also a good place to freeze the time.
Mountains in Yangshuo.
River in Yangshuo.
Me in Yangshuo.