On the advice of fellow nomads I left Basha for Zhaoxing where I was told there’d be Dong construction a plenty. I no longer have an alarm clock as my phone broke in Fenghuang and I slept in for the only direct bus. Instead I walked and hitch hiked back to Congjiang then boarded a bus for Luoxiang through a windy valley with potholes galore. Luoxiang is the biggest cesspit I’ve been to in China. There are no paved roads and open sewers. The edge of the town has all been dug up and is full of large piles of grit and red soil which have been dumped on the edge of town for the huge freeway that’s getting built at the top of the valley. It had been raining and the water flowing through the town had a rich red hue as a consequence of all that digging. I got lunch at the market in the centre of town then decided to walk to Zhaoxing as it was only 6 or 7km. the best thing about this place was seeing a middle aged woman walking alongside me who was on her way home from the market wearing high heels, a short skirt and suspenders. It looked so surreal seeing her dressed up so well, dodging the potholes, huge red puddles and dog pooh as she made her way home past grubby old concrete houses and rusty 3 wheeled Lorries.
I came to Zhaoxing just in time. Once the highway gets completed I can imagine it will become just like Fenghuang; lacking in authenticity, full of loud karaoke bars, aggressive salesmen in shops selling identical tacky tourist products and loud and obnoxious Han tourists with little respect for local Dong culture. At the moment the vast majority of shops in Zhaoxing are aimed at locals, the markets sell food instead of fake antiques and wooden frogs. Although lots of shops and restaurants have made English signs and menus, by and large it is a Dong village. The Drum Towers have far more old men whiling away time and children playing than tourists taking photos. There is a fair amount of construction going on at the edge of the village. Unfortunately the construction is largely done with concrete, wood is added to the exterior to make it look old and traditional. Although I’m disappointed in this, at least they are making the new builds blend in with their surroundings which is a lot better than what is going on in a lot of other places with historical architecture, (such as Fenghuang, have you gathered that I don’t like that place)?
I had a walk up to a cluster of villages at the top of the valley looking for some casual labour. There were a lot of half constructed buildings en route but no work going on at the time. The wood in most of them had lost its fresh tone of beige so I’m assuming they’d been lying there unfinished for some time. The houses that were being worked on were all nearing completion. I feel lucky just to have seen a frame going up. Given that they go up in a day I can’t imagine that happens on a regular basis. I made two children cry on my wanders around the villages. One was about four and the other was about two. Poor wee things, maybe it’s time for another shave. The wee two year old was howling and banging on his door so that his mother would let him in. I don’t feel I’m ‘off the beaten track’ but the kids obviously haven’t seen many stray waiguoren walking about their village.
The drum towers in those villages are centuries old and have flaking depictions of what local life would have been like painted on the sides of them. The majority of pictures are of ceremonies, farming and romantic scenes of men seducing women by reciting poetry or playing their bamboo flutes. Having heard these flutes being played on numerous occasions I would say it’s less seduction, more wearing her down. One of the drum towers depicted Tigers, Pandas, Elephants, Crocodiles, Peacocks, some type of Deer rutting, and elegant species of birds that are nothing like anything I’ve seen so far in China. One was like a Toucan and another looked like a bird of Paradise, a species found only in New Guinea. It’s quite sad that this is how things used to be not so far in the distant past. Tigers are pretty much extinct in Southern China, There are some in the far north, wild Elephants are now restricted to a small pocket of forest in Yunnan by the Burmese and Laos border and Pandas are found merely in isolated patches of bamboo forest in Sichuan. It’s sad that the Chinese have lost such great biodiversity in such a short period of time but as a European who am I to criticise. We got rid of all our large wild mammals when Neanderthals were still part of the equation. We got rid of them too, allegedly, although when I’ve seen a group of neds out drunk on a Saturday night, symbolically beating their hairy chests I have pondered the thought that they are carrying some interbred Neanderthal genes. Maybe I’m being unjustifiably prejudiced about Neanderthal intelligence.
The bye bye kids. That's the only English they know.
One of the two kids I made cry.
Pigs in China are fattened up in cages all their lives and are unable to walk when ready for market.
Because I don’t like going back the same way I came I opted to go north to Liping and then southwest to Rongjiang rather than take the logical route via a return trip to Congjiang. This would not be a recommended route for those who suffer from travel sickness. It’s only 64km to Liping and took three and a half hours. I’d have been almost as quick by bike. The majority of people who go to minority villages in Guizhou do so in and around Kaili and I’ve been told they are nice but extremely overly touristy, probably like Fenghuang (did I tell you I didn’t like that place)? I don’t think I’ll regret giving them a miss.
Liping Bus station
The following day I flew through Southern Guizhou via Kaili until I reached the capital, Guiyang. It was another long slog out of Southern Guizhou. Roads continued to be terrible for much of the way. With all the highways being built, this will be irrelevant in a year, possibly less. Coming to think of it, pretty much everything I’ve written about China will become dated very soon. Travel Books need to get updated every couple of months. In a way this makes travelling through China feel more special. Although I would have far preferred to have come here 10 years ago, before domestic tourism really kicked off, whenever you visit China, you are witnessing a nation in transition.
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