Super 8 Hotel Kaili Ti Yu Chan

... oh my god!! Tradition has it that men and women do not sleep in the same room - I know - how very strange!! So some of the single girls were taken off in the dark to narrow paths by strange men, which they didn' like and so came back. John and I were taken to a very strange house, with a very large spider (very very large - no exageration!!). I was given a room where someone had obviously just got out of and John was taken to another house and shown the 'loo ...

... silver wand with one end tapered like a paintbrush, goes in horizontally, the other, usually shorter and curved, goes in vertically, from the bottom up. Around the crown of their heads, they wrap a red stripy silk scarf. In back, just under the bun and the pins, a half-moon comb keeps it tidy. Most of the women have fastened loops of white thread to the comb and the headdress, in case the comb falls out. This hair arrangement amazes me, and I spend ...

So ffrom Kalili - I ventured off to three villages: Xijiang Village-(Miao Village) So got to this village not knowing what to expect and I get a woman called xiao Mei - the only lady to speak a little english inviting to me stay with her family, sweet. The family were really cool, i had dinner both nights with the family where they ply you with home brewed rice wine(32%!! - strong stuff you are supposed to sip). both nights the ...

These women are desperate. The first one spotted us before we even reached the corner. We hadn't even glimpsed the wooden houses or the welcoming arch before the village. A woman's voice came out of a field, like the scarecrow's in The Wizard of Oz: "Ni hao." She called to us, a smile in her voice, so we stopped and waited for her to pick her way through the stalks of corn and trailing squash vines to the road. Delicately, like a ballerina carrying her gym bag, she balanced a ...

... fix for that sweet tooth, but it rarely satisfies our Western urges. I thought a love of baked bread was foreign to the Chinese palate, until, that is, we visited Kaili. One of Guizhou province's main cities, Kaili is the jumping-off point to go to the southwest minority villages. Killing time one morning between the villages and our train back to Zunyi, Dan and I decided to go to the local museum, just about the town's only attraction according to our guide book ...

... slip-on sandals, the same kind everyone in the village wears. In contrast, I'm wearing linen shorts from a thrift store in Australia, and a 10 RMB tee shirt from Guiyang. Tevas knockoffs. My camera swings, heavy and foreign, around my neck. Her face is lined and brown, probably from years of work in the terraces we're hiking up. I would guess she's not much older than thirty-five, but she could be lots younger. She looks back from the fields to me and smiles ...

Up until now, our interactions with people have been solely with those of the Han nationality. THis isn't surprising, given that the Han makes up the overwhelming majority of people in China - 93% of the nation's 1.3 billion. As soon as our plane landed in Guizhou Provence, however, we noticed a difference in culture. The women on the streets of the city of Guoyang were not all dressed in the western clothes that even the people in the rural villages near Luoyang wore, but instead ...

Salut à tous, me voila de retour à Shanghai après plus de deux semaines dans le sud de la Chine. Mon ange gardien m'a encore bien secondé imaginez vous que arrivé à Kaili je savais où je voulais aller, mais je ne savais pas comment et renseigné dans une agence tout le monde m'a dit que je n'y arriverai pas sans guide. Cela paraaissait eévident, comment s'orienter sans parler quel chemin prendre ? On me proposait un guide mais à un prix qui depassait de beaucoup mes ...

Bonjour, voila quelques temps que je me promene dans les montagnes et il n'y a pas internet partout ou je n'ai pas su le trouver. J'ai passer de magnifiques moments dans des villages en bois ou vivent ce que l'on nomme ici des minorites. Ce sont des communautes tres anciennes qui a une certaine epoque ont ete chasse par la guerre et se sont refugies dans les montagnes. la haut bien cache du reste ...

From Lijiang we headed off on a pretty epic journey involving 9 hour bus, 12 hour train and then another 2 hour bus. This brought us to a place called Kaili. Kaili was completely off the tourist route, and the stares and giggles that followed wherever we walked was quite something - now I know what a freak in a freak show must feel like. We decided it was time to splash out and get a guide, as we were going into ...