A Minority in a Minority
Trip Start
Jul 11, 2004
1
9
19
Trip End
Oct 10, 2004
Ping An,
China
Friday, September 17, 2004
The open road is a beckoning, a strangeness, a place where a man can lose himself
- William Least Heat-Moon
A Journey Of Two Halves, or Two-thirds and One-Third
Returning back to Guilin I found the CITS and purchased onward bus tickets, overnight sleeper bus tickets I might add, to Guiyang, in Guizhou province, some 400km from Guilin. I can't quite remember why I got bus tickets as apposed to train tickets. Maybe there were no train tickets, or no trains period, for the route? Or maybe the bus was more convenient? Either way, the tickets I purchased were for Friday's departure, and this was Wednesday. I was going to spend the in-between days and nights in the Longji mountains, in the heartland of the Zhuang nationality, a minority people who work the land like they have done for centuries. So I embarked on a series of bus trips that I was to become very familiar with over the coming days - a bus from the Guilin bus station north to Longsheng (about 2 hours) and from there a minibus, along windy river roads, to the Zhuang minority village of Ping An (30-40 minutes).
Chill'n
Ping An is in the heartland of the 13 million-strong Zhuang nationality who, although largely assimilated into the ways of the Han Chinese (who make up 92% of the 1.3 billion Chinese population), have their own distinctive features. The Zhuang ladies, for example, wear dark blue embroidered trousers and headscarfs, which they use to tie up their extraordinary long black hair. While that was nice to see, it's the scenery and setting of this place that gets my vote. The hillsides are ridged with the some of the most extraordinarily extreme rice terracing in China, with the steep sided and closely packed hills surrounding the village having been carved, over centuries of backbreaking effort, to resemble the literal form of a contour map. The terraces were constructed by the Zhuang to make their mountainous land arable, with construction beginning in the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368) and lasting over 400 years. Today the Dragon's Backbone rice terraces, as they are called, now cover over 16,000 acres. Viewing the scene from the hills above the village really is an amazing site, particularly when you see the flooding and drainage systems, essential to good rice growing, ingeniously installed on every terrace.
I spent 3 nights here, doing nothing more than waking in the hills, taking in the views, walking in the hills again, hanging around the village, eating in the local restaurants, walking again, taking in more views, updating my diary, reading and sleeping. There is a tourist infrastructure here but, as I type this in September 2004, it is still in its infancy and it never gets in the way of the scenery or the solitude that spending time here gives you. With numerous locals offering you a cheap bed in a spacious wooden village house, each one with a guaranteed stunning view of the surrounding landscape, there's not much to dislike about Ping An. Here's hoping it stays that way.
The Scare and The Extra Night
I retraced my steps back to Guilin (minibus from Ping An to Longshang, bus from Longshang to Guilin) in good time for the overnight sleeper bus north-west to Guiyang, Guizhou province. Remember, the bus I had purchased a ticket for days earlier, before going to Ping An? It was only when I was reporting to the CITS office in Guilin, where I was to get the bus, and went rummaging for my ticket that it hit me - I didn't have my money belt, the money belt that contained my passport, credit cards, travellers cheques, cash, bus ticket..... everything. Now that wasn't a nice realisation. In fact it was terrible. Trying to recap where I last saw it lead me to believe it was still in my room in Ping An. But I couldn't be 100% sure. Maybe 80%. If it happened to be in either of the two busses I got that brought me from Ping An to Guilin then I was screwed. Big time. But I had to hope it was indeed in Ping An, and what followed was a crazy 4 hours of trying to get back there. First I had to ask the CITS to cancel my overnight bus ticket and reissue it for the following evening. No problem Mr. Rich Tourist, but for a fee. Then I went back to the bus station and hopped on the next bus back to Longshang. No problems there either, but arriving late in the day my worst fears were realised; the minibuses to Ping An had ceased running for the evening. With the minibus option not an option I found myself haggling an agreeable fare with a local moto-taxi for 40-50km jaunt to Ping An village. Success there also, with the agreed upon fare in the RMB80-100 region, some 15 times the minibus fare for the same trip. With that done I had to find a guesthouse where I could stash my 15kg+ backpack, something I eventually succeeded in doing. Trying to explain to the guesthouse owner that I just wanted to store my bag for the night, and didn't actually want to stay here myself, was quite a task. So with all hurdles seemingly overcome I was soon on the back of a motorbike, on the last leg of the trip back to Ping An, with only my daypack containing the essentials I needed to get me through the night and my hopes that my money belt is where I think it is. The only incident I had after that was the lame attempt by the moto-taxi driver to re-negotiate the predetermined fare on route to the village. You kidding me? Sorry bud, a deal is a deal. You just keep on driving. Anyway, to cut a long story that bit shorter, my money belt was where I left it (under the pillow of the rooms unused bed), totally unmolested. Needless to say it was a huge relief to be reacquainted with it, something that seemed to satisfy the oh so hospitable owners of the guesthouse more than it did me. What that little mishap meant was that I got to spend another night in Ping An, so I guess everything worked out not so bad in the end. The next day I returned, once again, to Guilin, this time by conventional methods, and got the overnight sleeper bus to my next stop, Guiyang in Guizhou province. But before I went I made sure to have my money belt with me.
