Time in the Chinese Countryside

Every visito r to China should escape its gargantuan cities at some point and visit the countryside. From Beijing I flew withJim to Guizhou province in southwestern China, an area where many of China's minorities -- the Hmong, Bouyi, Dong and Geija -- live.(While the Chinese call the Hmong people Miao, the Hmong prefer their non-Chinese name.) We went to Guizhou for  several reasons -- interest in the minorities, a recommendation from a Chinese friend now living in the US who was born there, and a desire to spend some time in nature.

The Chinese consider Guizhou province a remote, underpopulated area. It has 39 million people, about the same as California, but the average annual income is $1270, the lowest in all of China. The area consists of deep green, steep, cone-like hills and rushing rivers. Kaili, the city where we stayed, was remarkable for its lack of traffic and crowds, at least in comparison to Shanghai and Beijing. The region is known as the rainy mountains, but we were blessed with sunshine which made touring around small villages delightful.

We had a wonderful Hmong guide, named Lee, who was a good English speaker and a man proud of his traditions. We were driven around by a reliable driver in a comfortable sedan. Some of the highlights included a beautiful, traditional Hmong town, Xijiang, where we spent time at a health clinic partly funded by our friends at the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai.

We also took in a museum full of breathtaking old embroidered and batik Hmong costumes, the most exquisite costumes I've ever seen. We stopped at the home and workshop of a traditional silversmith who made delicate silver ornaments in the traditional style. Yes, I am coming home with some Hmong decorative clothing and jewelry to wear to California gatherings!

The most remarkable place we saw was a town, Zhenyuan, that has been a mountain trading center for 2000 years. Located on what is known as the Southern Silk Road, the town spans a river which was a transmission point for salt and silk coming west from Canton and local tea that went further west to Tibet and India. The old town of Zhenyuan consists of tall narrow buildings crowned and decorated with sculpture carved in the shape of dragons. Pedestrian bridges over the river are adorned with pagodas. From my hotel room balcony, I could drink in a magical sight, illuminated by colored lights in the evening.

To add to the pleasure of the Chinese countryside was the food, the only local cuisine in China that I really liked. We ate Szechuan type dishes at every meal -- spicy and full of tasty, unfamiliar vegetables. Dinners were accompanied by delicious and mildly intoxicating rice wines.

If Guizhou is China's poorest region, I would never have known it. Many village homes had satellite dishes (costing about $25 each) and most people have mobile phones which cost very little to buy and use. The homes we saw were poor (very small with  earth floors) but people were welcoming and seemed content.

Best of all, there seemed to be a widespread effort to preserve and promote minority culture -- not just for the sake of toruism but to keep the region's traditions alive.