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For breakfast the next day we got banana pancakes and I also had my porridge from Holland (with chocolate sprinkles!!). It was market day in one of the half dozen hamlets that make up Chengyang, so we had to visit. In the muddy main "street" vendors had set up small stalls with meat, vegetables, fruit and clothing (I got a hat and gloves). The Dong people are dressed in mostly black or dark blue, sometimes with colourful embroidery. Needless to say everybody was super nice to us and as usual people were always smiling when they saw me (being a western child). In another covered bridge two men were collecting money for the upkeep of the bridge, so now "GE'ers 2002" can be read on a large stone plaque. Another characteristic of a Dong village is the "drum tower", a pagoda-style structure where the villagers congregate and where a drum used to be used to sound the alarm in case of fire. Actually with all those wooden houses so closely built together, they have created (fish) ponds in the village. |
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We were lucky that a group of Chinese VIP's came to visit the village, as they were welcomed at the bridge by a group of men and women dressed in very colourful ceremonial costumes. On the small village square, in front of the drum tower, they then performed a series of traditional folk dances. I quite liked it, especially the bamboo flutes. The next day we hiked some more through the hamlets, crossing bridges and rice terraces. Later we took the bus back to Sanjiang where we spent the night in a Chinese hotel. The town was nothing much, rather dusty and noisy. |
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At 5:45 on Oct. 23 we woke up to catch an early bus to our next destination: Zhaoxing, in the neighbouring Guizhou province. We were all psyched up for this notoriously bad trip: 4 or 5 hours of unhardened mountain road in a rickety old bus! From here on we got into a more remote part of China, where few travellers venture into, the infra-structure (roads, hotels, etc.) being rather limited. We had seats right in the front and as usual I sat on my parents lap. But first we all had to get out and push the bus, because it wouldn't start... Something else funny happened at the start of this trip: 6 or 7 guys got on just to gamble for the first 20 min. and walked back to town when the bus stopped to fill the water tank (for the radiator, the brakes?). Just like the cruise ships in Miami! It was a very bumpy ride, but also very scenic, as we followed a river for most of the time. Once or twice I needed "to go" so my dad asked them to stop, no problem. Halfway we noticed something wasn't right: they took a different way than we were supposed to. So we were not dropped off at Zhaoxing, but 10 km. away at some intersection in the middle of farmland. Later we understood that there had been a large landslide on the "regular" road, one that would take days or weeks to fix. We waited maybe 1 hour before another bus took us a bit further. The Swiss guy (Rolf) was in it too and a girl from Taipei. With them we chartered a tractor-truck for the remaining 1/2 hour, extremely bumpy stretch to Zhaoxing.
Our visit to this large Dong village was certainly a highlight in our trip so far. Surroun-ded by large hills on all sides, perhaps 100 traditional houses are nestled together along a small river. There are 5 drum towers and several small covered bridges. Most women wear their home indigo-died and embroidered shirts and apart from the busses that sometimes pass through town, you would think that time has stood still here for quite some time. Our guesthouse was again very typical with a friendly family and our wooden room was basic (shared wc/bath). Soon we found out that a family member had married a Swedish traveller and they happened to stay here for a few months while he was teaching English in the local high school. So we had met some more friends... I actually had a great time playing with some of the smaller children in the neighbouring houses and later also with the family's 6-year old girl.
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Our first day in this town was picture perfect: bright sunshine, no clouds! Finally we were heating up a bit and Papa did our laundry. We took a nice walk through the narrow walkways and Mommy really went crazy shooting: so many nice scenes! People were busy with all sorts of activities: laying rice on the floor to dry, pounding bushes of soya plants, mixing indigo in large wooden vats, hammering the dyed cloth on stone, slaughtering a pig, building a new house of only wood, playing cards or Chinese chess, bringing a few water bugffalos to the fields, etc., etc. |
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That afternoon we also went into the hills, accompanied by a bunch a school children who always love to shout "Hello" and "Bye-bye". We arrived in a small hamlet perched on a hilltop, where the houses were even closer built together than usual, making the paths extra narrow. It felt like a small fort. On the village square Mommy created some laughs helping a few ladies un-husk the soya beans (later in town she & I would also help remove the rice kernels from the stem). It was nice walking back through the rice fields too. |
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Then we witnessed a few games of basketball at the high school. And after dinner we were lucky again to attend a folkdance arranged for a French tour group. This time the ladies wore very elaborate, silvery headdresses. Quite a spectacle with the full moon! Nights were rather cold, so we were happy to have our down sleeping bags AND the thick quilt provided in every guesthouse or hotel.
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