Some Miao Stories

This story was posted under the categories: Big Asia Trip, China

There are a lot of different minorities in China and especially in the Guizhou province. The two biggest are the Miao and the Dong. As we were leaving Kiali, we decided to make a trip through some of the more remote Miao villages. Fortunately for us, we stumbled upon Dylan Gu, a friendly Chinese guy who just setup his Miao Exploration Service the week before and was very happy to hook us up with a guide - a local Miao boy – who would show us around his village and some surrounding sights.

So we set off from Kaili with the morning bus to some small village and started walking through rice fields and along a river. The scenery was amazing, although the fog that had been following us for some days limited the view considerably. It was really useful having a guide, as it would be very easy to get lost in the web of little dirt roads among the rice fields.

After about 2 hours of walking, we arrived at a small community, consisting of only a couple of houses and a school, connected only to the outside world by a sandy road and of course, the ominous GSM network. We were invited to eat with the family of the local teacher. The reception was extremely friendly and although we didn’t speak the language, we felt that these people were genuinly goodhearted. This was also the first time that we were presented with the local wine, made from rice and with a lot of alcohol. Appearantly, it’s a custom to offer wine to guests and each time somebody drinks, everybody needs to drink. At the end, we simply had to refuse, as we still had an afternoon of walking before us. As it turned out, we would be having wine again and again, even for breakfast…

In the afternoon we visited two other villages, were invited for more wine & dine as we visited Barts (our guide) brother-in-law and we ended up sleeping at the house of his brother, in a building that might become the town hospital.

The night wasn’t as silent as you would expect in such a rural area, as the Miao seem to have the habit of lighting fireworks for about any occasion that they can think of: getting up, going to sleep, starting diner, people arriving, … and appearantly some Miao people get up very early (or go to bed very late).

The next day we visited the largest Miao town, Xijiang, which holds about a thousand households. Unfortunately, we missed a festival just the day before, but we could witness a tourist-show on the town square. The Miao have a lot customs around dating and finding a partner. It’s almost a mating ritual

After another fireworks filled night, we left for Sheilan and said goodbye to our guide. He would go back to Kaili as we went further down to Taojang (where we saw a small local market) and then directly to Conjang, a bigger city.

We lunged for a peaceful dinner, but after a fruitless attempt at finding a good restaurant (there are hundreds of food stalls in each town, but no real restaurant as we know it) we ended up at the stall of a young guy who fries (in a wok) whatever you point out. This makes it easy to order your food if you don’t speak the language

Today we went up to Basha, home of more Miao, but these are different as they wear other dresses and walk around with blades and riffles. As the sun finally showed up amid the fog, we decided to walk back. Of course, we couldn’t simply take the big road back and we descended into the lower sections of the village. Scared by the dogs, we made a couple of quick turns and ended up in the middle of the rice fields. Gorgeous in the soft sun and with local people working all around. We walked for about 3 hours between rice, buffalos, cows, chicken and pine trees and ended up back in Congian, tired but happy.

PS: we actually wrote this post 2 days ago, but electricity fell out, just before we could click on publish. Better get used to it Long live for the wordpress autosave feature…