Minorities of the Southwest

The first stop on today’s sightseeing trip is Elephant Trunk Hill, a limestone rock arch on the river. Reed Flute Cave is China’s most famous show grotto, famed for its colourful illuminations. And Fubo Hill is a spectacular tooth of karst limestone rising from the riverbank outside town, which was embellished with exquisite sculptures of Buddhas during the Tang era of the 7th and 8th centuries. Your guide will be on hand to provide essential context for these intriguing landforms and monuments.

On arrival in Yangshuo, you’ll have time to shop for souvenirs along the village’s bustling West Street before being transferred to your hotel on the quieter outskirts. You may, however, be tempted back into town after nightfall to see the extraordinary Liu San Jie Lightshow – a typically Chinese son et lumière extravaganza featuring a cast of hundreds.

Quite apart from being an arresting spectacle, the elaborately terraced hillsides around Longji village are a fine place to unwind. Wandering around the old pathways through the fields with your guide, you’ll enjoy encounters with local Zhuang farmers planting, weeding or harvesting their paddy, depending on the time of year. Photographers will have plenty to get excited about as the fading light intensifies and the beautiful colours of the terraces spring to life.

Local wood and stone houses are separated by narrow cobbled lanes in Longji. Savour the amazing views at breakfast time over a cup of steaming, sweet ‘oil tea’ and from various named panoramic viewpoints, from where you’ll be able to observe Zhuang farmers working the terraces using horse-drawn ploughs. This area is also the homeland of the Yao minority, whose womenfolk grow their hair to extraordinary lengths, and wear it coiled into fabulous ornamental headdresses.

West of Longji, the main road winds through the heart of Dong country towards Guizhou Province. This is a journey not to be rushed. Aside from some bucolic scenery, the route takes you through one of the most culturally fascinating corners of Asia, where a host of different minority groups survive. The Dong are known for their ornate traditional dress (which on special occasions may include elaborate silver headdresses) and the elegant, pagoda-roofed Drum Towers that soar above their pan-tiled townships. One of the largest of these survives at Sanjiang, where you’ll spend the night in a local guesthouse.

The largest Dong village in the region, Zhaoxing was one of the first places to embrace tourism and is showing signs of over-commercialization, but still deserves a visit for its superb wooden architecture, which includes several wind-and-rain bridges and drum towers. Home to 5 different Dong clans and 1,000 households, it’s a thriving place whose narrow, stone-lined streets still resound to the thump of cloth being hammer-finished in the traditional way to make it shiny.

Spend the evening soaking up the sights and sounds of Zhaoxing, before a supper of traditional Dong cuisine.

Kaili, in the southeast of Guizhou Province, is capital city of the Miao (aka ‘H’mong’) minority. A large, modern city, it holds little of more than passing interest in itself, but its hotels serve as useful stopovers when travelling across the minority belt that runs east through the hills into Guangxi province. The surrounding countryside has a large number of Miao villages. Most have been heavily commercialized in recent years, but our guides know how to sidestep the more frequented settlements close to the highways in favour of villages where many women still wear traditional dress.

The Long-skirt Miao traditionally wear ornately embroidered and pleated skirts, and large, heavily ornamented silver headdresses on ceremonial occasions, such as the dances local women perform to greet guests. Maliao and Kongbai are renowned for their metalwork, and you’ll be invited to watch silversmiths at work.

One of our current favourite Miao villages (because it has much less of a theme park atmosphere than most others in the region) is Shang Lang De, where most of the local women still wear traditional hand-embroidered textiles. Visits begin with a welcoming ceremony with local rice wine, and conclude with a small culture show, involving live music and dance. You’ll also be offered the chance to eat traditional Miao food for lunch, made with farm fresh ingredients grown in the fields around the village.

The handicraft speciality of the Gija Miao is batik, numerous examples of which are sold by hawkers and souvenir shops. Traditional dress is still widely worn by local women and features striking blue and red patterns, with distinctive leggings and piles of elaborate silver jewellery!

If you’re lucky, your visit to Liugan will coincide with a performance of local opera, for which the community is widely known. In the afternoon, it’s also well worth setting aside a couple of to scale Hongfu Shan, the culminating point of Qianlingshan Park, on the outskirts of Guiyang. A long, steep flight of stone steps winds through a monkey-filled forest to the top of this wooded hill, from where the views are magnificent. You can also catch a chairlift to the summit. Either way, be sure to call at Hongfu Si monastery, a delightful, wooden, Ming-era building with turquoise ceramic roof decorations.

For a final outing, we recommend a stroll along the Bund – the iconic walkway lining the Huangpo River. The best place in the city to get your bearings, this breezy promenade backed by stately old Neo-Classical and Art Deco buildings faces the dramatic skyline of Pudong across the water – a mesmerizing spectacle around sunset when the twinkling lights of its innumerable skyscrapers are reflected in the water.