On Monday I went on an overnight trip to the village of Ping An, about 3 hours northwest of Yangshuo. Ping An is a Zhuang minority village that is known for super steep rice terracing - the terraces are so steep and narrow that the farmers can't use machinery or even buffalo to plow their fields.
I could have taken public buses to get to Ping An, but this would have involved switching buses two times, so instead I went with a tour from Yangshuo. Most people do this as a one-day trip, but I chose to go with the tour on Monday, but then spend the night on my own and take the next day's tour bus back on Tuesday.
The travel agency where I booked my ticket didn't fully describe the tour, so I didn't know what I was getting myself into....but overall, the tour aspect of the trip was quite interesting, and nothing I'd ever want to do again. I had thought it'd be a small group going to Ping-An, but instead I was on a large bus with mostly Chinese tourists. My guide was nice, but her English was very hard to understand, especially since she was speaking into a microphone at the front of the bus. For the first half of the bus ride, they played an American horror movie on the TV, which had lots of blood and gory torture bits in it. I was able to block out most of the sound since I had my ipod with me. Then as we approached the hills near Ping-An, the tour guide told us about the Yao minority village where we'd be stopping before Ping-An.
At the Yao village, we had the option of watching a 30 minute show for an extra 60 RMB (the tour operator hadn't mentioned this either). I decided not to bother, which was good because one of the Chinese tourists on the bus who did see it told me afterwards that it wasn't worth it. We had to walk a bit to get to the Yao village, and our guide got off the bus first and held up a flag for us to follow! At this point I checked my watch, happy that at 3 PM I would be rid of the tour group forever!
The Yao women grow their hair really long, which is kinda cool to see I guess. From what I could understand, they only cut it three times: when they get married, when they have a child....and some other time too? I think I wasn't paying that much attention. But the traditional wooden architecture in the village was cool, and the air was clean and cool in the hills.
After the Yao village, we continued in a different bus up a super-windy road to Ping An. It was quite hazy, so the views weren't quite like the postcards, but the terraces were still impressive. We all had lunch at a restaurant in the town - the local specialty is bamboo rice and bamboo chicken - a hollow piece of bamboo is filled with food, then cooked over a wood fire. Both were quite tasty. By the time lunch ended, my tour group only had about 1 hour to spend hiking up to the different viewpoints before heading back to Yangshuo, so I was glad that I had extra time. I said bye to the group, then went to find the hostel that was recommended by my friends in Yangshuo - one of them had already called to reserve a room for me.
After settling into my room, and having a bit more lunch (the owner of the hostel suggested I try the local smoked bacon, so I did!), I latched on to an Intrepid tour group and went with them on a hike to the viewpoints above the town.
The Intrepid group had a local guide with them too, which was nice because he spoke very good English and knew a lot. The views were pretty cool, and it was nice to be able to hike with other people, even though the hike was short. The scenery reminded me a lot of Ecuador near the Black Sheep Inn - misty hills, farmers carrying vegetables, terraced landscapes. Ping An also has wooden architecture which is cool looking, so I took a bunch of pictures.
For dinner, I tried a local restaurant where I met and American guy named Jesse who just finished the SIT study abroad program in Vietnam. We shared some grilled beef, pumpkin w/ ginger and some fried noodles and chatted for a while. There are no real roads in Ping-An, only stone pathways and staircases that wind up and down the steep landscape, so in the dark it took us a while to find the correct path back to our hotels (he was staying in a hostel just next to mine).
We made a plan to meet up the next morning for a longer hike, but during the night a storm blew in, and by morning the town was fogged in and it was raining quite hard. We had breakfast of noodle soup instead of hiking, and then Jesse headed back to Guilin. As I walked back to the hostel, I noticed a wooden building with a big cauldron of liquid - I said hello to the man inside, then went in to discover that he was making tofu.
I ran back to the hostel to get my phrasebook and camera, and I watched the man make tofu for about 20 minutes. He explained some of the process to me, but since I barely speak Chinese, we were mostly limited to sign language and numbers. He heated soymilk over a wood fire in a huge wok, then poured that into buckets to mix with the rennet (or whatever the tofu equivalent is called), and then into the mold and press once the curds/whey had separated. All the waste from the process went to his pigs, who were making a commotion in a pen below the building. It was cool to see tofu being made, mostly using the same processes that people in the village have used for hundreds (thousands?) of years.
I spent the rest of the morning reading and writing, and after some lunch, I headed down to find my bus back to Yangshuo. Because of the rain, we ended up leaving early, which was nice - and this time we were in a mini-bus instead of a big bus, and there were only 6 other passengers. So the ride went more quickly too.
I was back in Yangshuo in time for dinner. Kelly had invited some other people over, so we had a very nice feast! I joked that it was in honor of my return! We had: steamed tilapia w/ ginger and soy sauce, sauteed crayfish, sauteed shrimp, bok choi, bamboo shoots, chicken soup with ginseng and ginger, and a whole sauteed duck! There might have been some other things too. Food that I eat with Kelly and Leo tends to be better than everything else I've had in this area - so I am gonna miss being here and eating good food all the time. I only have 4 more days in Yangshuo now....so I am off to make the most of it!
