Guizhou Province is easily one of China's undiscovered gems.
As beautiful and as ethnically diverse as
Yunnan Province, as uncrowded as
Inner Mongolia, and as gifted with natural beauty as
Sichuan and
Qinghai combined, it's a wonder Guizhou isn't over-run with its own popularity.
And yet...hardly anyone ever goes there.
Lying in the central south of China between Sichuan, Yunnan and
Guangxi, Guizhou's terrain is mountainous and heavily forested, the valleys filled with meandering rivers and clusters of wooden stilt houses.
The limestone karst peaks are younger, geologically speaking, and less eroded than those in Guilin and Yangshuo, which means that to get from one place to another is enormously challenging as you ascend and descend successions of hairpin winding roads. Straight lines between destinations? There are very, very few of those.
Which might account for the few visitors willing to overcome the necessary obstacles to get there.
The local people are ethnically diverse and overwhelming welcoming - mostly Miao (shown above), but also Dong, Yao, Yi, and Bouyei, Sui and Tujia. The region's relative poverty and difficulty of access has meant that traditional lifestyles are still practiced in most parts of Guizhou, preserving culture and traditions that might have otherwise been lost with progress.
Change is coming though - in the last few years tunnels have been burrowed through mountains to allow highways to pass. New roads and a high speed train line are underway as we speak, connecting villages that were previously preserved largely because of their inaccessibility.
You need to go to Guizhou now, while it still has all its charms, and before everyone else realizes what they're missing out on.
I spent last week in central Guizhou, my fourth trip to the province and part of a project that will see me spending a lot of time in China's remoter parts over the next year, meeting with traditional craftspeople and artisans who weave, dye, embroider and print fabric, and silversmiths who beat out beautiful things from raw metal.
I feel extraordinarily lucky to be part of this project - a series of public art works featuring indigenous Chinese textiles and crafts.
Like many of you, I adore anything made by hand with care and love, whether that be a beautiful meal or a piece of embroidered cloth, and the story behind it.
A lifetime of curiosity and interest in the act of simply making something by hand, in a way that is true to tradition, has led me to this point.
My apologies that things have been a little quiet on this blog - travel is wonderful for the soul, but poses challenges to the blogger, especially in remote areas of China where the internet is patchy.
Over the next two weeks I look forward to bringing you posts about the villages of Guizhou: Shidong and Qingmai, and the large town of Kaili.
First post tomorrow!
In the meantime, if you're interested in Guizhou you might enjoy these previous posts:
Labels: China, Guizhou, handmade, travel
