Dazhai Rice Terraces

We’ve come to one of the most beautiful parts of China – Guangxi province – the home of inspiration for millenia of bamboo paintings and indeed the picture on the 20 Yuan note depicts a landscape here. Our main destination is Yangshuo, our bit of R+R at the end of our holiday, but we made a quick detour via Guilin to the Dragon’s Backbone rice terraces. Getting there was a bit of an adventure in itself and another example of how organised chaos works.

According to the trusty old Lonely Planet, we would have to pass through the town of Longsheng to get to our destination – Dazhai, home to a minority people whose women who never cut their hair and pile it on top of their heads in a sort of turban affair. So off we trotted to the bus station. “We’d like to go to Dazhai, please.” Ticket printed. “Do we have to change anywhere?” “Yes, you change in Heping, buy your onward ticket there.” “Oh, I thought we’d change in Longsheng.” “No, no, Heping.” “Hmph.”

Once on the bus, we enlisted the help of the two friendly ticket ladies, asking them to let us know when we reached Heping. This seemed to cause a little confusion, because they checked more than once that we wanted to go to Dazhai, and not to Ping An, another ancient town in the region (more touristy). “No, no, we’re going to Heping and taking a bus to Dazhai.” Much conferring ensued, including mobile phone calls.

We arrived in Heping and one lady said, “We’re here”, whereas the other one said, “No, we’re not.”

More phone calls and busy looks and we continued in the same bus on the road OUT of Heping. Another bus came our way, which caused the bus we were on to honk loudly and slam on the brakes. Turns out we needed to take the other bus in the other direction, so we hopped off in the middle of a country road, ran across and boarded the next bus, which transported us a full 500 yards before we were dumped onto the next one. That got us where we needed to be.

We were on a bit of a tight time budget because most buses stop running at about 6pm and we knew we had to change at least once, so I was constantly asking people when we could get a bus back. If we missed our connection, we’d be stuck and return tickets are a foreign concept (as are through tickets. See above!). Anyhoo, we got to Dazhai and I had two business cards in my pocket from two people who assured me we’d be able to get buses back.

Dazhai is a little village nestled in the karst mountains, surrounded by rice terraces. As we’d left Guilin a little late, we needed lunch on arrival. A long-haired lady engaged us in conversation on our way into the village and asked if we’d like to eat at her place. We thought, why the heck not. Worst case scenario we’re being pulled into a tourist trap. Which it wasn’t, although I was immediately attacked by more long-haired ladies wanting to sell me jewellery. I made the mistake of looking interested. If that wasn’t bad enough, I bought something without haggling very hard, which really upset one of the ladies. Turns out I’d bought three bracelets from three different women, but not from her, which she thought was terribly unfair and she was extremely difficult to shake off!

After lunch we walked up the hill to get in amongst the terraces, which took us through the rest of Dazhai. Country life here pretty much goes on as it always has – I’m not sure if the long-haired women would dress up in their traditional black pleated skirt and large silver hoop earrings every day if there weren’t tourists around, but at the end of the day they all have to make a living. Without the tourists, they’d be farmers stuck on or below the breadline and it’s not like they make a fortune either way. Why not earn your pennies by showing your traditional culture to people who find it interesting?

As we walked the country paths, we saw donkeys go up and down carrying their owners’ loads, chillis and corn being dried, terraces being mended, daily life completely oblivious to the big noses walking around with their cameras.

The scenery is just indescribable. Even the photos don’t really do it justice. I thought we’d have to walk for ages to really get into the thick of things, but it was just a short climb up more bloomin’ steps and below are the views we were met with. I would say it’s peaceful, but there are other tourists on the trail (both foreign and Chinese) and there was terrible unk unk music coming from the main pavilion in the village, where they were doing some kind of dancing, which then reverberated around the valley. Kind of ruined the rural idyll, but the Chinese like a bit of noise, so make as much as possible most of the time. Hardly anything is allowed to happen without being accompanied by either terrible elevator style music or ear-grating techno trash. We managed to escape it by hiking on to the next viewing point, letting the incumbent tour group pass and then just soaked up the views. Bliss.

Our lack of time meant we had to make sure we were back in Dazhai village in plenty of time to catch a bus, particularly as we didn’t know when one would be leaving. We had someone’s card that said they’d leave at 4.30pm, so I thought I’d be clever and call him from the top of the terraces (you can get mobile phone reception EVERYWHERE in China. No black holes or dropouts here!) to let him know we definitely wanted to take that bus and could he hold two places for us. He told me there wouldn’t be a 4.30pm bus today. But as this was organised chaos, he said he’d help me find another one, we should just make sure we were back in the village by 3.30. So that’s what we did. As it turns out, there was a bus ready and waiting to go when we arrived at the bottom. You just never can tell. There always seems to be a coach, a bus, a minibus or a van going somewhere, but the second you rely on it to plan your day is when you get stuck in the back of beyond and have to sleep in a cowshed.

Our journey back to Guilin followed the same pattern as our journey there – tell people where you want to go, they’ll call a mate, two buses will magically find each other on the road and you get booted out of one to take up your place in the other. It works!

Once back in Guilin, we had more taxi troubles – the drivers here are averse to using their meters so you have to haggle over a price. We’d met two other travellers on our bus who were staying at our hostel so decided to try and share a ride back. We couldn’t find a taxi for love nor money so thought we’d try and walk, but we didn’t really have a proper map and had no idea which side of the bus station we’d emerged on so didn’t know which street we were on or which direction we should head in. Gav spotted a police car and sensibly suggested we ask them where to go. Which I did. The policeman and his friend in the passenger seat scratched their heads for a bit, trying to decide if they knew where it was or not and then told us to hop in, they’d give us a lift! There was only room for three on the backseat, so one of our companions leapt into the back bit (car terminology is failing me – this police car was a pick-up truck so, you know, the outsidy bit) and we were driven home in style! The policeman and his friend were very interested in us and where we were from. When they dropped us off, he gave us his phone number and insisted we call if we have any problems. I’d like to see an English Bobby do the same!