The Magical Mystery Washing Ladies Of Zhaoxing

The last hour of our bus ride to Zhaoxing (see "Worst Bus Ride in China - two") was spent negotiating the winding road to the bottom of the valley in which the village is nestled.
From reading www.chinabackpacker.com, we knew that this would be how our journey would end; we would come over the top of a pass and drop down into a subtropical valley, but we had no idea which pass would be the last one (well actually, for quite a while we thought that every pass would be our last one and that we were going to go over the edge of the "road" and off a cliff, but then we realised that either way we would end up at the bottom of a valley, and gave up thinking about it).

The last pass.

We had been over one hell of a lot of mountain passes, and each time we went over the top of one we were wishing that it would be our last, (not literally that is, although we did use our video camera to make our last wills and testaments), so when we saw the bottom of a lush valley, with a beautiful village at the bottom surrounded by sunlit rice terraces, we decided that no matter where we were, we were getting off. Fortunately it was Zhaoxing.


We stumbled off the bus with shaking legs, kissed the ground and slapped the driver (I'm still not sure which one would have been cleaner to kiss), told each other we were just joking when we made our last wills and testaments - 'course we were - and walked shakily into the first beer outlet we could find.
Zhaoxing really is a beautiful place, and it was such a relief that the place we had spent so long traveling to was looking like it was going to be worth the effort.
As you can imagine from our accounts of getting there, it is really quite an isolated place (as much as anywhere can be in china that is). It is pretty much in the middle of the Dong Autonomous Prefrecture, which is the region of
northern Guizhou that the majority of the Dong people live, and because of this, still retains much of its traditions and culture.
We wandered around trying to find some accommodation, and finally found a cheap place which promised hot showers and the possibility of washing our clothes, now long overdue, then dropped our bags off and went for some food.

The main street of Zhaoxing.

A Dhong taxi.

An old style shop.

Whiling the day away, watching life go past. I imagine things have changed a bit in his time.

Art is another thing the Dhong aren't very good at.

An aerial view of the village.

The next day we woke early, as we wanted to go trekking in the surrounding hills, and headed for the showers.
A little background on the Dhong people is required here;
The Dhong are considered expert architects. Each Dhong village is charicterised by its drum towers (basically a very large wooden echo chamber, used to amplify the drum it houses to call the villagers to the square), and its wind and rain bridges (which are what you would think they are, covered bridges to keep the wind and rain out).
Not such an achievement in itself, a tower and a bridge.... Pretty easy really, except they don't use a single nail. They are like giant 3D jigsaw puzzles, with the pieces cut to size and then put together.
They also created the sea of rice terraces you have seen in the pictures in this blog, in often very steep and rugged terrain, with amazingly complicated irrigation systems.
Pretty impressive eh? Well, they may be good architects, but they are crap at plumbing and wiring.

After finally getting the water to run, we were treated to an extremely cold shower which didn't drain properly (remember the rice terrace irrigation boys??? Put the drain at the lowest point......LOWEST POINT).
Well, even if we couldn't shower, at least we could get our clothes washed....
Enter the Magical Mystery Washing Ladies Of Zhaoxing! The Mystery being why they charge AUD$1 for every item of clothing they wash...... I suppose we could have sewn them all together, but we just bitched at them instead, and resigned ourselves to stinking for at least a few days more. Oh well!!

We set of and walked north from the town, up the valley from whence we came, following a little stone path that must have been the main route out of the village before the "road" was built and turned onto one of the access paths that the villagers use to access their rice paddies.

Martin on the old road.

An old guy we met on our walk up, smoking his pipe.
All the old Dhong men wear jackets like his.

We followed the little trails you can see, and made some of our own.

We spent the whole day wandering up and down the paths which link the terraces, trying to stay as high as possible so we could get better views. Although all of the terraces have paths leading to them so that the villagers can access them, not all of these paths link together so we spent quite some time scrambling up and down bushy hillsides and rock walls trying to follow the route we wanted. Obviously they didn't think of tourists going walking when they designed them, but it all adds to the fun, and it was a beautiful sunny day so we didn't care how long it took us.

Debating which route we should take over to a new path.

The cherry blossoms are in bloom, this one doubles as a hay storage post.
I think they wrap it around poles and compost it over winter,
then plow it into the fields in spring.

One of the terraces being composted and prepared for the next seasons crops.
Nothing was wasted, and everything recycled.... Until the plastic bag that is.

The plants growing in the field above.

We walked around to the top of the terraces in that part of the valley, and snaked our way along the edges of the fields. The air in the valley was beautiful, and filled with the scents of all the spring flowers.
There were millions and millions of white butterflies fluttering about, the air was thick with them sometimes. It made me wonder about the pre pesticide days in Europe and Australia - it was probably like that then, too.

The view from the top of the terraces you can see 3 photos up.

The same view, a little further along the path.

When we reached the top of the valley we could no further, and scrambled down a hillside on our bums to another path which lead through a pine forest and back to the village.

The path home.