Monday 17th November 2014
Hiking Through the Rice Terraces
A Lady From the Yao Tribe – Guilin Bravo Hotel
We woke before the alarm rang. Through the large window on the left we can see the rice terraces. The window to the front of us offers a view of cloud that we watch as it slowly lifts to reveal more terraced rice paddies.
At breakfast a young lady named Summer is serving. Yesterday we had assumed that she was Spring but she corrected us and informed us that Spring was her sister. When we asked her name she replied ‘most tourists call me Summer’. It was very cold again in the dining room. We chatted with Anne and Pete over breakfast and we commented that yesterday we woke in Yangshuo, today in the village of Ping An and tomorrow we will wake in Guilin. We laugh as we agree that most days we don’t know what day it is and we often refer to something and say a couple of days ago… and it was only that morning when it happened.
Marco arrived and we set off on our hike, carrying all that we had brought with us on our backs. The hike took us upwards towards the viewpoint area named ‘Nine Dragons and Five Tigers’. The scenery was absolutely stunning. We spotted a worker carrying sweet potatoes, which had just been harvested.
I heard someone behind me and when I turned I was both amazed and delighted to see a lady from the Yao tribe. Only a few hours ago Dave had shown me a picture of a village and it’s women, who all had extremely long hair (past their bottoms!), in the picture they were all dressed in pink traditional costumes. I couldn’t quite believe my eyes as here next to me stood one of these tribal ladies. She started to talk to me and she kept pointing to her hair. I assumed that she was offering me the chance to photograph her in exchange for cash. I called to Marco who was a little way in front and asked if I was correct. He spoke with the lady and confirmed that for a cost of 5 Yuan she would untie her glossy black hair and we could take photographs. We immediately agreed.
The friendly smiling Yao lady stood amongst the rice terraces and slowly unwrapped her beautiful black hair. Apart from her extremely long hair, she also had another two pieces of long hair; one was cut off at the age of 18 and the other some years later. She always wears the extra lengths, which along with her still growing hair are washed in rice water. The lady was forty-seven years old and she has no grey hairs (just like me!). The Yao people live in the Huangluo Village. The tribe believes that long hair brings longevity, wealth and good luck. The average length hair of the female villagers is 1.7 metres.
We were all wearing cagoules as we were walking in low cloud and it was damp, not long into the walk it started to drizzle. The steps were muddy and in places slippery but we were all fully enjoying the hike and oohing and aarghing at the truly spectacular views.
The view of the ‘Nine Dragons and Five Tigers’ was breathtaking and well worth the hike. We then walked across the rice terraces, which were cut into the hillside to the viewpoint for ‘the Seven Stars and Moon’. As we arrived there a thin cloud covered most of the view. We stood there hoping that it would lift while listening to Marco explain the name of the view. Slowly but surely the cloud lifted and we were treated to yet another dramatic view.
We continued to the old village of Longji where Marco accompanied us on a guided tour around an old traditional village house. While walking through the village we saw some ladies cutting lengths of bamboo and making it into the simple cooking vessels, which they use to bake the delicious bamboo rice. We were served a hot lunch in another of the village’s traditional buildings which had a beautiful wooden carved façade. After lunch we took some more photographs of the memorable scenery before a short 20-minute walk to meet out driver.
I attempted to sleep on the back seat of our vehicle but once again there were lots of hooting of horns. After a while we came to a standstill in a long queue of traffic. Marco said that there had been a lot of rain in the area earlier in the day and he suspected that there might have been a landslide. He told us that there had been one previously which had closed the road for two months, and also one earlier in the year, which forced him to stay in the village for three days while it was cleared.
After a short while a policeman arrived and advised us that there had been an accident and unfortunately three cars were blocking the road. The police expected it to be four hours before the road was cleared. Our driver turned round as did many vehicles. However, there were some long vehicles, which could not turn around, as the road was narrow, these drivers had no alternative but to sit and wait. Marco informed us that the detour that we would now take would put an extra hour onto our journey back to Guilin. We hoped that the people involved in the accident would be okay.
As it happened our journey still took around three hours as originally expected. One change that we noticed at the luxury 5* Guilin Bravo Hotel was the appearance of two decorated Christmas trees. They were a little early we felt, as it was only 17th November.
This time I made use of the luxury facilities at our hotel and enjoyed a nice soak in a hot bubble bath.
Our evening meal was included, and the four of us enjoyed the set menu in the hotel’s restaurant. We ordered a bottle of wine, which the waiter brought, we then asked him for four wine glasses and he repeated this request to us and at the same time attempted to remove the bottle of wine. Holding tightly onto our bottle of wine we repeated the request and this exchange continued for a few minutes until finally we received the glasses.
Pete commented that with hindsight it has probably turned out for the best that we had to return to this hotel this evening (to enable us to get the flight tomorrow) instead of staying a further night in Longji. Otherwise we would have returned damp and chilly from the hike to the hotel in Longji. With no heating in the bar and dining room we would have had to spend the evening in the rooms again with the air conditioning units on. We all agreed that it had turned out for the best although when we heard originally about the alteration to our schedule we were all greatly disappointed.
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