Yuanyang

So last post was pretty much about how frustrated I was with not catching a bus on time for my room reservation and missing out on half my reservation (my numbers were off and I realized later that I had two nights). I have to admit, for a while I looked at the 7 hour sleeper bus ride it was going to take, the time it would take to get back, and the time I had in Yuanyang and asked myself if it was all worth it. I'm happy say it was:

Sunrise from Sunny Guesthouse viewing area.

Initially, these rice terraces formed by the Hani over 1000(?) years ago were the only thing that I knew about, the only big draw I'd heard of, and the only thing I found in a guidebook while wondering if there was something special going on in winter that I should check out. But since I stayed at Sunny Guesthouse in Pugaolao Village and pretty much slept next to the terraces, I found the whole area to be extremely pleasant. Given the nature of the terraces, they can't really industrialize how the red rice is grown and harvested here. I've read travel websites and guidebooks that talk about how great it is that this place is relatively untouched by tourism, but I don't know if it's entirely true when they've built viewing platforms you need to pay to enter. It's true though that since it's not the easiest place to get to, it's not really got a lot of other things going on for tourists. I would totally go back here, maybe even in its off season when the terraces aren't full of water since I really enjoyed my neighbors, a bunch of little girls who were always playing and singing together at all times of the day. One of them showed me to the guesthouse and I wound up giving her both the cakes I had in my bag in exchange for her help and she always smiled at me whenever I walked past.

Maybe I should go back to that first day of arriving. It was the 18th, New Year's Eve. After resting on the bus as best as I could, a man came on with a flashlight asking if anyone was going to DuoYiShu and I said yes. So I walked out at (6? 7?) some dark hour of the morning, loaded up into a minibus with one woman and two men and we set off for DuoYiShu. When we arrived at the viewing area, I asked if he could tell me where the parking lot of Pugaolao Village was. The other man siting up front heard me struggling with my Chinese and he spoke to me in English. We all got out at Pugaolao and they seemed bothered by me traveling alone so they walked with me down a to convenience store that a local man had set up in his house. The man called a friend who spoke English and had me talk to him, the woman who traveled with us stared and said "You don't understand?" as she tried to work out my nationality and my appearance. So the man who ran the shop walked me partway before asking a woman with a big-eyed baby to help me out, she walked me partway then asked a little girl to help me out and she got me to the guesthouse. Dante had Virgil and Beatrice, but I got 4 guides on my journey through what felt like paradise despite how tired I was. Cool, clean morning air, sun already risen over the terraces, roads with water running down the gutters everywhere and taking advantage of the mountain that this village is built on, little girls in traditional Hani tunics, blue sky, and all of it more than welcome after the time I've spent in cold and wet Hunan. The change in the air was the first thing I noticed as the bus came up the mountain since I couldn't see much outside my window at night.

For whatever reason, Lonely Planet describes Jacky's Guesthouse as being in the heart of Pugaolao Village while Sunny Guesthouse is described as taking a bit of work to find but they're not that far from each other. Every time I went back to Sunny, I passed Jacky's. They took care of me very well at Sunny guesthouse given the circumstances. Pretty much every hotel or hostel in this area offers meals since the villages outside of Xinjie Town (where the bus from Kunming arrives) don't really have anything as far as restaurants. If you ever come out here and you plan on eating at the place you're staying, set aside about 30 yuan per meal. I had a Western breakfast one morning and decided to trade it out for noodles the other two mornings I was there. Western breakfast was 20 yuan and turned out to be one fried egg and tons of bread that looked like they'd been covered in egg like French toast, but with none of the seasoning. It was good, it filled me, but it was also twice what noodles cost. And I think the veggies in the noodles may have been fresh from their garden but I'm not sure. The staff let me eat dinner with them on New Year's Eve since I was traveling alone and staying there. Firecrackers had been going off all day, as I wandered I saw pigs at various stages of preparation.(WARNING: If you don't like to think about dead animals, skip this sentence.)  One already dead with a towel over its head and a man pouring hot water over it, one squealing in a man's yard, one with the blood going into the gutters where the water continuously runs, and as I came back around they were shaving them or in one case, covering it with branches and setting a small fire over its body.

Human life and animal life are close to each other in Pugaolao. There were water buffalo, chickens, pigs, and geese moving through the streets and under people's homes.

I would love to come out here again and explore the area. I really liked where I stayed. There may have been one person on staff comfortable speaking to me in English but everyone was welcoming and attentive and they gave me information about the area. That and they invited me to dinner with them to watch the New Year's gala. I would definitely stay there again, but next time it might be good to ask the owner of Jacky's guesthouse for a tour of the area as I've heard many say they felt it was the one way they were able to understand a little more about the area. It's about 300RMB so it may be more economical to find a group of people who want to do that. Or I could stay in Xinjie. I was surprised by how much I found there and I've heard that there's a place called Window of Yuanyang where they give information about local markets.

Anyway, after a wild 4 bus journey (talk about it another time) I'm back in Kunming and getting ready for the 24 hour train ride back to Zhuzhou. Yuanyang was totally worth all that trouble and I felt at home there in a village of a few hundred people just working and living. The mountains and clean air probably helped me feel pretty good there too. I certainly found myself more relaxed than I had been in a while and perfectly content to eat at some of the shaokao (barbecue) stands and just wander through the villages. I'm leaving Yunnan with the memories of beautiful terraced mountains  and though I know this one province alone has so much to offer, I also know that to leave content is all I can ask for because the thing with traveling is it's like reading. You come back knowing that there's more for you to look into and that no matter how much you read or how much you travel, there's always more.