My GF sent me some pictures that she got in some random mail forwarding in her office.
The place looks beautiful but where is it?
I think that’s in Guizhou. The more rural pictures are a lot like these, of a Miao village:
,国产精品亚洲AV电影在线观看,99久久国产综合精品色,FREE嫩白的18SEX性 (scroll to the end and compare with your second-to-last.)
As a matter of fact, looking at this other picture you can tell it’s the same place – the small grove is exactly the same. Here’s almost the exact same picture (scroll down.)
The place is called 千户苗寨, “1000-family village of Miao,” close to Kailin on the Xi River. A short description: http://news.qq.com/a/20081028/001086.htm
I can’t identify where the first few pictures have been taken, though judging by the geography it’s likely in Guizhou also. It’s not Yangshuo or Guilin, as I’ve been there.
Looks nice! Maybe I’ll check it out next time I have a long weekend!
Sorry. Living in a polluted mini-metropolis where cheese is unheard of and everyone acts exactly like I don’t expect them to act can be trying, but now and then I remember the good parts about living here…Though if you are thinking of making vacation plans keep in mind the dark and misty photos are much more likely to be accurate than the blue-skies and green trees.
In America, we are likely to be familiar with the Hmong, who are a Southeast Asian subset of the Miao ethnic group. (experts feel free to correct me.)
Fantastic job!
I’ve been wanting to visit Guizhou some day… maybe next year I’ll get a chance to go there. I looked for the Xi Jiang village and found this small article
Lovely!
Oh, I dig dark and misty too. No problem there.
I’ve stayed in Yangshuo, about 10 years ago, which was already a super backpacker magnet. It was nice getting good western-type breakfast, but the amount of tourists was a bit overwhelming. However, we took a local guide and went biking outside of town and there we were in a completely different world. If you go, you should really make every effort to go out of the touristy places, though they can be convenient as a starting base.
(Also, it’s Kaili, not Kailin.)
I was in Yangshuo earlier this year and you can imagine how touristy it is. It was all tourist-oriented crap. One thing of interest was T-shirts with Osama Bin Laden on them. They were everywhere. He must be a local hero.
We also took the local guide and bicycles and did the river raft thing. In spite of being so touristy it is still very cheap.
A nice photo: File:YangshuoFromTvTower.jpg - Wikipedia
I saw the OBL t-shirts in HK as early as 2001. I think they’re largely for the tourists, especially in Yangshuo. Things may be a bit better now because of the tourism, but when I was there, talking with the locals, it was very clear that these were not wealthy people. And by not wealthy, I mean owning one, maybe two sets of clothes. Definitely no disposable income to spend on novelty t-shirts.
I had a bowl of noodles and a largish beer in a small village for what must have been under 1 dollar, and that was “tourist price”.
Looking at the pictures I have and the ones from the Xi Jiang village, I think that there may actually be pictures from two, maybe three different places.
I didn’t see anything like this bridge or this tower.
The geography looks similar, so I guess those should be neighbouring towns. So, one identified, one or two more to go. 
This could be the beginings of a wonderful tour of Guizhou province; it isn’t very far from Bangkok after all.
I found it. It’s Feng Huang Cheng, also known in English as “Pheonix city,” in Hunan. See this picture and compare with this. Some more:
http://www.pbase.com/drlam/image/73823131
http://www.pbase.com/roseslover/image/77973844
http://www.pbase.com/roseslover/image/77973850
http://www.pbase.com/roseslover/image/77974746
http://www.forums.clubsnap.org/forums/showthread.php?p=4054157
The border between Guizhou, Guangxi and Hunan is almost all populated by various minority groups. Mainly the Miao (Hmong) and also the Dong, Yao, Buyi and Zhuang.
I spent time in Guizhou (Kaili, Zhenyuan, Shibing, Shidong) in 1986 and 1987. Many of the places like Kaili and Zhenyuan were building “authentic tourist sites.” At that time, foreigners were not allowed to go to other places. It was still pretty wild and if a dozen foreigners had gone there before me, I would be surprised. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of square miles in these three provinces that are all minority areas. The Han Chinese are concentrated in cities like Zhenyuan, while the surrounding area is almost all minority.
Yangshuo was overrun by Chinese and Western tourists when I first visited in 1985.
Author Amy Tan wrote a piece for National Geographic on a Guizhou Village. It’s as Dong Nationality village, and look for it to be featured in her next book (as yet unwritten).
The Dong are famous for building all wooden drum towers and “wind and rain” bridges. The town of Kaili mentioned by another poster has a Dong drum tower, however it was built by imported Dong labor as the Dong don’t actually live in that area. Rongjiang is the big Dong area in Guizhou.
If you go from Guilin, in Guangxi Province. There are two areas a few hours north called Longsheng and Sanjiang. Longsheng is mainly a zhuang area, with incredibly stunning rice terracing. Sanjiang is a Dong area with some great original wooden drum towers and bridges.
Jovan, China Guy, thanks a lot.
I just bookmarked this page to keep it for future reference. I hope to have the chance to visit those places soon.