guizhou

During our 25 days' trip across China, from north to south, Guiyang, the capital of southwestern Guizhou province, is obviously our favourite. The reason is really simple. Above all, the temperature was most welcomingly, cool, with the high only about 25. What a surprise, when compared to most other scorching cities. Even Harbin, located near the border between China and Russia, welcomed us warmly with 35 (95 degrees) in the early June.

The places of interest are more green and natural, including the magnificent waterfall of Huangguoshu, big caves, underground rivers and as well, mountains beyond mountains along the drive. Besides, we enjoyed the minority performances at a Miao village, which was great fun. And for the first time for me even, a local opera, called dixi, highly praised as living fossil opera, is legendary and magically preserved here after it was first brought about 400-500 years by the Ming soldiers into this area to guard China's southern border. In the surburb many villiagers,descedents of these army, still wear special Chinese costume today, the style as our ancestors wore five hundreds ago on mainland. Wandering on small alleys at these some small but lovely small towns (qiyan town) made us feel like being in different century.

However something I wonder, is why the men here liked smoking so much, almost every man, every where. Is this too a heritage from hundreds ago? Another pity was we didn't try good foods here, instead some boring and unclean places. So in the end we even declared we could go to KFC.