Guanxi

We stopped over in Kunming for a night before getting a long bus down to Yuanyang to look at the rice terraces. The final stretch of our travel that day was a taxi, which was certainly an experience: after much confusion we ended up barelling through the mountains on three wheels, in a half-hour ride that was equal parts amusement and terror.

We got up early the following morning to look at the terraces in the sunrise. The conditions were okay (terraces mostly but not completely flooded, sky partially foggy) but the views were incredible nonetheless. I took a lot of photos, with mixed success.

We spent most of the day walking around the area. We visited a local market, which was rural and traditional. There were a lot of chickens (and chicks) on the street, but mostly we were there for the rice terraces.

We hung around for an hour or so waiting on the customary sunset to get even more views of the terraces

The following day we travelled up to Jainshui. We were stopping off here mostly to break the journey up a bit, but it was a nice town. We visited the Confucian Temple (where we caught an unexpected musical performance) and the ancestral home of a rich family in the town.

After that we continued on to Yangshuo, to see the karst rock formations. This was another incredible landscape, which I’ve never really seen anything like before. Most tourists were travelling up the river, but we couldn’t really work out the complicated system for what boats were allowed to travel when, so we just hiked along the riverbank most of the day.

The following morning, we climbed up a small hill in the area to get some views of the karst rocks from a higher vantage.