How to tell if a mountain is a karst landscape

Opening the map of Guangxi, the southwestern reach extends to the junction of Yunnan, Guizhou and Gui. This location is Longlin, the most remote part of Guangxi. Compared to Yunnan and Guizhou, there are only four ethnic minorities here: Zhuang, Miao, Yi and Gelao, but the Miao branch alone is enough to make you look away. Mr. Liang Hanchang said in his photo book that Longlin is an ethnic museum without walls. Although the reality of Longlin is not everywhere to show her exotic side, but the no-frills customs, natural and primitive ecological are, let me return to the city after countless times to miss.

De'e Street polder.

Saying different words, catching the same field

Longlin's tourism industry is still in the enlightenment stage, a lot of the so-called attractions, either make a fuss or a tiger's head, I'm only interested in "catching the street", that is, Longlin's polder.

Longlin, like most southwestern counties, also has the custom of catching the street, and each township has a "street day", but the unfamiliar names and thick accents became the biggest obstacle for me to find out about the street day. As an autonomous county of ethnic minorities, Longlin mostly speaks Zhuang, and every time they answered in a colorful manner, I could only smile awkwardly but politely. In the end, the enthusiastic innkeeper gave me a detailed list of street days, before locking the De'e Street polder.

Take advantage of the early morning to catch the street, before six o'clock I got on the countryside minibus to De'e. The bus was packed. The car was packed to the rafters, and a motorcycle loaded with goods sped by on the mountain road, and there was always a woman on the backseat clutching her chickens and ducks, and from time to time, a hand was released to block the wind-blown hanky. Catching the street is like a big party, the women are always "dressed up", the scene has almost become a national costume show. The most popular ones are the Miao - wearing a big black pashmina layered with white trim, and a long skirt with three horizontal stripes on the large lapel.

Eco-friendly bags are not popular here, and people carry bamboo baskets on their backs, and at any moment someone will squeeze past you carrying a piglet or chickens or ducks in a long bamboo basket. A good piglet will always attract a crowd of spectators, but more lively must be all kinds of witch doctors and wizards. The "big fairy" was surrounded only to hear their voices, do not understand the Zhuang language I can only push through the crowd to see a field of "rare medicinal herbs" vaguely. I'm tired of wandering around, I ate a bowl of sugar water called "rice bugs" at a stall on a fork in the road, and talked to the stall owner who was buying Miao embroidery next to me, and she began to teach me how to distinguish between white seedlings and flower seedlings.

The old house in the village of Dashugou

Dashugou and Cold Water Falls

The afternoon of my return to the city, I thought about going somewhere else to hang out, and in front of the station, the driver of the motorcycle was bored under the sun, and chatted up and said he'd take me to see the Dashugou and the waterfalls, and the place didn't sound particularly appealing, but he said that he'd give me whatever he wanted to pay for the fare, and rubbed his sleepy, black face, saying, "It's too hot to drive," he said. "It's too hot to drive cool!" , and I laughed out loud and straddled the back seat.

Originally, Dashu foot is a Miao village, named for being situated at the foot of a thousand-year-old banyan. The village is now split in half by the highway, and a symbolic gatehouse has been built in the center in preparation for a folk village, but as you walk into the village, there are still quite a few of the old, dry-fence buildings preserved. The residents keep their doors open and smile coyly at the sight of prying tourists like me, rather than being wary.

The Cold Water Waterfall has nothing to do with the temperature of the water, but because it's on Cold Water Mountain, with water coming from the Meida Underground River not far away, the nearly 100-meter drop does look a bit spectacular. Compared to these two "attractions", the "guide" is more lovely, along the way to popularize me all kinds of food and drink, especially the Miao people's best dish "sheep yak soup". The secret is to keep the undigested grass residue in the sheep's stomach and intestines, so that the soup will appear a thick yellowish-green color. As soon as I heard that, I said I didn't want to try it at all, but the driver emphasized again and again that that was the essence, and that it could also cure diseases.

Pingliuzhai, a traditional village in the terraced rice fields.

Pingliu Zhuangzhai

Seeing my love for old villages, the driver recommended Pingliu Zhai, which is said to have preserved a large area of old-style buildings. However, Pingliu is deep in the Jinzhongshan Township of Longlin County, backed by a national black-necked long-tailed pheasant forest reserve, and there are only two buses going to the county town every day, and one bus going back. After 3 hours of bumpy ride, there are 5 kilometers of mountain road at the end, not open to traffic at all, even driving a motorcycle is difficult to inch. The driver kept talking to me the whole way to make sure I didn't get knocked off the bus.

The trek proved to be worthwhile. Pingliuzhai is a Qingyizhuang hereditary village, with a hundred families all living in uniform log dry-fence houses, which have survived hundreds of years of wind and rain and have been preserved in their original splendor until now. The whole village is set on the edge of cascading terraced fields, forming a complex of bronze-colored buildings of varying heights. But unfortunately there are not many households here, because of the inconvenience of transportation they are mostly moved out of the mountains, the houses will soon be unified planning and protection. Even as far away as Longlin, a number of Zhuang villages have begun to convert to uniform brick houses. Fortunately, Pingliu Zhuang Village was listed in the first batch of Chinese traditional villages in 2012, and was able to remain intact while all the surrounding villages took the modernization route.

Nalao Cen Clan Complex, Ronglu Di

The academy in the Nalao Cen Clan Complex

Tour of the Pack Niang River

I stayed in Longlin for nearly a week, and the owners of the guesthouses to the restaurants began to greet me, and as I was leaving, the driver of the motorcycle shouted behind me, "Have a nice trip! " This almost extinct standard greeting was both amusing and heartwarming.

I turned back to Baise, taking a detour south to Xilin, where I decided to take a look at the locally famous "Gongbaofu". This is the largest preserved Tusi complex in Northwest Gui, the whole building expansion through the Ming and Qing dynasties, is the Cen family house in the Nalao area, but now there are few people to visit. I walked alone through the cold compound, from the Nanyang Academy with its small green-tiled houses and the Ronglu Di with its rich relief carvings, to the Si Zi Lou, built to deplore the untimely death of his beloved son, where ancient official-style buildings and contemporary residential huts are mixed together, scattered above the valley surrounded by mountains, and surrounded by silence so quiet that you can hear the water flowing.

The Xilin transfer is extremely convenient, and the next comfortable air-conditioned bus will take me all the way back to Baise. Along the way, a turquoise river stretched out of the window, cutting through towering karst mountains and winding through lush rice paddies, and for a long time it stayed close to the highway, as if it were just out of reach. Opening an electronic map, I found its name, the Pack Niang River, which is said to have gotten its name from a Zhuang chieftain in the Northern Song Dynasty who carried his mother across the river on his back. The river doesn't look too deep, and groups of teenagers playing in the middle of the water are enviable. 20 minutes later, I finally couldn't hold back and got off the bus at Batu Yaoxiang, taking advantage of the setting sun and stepping into the glittering river, adding an impromptu stop on this trip.

Playing in the water of the Pack Niang River