Man Man Zou

We left Xishuangbanna on an epic two night sleeper bus ride (via Kunming) in search of the most beautiful rice paddies in China. When we finally arrived in the main rice paddy town, Yuanyang, instead of paddies, this is what we saw:

I first heard of Yuanyang on TrekEarth, and was excited because it’s relatively unknown to tourists. November is the best month to visit Yuanyang because the rice paddies are flooded with water- it was a rare moment on this trip that we were in the right place at the right time. But our luck stopped there because when we arrived, we couldn’t even see across the street because of the thick fog- I have never before seen fog as thick as it was in Yuanyang.

We took the bad news lightly, and the first day we caught up on sleep and watched some of the many dvds I bought. Every hour or so one of us would go out on our hotel room deck to check the view, as I think our room was overlooking rice paddies. It remained blindingly white the entire time, and I never did find out what we were overlooking. It was a funny feeling staying in a town where we couldn’t see 10 meters in front of us- I really have no idea what Yuanyang looked like.

The next morning I woke up early to check the weather status- Yuanyang was still completely fogged in. So we went to the bus station and asked for a bus out of town. There was only one bus that day, to a town called Luchen. Luchen was in the opposite direction of where we eventually wanted to go, but since it was the only bus running and there was nothing to do in Yuanyang, we took it.

The ride was four hours. After about an hour we finally descended out of the thick fog, and drove along some really impressive rice paddies. Last February I was in Banaue, Philippines, at what are supposed to be the most beautiful rice paddies in the world. But based on photos I’ve seen of Yuanyang on a good day and what I saw out of the bus window, I think that Banaue has some stiff competition.

We drove through a few towns and saw many women dressed in their traditional minority clothing. Even though I’ve heard a lot about the minorities of Yunnan province, I wasn’t expecting so many different minorities dressed in elaborate outfits in the same area. Luchen was the same, so I was really happy that we decided to go there.

The people of Luchen were friendly- lots of smiles and greetings. We went to a meat and vegetable market, and every seller was dressed traditionally. I had a fun time with photography in there, since the people were definitely not used to foreigners. It took me a while to convince them to get their photo taken, the women always said they were too ugly to be in the photo. But once I got one woman to give in, the rest had no problem with it.

Luchen is also surrounded by rice paddies, but I have a feeling they’re not quite as beautiful as Yuanyang’s. It wasn’t foggy but the clouds were low and we never saw the sun, so in the end I didn’t really photograph the paddies (just a few out the bus window- bad!).

The next morning we went to the busy bus station and got similar news to what we got in Yuanyang: No buses out of town that day. Or at least they “think there are probably no buses”. It was so strange, as there were a lot of people hanging out in the station. So we just hung out too, until we saw a bus driver start up his bus. We walked up to his bus and asked him where he was going: “Kaiyuan”. Fine. Kaiyuan is in the direction of Kunming, and for some reason lately we’ve been pretty easy going about things in China. Kind of a ‘whatever’ attitude. I don’t know where it came from, maybe being in tropical Xishuangbanna for a week did it. It’s nice to be so relaxed, though that can all change in a second in China.

So we took a really long bus ride to Kaiyuan. After driving for a while we came to a stop on the road: a truck had gone off the road down a cliff into the river and a crane was set up in the middle of the road to pull it back up. The truck was very far down the cliff, I couldn’t even see it until they finally pulled it up an hour later. The somewhat ironic thing is that only 20 meters away were some road workers building a safety barrier on the side of the road.

We usually don’t mind delays like this, as it gives us a chance to hop off the bus in random places and check things out. In this case, a large crowd eventually formed to watch the crane. There were many minority women as well and it wasn’t too difficult for me to get them to warm up to my attempt at conversation:

“Your clothes are special, did you make them yourself?”
“Yes.”
“Looks good. What minority are you?”
“Yi / Hani”
“Do you live in Yunnan?” (stupid question, I know)
“Yes”
“I live in Canada” (they don’t care) “Can I take your photo?”

And then convincing would follow. One time I had a random Chinese guy take part in the conversation, trying to convince her as well. He explained to the woman that since I’m from Canada, I think she’s special because Canada doesn’t have people like her. If I just snapped their photo without asking, they probably wouldn’t care, but it’s nice to ask because I prefer it when they’re looking at me.

We finally arrived in Kaiyuan in the evening, and we hadn’t eaten since the afternoon the day before. I think that’s a record for us, though we did have some crappy Chinese snacks. We decided to continue our long day of transportation and go all the way to Kunming, still another 4 hours away. I bought a bus ticket giving us enough time to eat dinner, but then the woman told us we had to board the bus right away- so no dinner for us until 11pm when we finally arrived in Kunming. It was a feast, to say the least.

There is one thing I wanted to add about Southeast Yunnan. There was one other town we wanted to visit: a traditional town called Jianshui. We tried catching a bus from many towns: from Yuanyang, from Luchen, from Nansha, and from Gejiu, but all of the ticket sellers just said “No bus”. We had a nice bus driver (on the Kaiyuan bus) and he was helping us find a ticket to Jianshui along the way to Kaiyuan. After Gejiu, he told us to give up. His reason: bagong. We didn’t understand what the Chinese word bagong means, but we assumed it meant road construction, since it had the word gong in it. But then when we found our dictionary, Mark looked it up and it translates to “on strike”. So now I really don’t understand why Jianshui seems to be closed off from the world- on strike?

So now we’re in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province, for a couple of days. We came through Kunming a few days ago on our journey from Xishuangbanna to Yuanyang and dropped off our gargantuan backpack, so we already have a feel for the place. I’m not sure if I like this city as much as Sichuan’s capital, Chengdu, but it’ll do!