Lost in Guangxi -The broken spoke diaries

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The city of Napo itself can be found lying in a nice fertile farming valley at about 700m above sea level. The minority village we were looking for was supposed to be another 12k away up steep, dangerous mountain at about 1300m above sea level. Not too high, but high enough to scare the poo out of someone on a motorcycle. I said scare the poo out of you because we were told these mountain roads were a little on the dangerous side and that old feller wasn't tellin tales out of school. Some places on the road were just barely wide enough to have a small car drive across with one door missing the rocks and one door on the edge of a nice 150m drop. And of course this being China a guard rail is something you never get. But I think a lot of us like to try our best to cheat death on a regular basis. So I figured what the hell, lets cheat death by riding the windy mountain cliff road. While we were taking our time going slowly and carefully along the road to avoid any problems a local Chinese dude on his 125 Honda wannabe blew by us at about 60kph in shorts, sandals, no shirt or helmet and his girlfriend or wife on the back of the bike swinging her arms in the air like it was the safest place in the world. I have to admit. It did make me feel a little bit like a pussy, but I think it is better to be a pussy and stay alive than to be stupid fool and end up on the rocks 120m below.








When we did reach the village we were again smacked in the face by a crazy entrance fee. We talked to the people about how stupid it is for them to charge admission into a village and that nothing but bad press can come from gauging people. I do understand that these people live a simple, poor life and that the money we pay at the gate is used to help the community, but at the same time if I didn't have to pay so much to get in the door I would feel more welcome in the village and be more willing to spend more money inside if we were more comfortable.



























After getting around the money thing and after I started talking to the people in village I began to feel like I was really in a tourist attraction and not a normal village. Everything we talked about came with a price and one lady in the village was pressing us to buy everything. I guessed these people have had a lot of interaction with the majority Han Chinese and have learned some of their business savvy or lack there of from these people.



We did manage to meet one person who was really interested in talking to me and I did manage to find out quite a bit about their way of life. It isn't a normal thing for them to get a white fartass like me that can spit out some broken Chinese to talk to and this lady was really interested in learning about what I thought about China and Chinese culture. Most of the minorities in China really love their government for giving them free schools for their children and free hospitals for them and their families. The government had also helped them by building the modern road to their village and helping them to learn a little bit about how to exploit the interest in their culture to make a few extra bucks to help cover their yearly expenses.



The people in this village belong to the Zhuang minority group. This group is one of China's smaller minority groups and is based in the western mountain region of Guangxi. The culture group shares quite a bit in common with the Miao minority group that can be found in northern Guangxi, eastern Yunnan and Guizhou province. They make all of their own clothes and make some really beautiful hand woven cloth. The group is also know for making silk balls. These balls were used in a ritual for a girl to meet her husband. Each girl would throw a one of these silk balls and the boy who caught it would be her new husband.







This scarf took 3 days to make by hand on a traditional weaving machine.