Weekend in Guizhou - Sunday

The quintessential form of American travel is the roadtrip.  I spent many childhood hours sitting on the red vinyl back seat, next to my brother in my parents' station wagon as we drove across hours across the states.  We would sleep in the car, eat meals as picnics on the side of the road, and spend hours watching the rural landscape fly past our windows - staring at tractors pulling combines, watching crowds of cows calmly munching grass, and feeling mildly jealous of a life lived far away from everything.

As expatriates living in China, we miss the opportunity to offer our children many of our 

own childhood experiences.  And although I have yet to offer my girls a drive across the flat state of Kansas, I found a lovely substitute in the southern Chinese province of Guizhou.

We spent much of Sunday in a rented van with our bag of books and stickers, our music blaring from the CD player, and our peanut butter and jelly picnic lunches stowed in the back.

The drive from Guiyang to Huangguoshu Waterfall took us two and a half hours and 

worlds away from the congested and dirty cities of China.  While the portable DVD player kept 

the girls entertained, my husband and I spent the drive with our eyes glued out the windows at the pastoral landscape.  A far cry from the agricultural scenes driving across Kansas, we watched small villages clinging to the sides of sudden karst hills.  We saw land split into small plots, being worked by hand by individuals carrying buckets of water or following a single water buffalo.  The seasonal crop was rapeseed for making rapeseed oil - also known as canola oil.  The plants were in full bloom, filling the scenery with a patchwork of bright yellow flowers.

The scenery only began more dramatic as we drove further and neared the waterfall.  Hills terraced with yellows flowers quickly rising and falling again into river valleys.  Thin stone paths winding in between plots of land, wading through streams and guiding up and over hilltops.  Babies snuggled close to their mothers, tied tightly to their backs in brightly embroidered handmade carriers.  Children racing on their bikes down country roads; children walking alongside grandpa and a water buffalo; rows of little explorers navigating the hills and valleys of their world.

We reached the parking lot for Huangguoshu Waterfall and prepared ourselves for a few hour hike.  The path to the waterfall is a simple trail with some steps and hills, and the walk out to the waterfall itself took us over an hour.  We threw our lunches and our children into our backpacks and started down the path.

Huangguoshu Waterfall is a popular destination for Chinese tourists, but although plenty of people shared the walk with us, we rarely felt crowded or mobbed.  We never saw another westerner, and our girls' blue eyes and blonde hair turned plenty of heads.  But most people had come to see the waterfall, which everyone viewed as more dramatic than our children.  People would wave and say hello, but otherwise left my girls alone.

At 2- and 3-years-old, my city girls love the chance to walk on their own, stopping to investigate a spider and its habitat, or picking it sticks and leaves.  The simple path kept them happy the entire walk, and the waterfall left them breathless with excitement.  This jawdropper falls 77.8 meters and is 101 meters wide.  Apparently the river flows strongest and falls most dramatically in July and August, but it still looked mighty impressive from our spring vantage point.

But the best was yet to come, from our children's perspective.  The path continues straight on through a water curtain cave, taking each walker directly behind the waterfall.  The cave dripped with water and stalagtite, with low ceilings and crooked walls.  Our girls became convinced that a monster lurked just around the corner, and spent the entire walk in a combination of giddy excitement and tortured fear.

On the way out, we stopped for a picnic and for a few colorful photos.  Chinese tourists visit Guizhou province both to see this waterfall and to explore minority cultures.  Although the waterfall does not fall in or near any minority villages, the locals saw a place to make a buck and offered costumed young ladies to pose for pictures.  They found our kids so interesting and lovely that we got our photos for free!

Back in the van to continue our roadtrip, and the girls 

immediately fell asleep.  Just as planned, we all spent the next hour in serious nap time.  Everyone awoke feeling refreshed, and ready to hike to the next destination.  Another shorter hike took us to the bottom of The Dragon's Mouth, a waterfall dropping out of Tian Chi Lake where it has just left the Dragon Palace Caves.  This waterfall may have been less picturesque than Huangguoshu, but the power in the tons of water barreling through this small mouth still left us astounded.  

A breathless climb to the top of this waterfall led us to the most enchanting part of our trip.  We climbed onto boats with an adult life jacket on each seat.  The girls wrapped them around their bodies like warm blankets and we entered the Dragon Palace caves, named because the caves look like the crystal palace where the dragon lives.  No longer did we fear the monster around the corner - now we worried that our crew would awaken the dragon in his home!  The majesty and wonder of the caves frequently allowed the girls to forget the fearful dragon.  The curators of the cave and the river had cleverly named many of the outcroppings of rocks with whimsical names like Monkeys Watching the Moon and Groves of Grapes.  But while the rocks had names livening our imaginations, and sometimes red or green lights dimly illuminating them, they were left otherwise untouched and the natural beauty of the place worked with the girls' imaginations to create an amazing world of monkeys and dragons while we rode through the quiet caves on our simple boat.

After a beautiful and exhausting day, we overnighted in the nearest town.  Anshun has a population of 2.6 million people - the population of our hometown in America, St. Louis, Missouri.  Or Orlando, Florida;  Lisbon, Portugal; Manchester, England.  But this city had no downtown, no highrise buildings, and no theme parks.  It felt like a frontier town, with the roads still being paved, goods sold under tents in the street, and rarely a concrete building rising higher than 2 stories.  There were no sidewalks and few trees, and our guide advised us to stay in the hotel.  So tired from our day exploring the Guizhou countryside, we had no trouble following her instructions.