On assignment in rural Guizhou

It was a quiet summer in 2020, what with Lonely Planet’s publishing schedule nixed in its entirety due to the Covid pandemic. But I did manage a quick work getaway to Guizhou in southern China to write a series of sponsored travel articles. Not my usual cup of tea, but nicely handled by the client, and a chance to explore a part of China I hadn’t set foot in before.

You can read the articles here, here and here. Or stick with this fluffy excerpt:

“At times, the sparkling mountain landscape of Danzhai County in China’s Guizhou province does a good impression of the Swiss alps in summer. The sturdy homesteads of the Miao people, with their whitewashed walls, dark timbers and tapering tiled roofs, appear like chalets on the green hillsides. If anything, though, the colors in Danzhai are degrees more vivid. Even under heavy skies, the emerald sparkle of new rice shoots, planted in uniform rows on the bathtub-like terraces, ups the saturation of every vista.”

These rather spectacular falls were entirely untouristed. No tickets, no car park, just a tricky walk down a steep set of rice terraces. The words ‘China’ and ‘unspoiled’ don’t go together much at all, but Guizhou gets close, in parts. Particularly some of the isolated Miao villages at higher ground.

Foraging lunch was a standout highlight, snake encounter notwithstanding.

The artisan paper-making industry in the area is relatively well-known within China for producing molecule-thin folios that have been used by restorers to patch up old imperial books in the Forbidden City’s collections. Which is pretty cool. Although they are vastly overpriced.

The trip was also a chance to reconnect with Gil, an old pal from Dali in Yunnan, who was working on the same project as a video presenter. I wrote about him for Cathay Pacific here, a couple years back.