Architecture on the Road
XIJIANG QIANHU, IN THE LAND OF THE MIAO PEOPLE
Xijiang Qianhu is located in the valley of Leigong Mountain National Park, around 25 km from Kaili, and is composed by 10 villages spread over 50 square kilometers.
The cultural center though revolves around the village of Xijiang, which is the most accessible and which in the recent years gained a lot of popularity.
The huge village of Xijiang (which is growing in its surrounding day by day, as a lot of construction activity and tourism developments is currently taking place) is composed of hundreds of Miao traditional houses, where is possible to visit the Miao Ethnic Group Museum, assist daily performances and participates to local festivities.
The Miao is one of the 55 official minority ethnic groups of China, recording almost 9.000.000 people.
Under the Miao denomination are actually grouped together several sub-ethinc groups, sometimes with significant differences in languages and traditions among them.
The Miao ethnic groups is especially famous among all the ethnic minorities of China for their incredibly intricate and beautiful Silver jewelry and garments, which is a very important a cultural tradition and symbolizes the wealth of Miao women.
Most of the Miao people live spread in the Southern Region of China, mainly in the Provinces of Guizhou, Yunnan, Sichuan, Hunan, Guangxi, Hubei. The majority of them though (around the 48%) live in the mountainous areas of the Guizhou Province, especially in the region named Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture (黔东南苗族侗族自治州), which Kaili (凯里市) is the biggest and most important city and point of access.
In the region around Kaili, between mountains and rice terraces, are nested several small towns and villages where is possible to come in contact with the traditions, the costumes and the lifestyle of several of these local ethnic Minorities.
With the aim of getting in touch with the Miao culture, I decided to include on my route through Guizhou 2 days spent in the place considered the “Capital of the Miao People”: Xijiang Qianhu (西江千户苗), and use this huge village as a base to explore the surroundings.
The main reason travelers come all the way to Xijiang is to get in touch with the Miao Culture.
The village is called a “living museum”, and the tourism development really pushed this cultural identity at the point that everything there seems like screaming “Miao Ethnic Minority”.
The best way to experience Xijiang is just walking around, soaking the Miao culture that exudes from all sides, from the decorations of the buildings, to the traditional clothes worn by the locals (and the tourists).
While the main streets are quite full of souvenir shops selling snacks, trinkets and beautiful silver works, just going up towards the outlying areas of the village is possible to get out of the crowds and enjoy a much more peaceful Xijiang.
There are a few panoramic viewpoints on both sides on the upper parts of the village, where is possible to admire a quite spectacular view over the hundreds of wooden dwellings.
The rice terraces around the village offer quite beautiful hiking possibilities too; in particular the hike to the near Kaijue village can be an interesting day trip far from the crowds of Xijiang.
Inside the village visitors can get to discover the Miao culture watching one of the several shows performed every night in the Arena at the riverside (entrance ticket 130 rmb).
Twice a day (around noon and 5pm, but check with the host because schedules may vary daily ) free Miao performances (15 minutes) are played in the squares of the village, but these seems to be not quite impressive as the night-time ones.
To deepen the understanding of the Miao customs, the Miao Folk Museum hosts several exhibition halls showing every part of the Miao culture (traditional clothes and garments, art, behaviours etc…)
At sunset time the riverbank gets animated by a series of street food stalls where is possible to enjoy some yummy and reasonably priced local food.
I have to admit that my feelings about this place are mixed.
From a merely architectural point of view, I believe that Xijiang is really a beautiful town.
Built on the slopes of hills, crossed by a river and surrounded by rice terraces, this huge village of over a thousand stilted wooden houses is decidedly picturesque, especially at sunset.
The core of the village is supposed to date back of centuries, but a great amount of the buildings have been recently built or renovated, with many more houses are currently under construction.
The surroundings of the village are clearly going under a heavy touristic development in process as well. A freshly built and extravagant Miao Ethnic Group Museum, dozens of what looks like hotels facilities under constructions, new roads…
It’s really clear the commercial destination that Xijiang is taking, aiming to welcome and give hospitality to more and more visitors.
However I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised by the effort to keep the continuity and the look of the traditional typology and the local materials for the new constructions, a practice not always persevered in the Chinese countryside, where are often chosen cheaper and easier to build materials and designs, at the expense of the continuity with the traditional pattern.
The new-under-construction Xijiang kind of looked a bit cheesy to me, but at least not ugly.
From an experience point of view, Xijiang is basically a Miao theme park.
The feeling is that everything got “Miao-fied”, to pretend to express the Miao culture.
Approaching the village, visitors pass in front of the Miao Ethnic Museum, announced by a gigantic ethnic Miao hat of the diameter of several meters. At the entrance of the village women wearing traditional costumes greet the visitors with some local wine. During the day are available some short Miao performances held by the local people in the square of the village, while at night in the “arena” is performed a longer and more striking performance at the cost of 130 rmb.
I have also been shocked by the huge number of tourists, tour buses, cars entering and leaving the village, the number souvenir shops and hotels (basically every single building) and the number of people lined up to do anything. I dealt several times with National Holiday and summer holiday crowds, but the disproportion between the relatively small size of the place and the amount of people felt in some occasions really claustrophobic, and judging from what is being built at the moment around the village, the situation will most likely get worse.
Not to mention that everything is literally 2 or 3 times more expensive than other place in China.
I went to Xijiang to experience the Miao culture, but what I found was a sort of performance, not a place where to experience the daily life of the people.
It felt touristy in a cheesy way that I could not enjoy. And even if I have been in highly touristy places before in China, visiting Xijiang felt like being in the Miao Disneyland.
For the second day spent in Xijiang I was really motivated to go looking for some less touristy places, aiming to find some traditional villages in the surrounding area unspoiled by mass tourism development.
I asked to my hotel hosts if there was something around the village worth to see, and suggestion about routes and traditional places to visit. I also asked the contact of a driver I could hire for the day (a thing that I do very often in my trips in the Chinese countryside and is usually affordable and worth the money).
My hosts turned me down saying that there was really nothing around, renting a driver would costs me over 1000rmb because of the bad connections of the roads, and that, because of the crazy traffic jam around the village I would most likely end up spending my day stuck between tour bus; for these reasons it would have been better for me to just stay in Xijiang (which at this point it was actually the least thing I wanted for my trip). I was kind of upset for this answer, since I just wanted to get out.
Took me quite some efforts to eventually find the contact of a local driver, make arrangements on where to go, and bargain down to an acceptable price.
I made myself really clear to him (using a translation app, as my chinese skills is still in progress) that we wanted to see the traditional architecture and the real life of the local people. No entrance tickets to pay, no touristy commercial attractions, no performances.
He totally got it, and got back to me with a very interesting and worth it route of 4 villages, for the duration of an entire day.
For the “friend” price of 800rmb (starting from almost the double) our driver took us (I was travelling with my family) for the entire day in the beautiful surrounding countryside, showing us some traditional Miao villages of:
To reach all these villages is necessary a private vehicle. These places are not really distant one from the other, but the drive takes quite some time due to the mountainous landscape and the hairpin bends. The roads are quite in good condition and seems to be pretty recent. The villages though are still very remote and authentic, retaining the traditional lifestyle and local costumes, and being completely free from tourists.
The places our driver showed us were some real unspoiled gems, and I have to admit we couldn’t ask for anything better.
Arranging this whole thing took quite some effort, but the driver took really good care of us, and eventually the whole experience was absolutely worth it.
Usually the visit of Xijiang is often joint with a trip to Langde, another quite popular Miao village located 2h drive from Xijiang.
Langde though is much smaller and quiet, but still open to tourism, so expect to pay an entrance ticket and see Miao dancing performances.
Xijiang is nested in the mountains about 20km from the city of Kaili (the main city of the Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture)
To get to Xijiang the easiest way is to reach Kaili by train, and from there take a bus or a taxi to the village.
The city of Kaili is served both from slow train Railway Station and High Speed Railway Station (Kaili South Railway Station, which is in the outskirt of the city).
I arrived to Kaili South Railway Station, where I took a shuttle bus to Xijiang. The ride takes 30 minutes and costs 40 rmb; the bus leaves when full. It possible to purchase the ticket just outside the arrival of the trains, where is located a tourism office specified in getting you on the first bus to Xijiang.
The shuttle bus goes to the North Gate of Xijiang, and stops very near the ticket office.
To enter the village is mandatory to purchase a ticket of the cost of 90rmb and valid for 2 days.
Once stamped the ticket at the access gate, to reach the actual village is necessary to walk following the only road for 15 minutes, or taking a short bus ride (purchasing a single ride ticket for 5rmb, or a 4 rides ticket for 20rmb).
From my experience I noticed that Xijiang is not really well connected with the region around. For being such a touristy destination I naively expected it to be well connected with the villages and cities of the Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture, but seemed not to be the case.
The village is basically connected by public transport only to Kaili and Leishan 雷山县(the other main bus hub of the county), and not really continuously trough the day.
Most of the tourist get there by tour busses and private cars, which makes the road and the parking lot to access the village really crowded and busy, with a significant cue to take the local bus to the village (at least in the season I was there, August 2019)
In my personal experience I found that leaving the village was challenging for me as well, because the first bus departing from the village was at 10.30 am, but my train in Kaili at 8.30.
If I wanted to do it by public transport, I should have gotten back to Kaili directly the night before.
Having already booked and payed for the night my very overpriced hotel in Xijiang, I arranged a private car early in the morning which costed me 200 rmb. Being us 4 people travelling together, eventually the price was similar to taking public transports; anyway, for being a short ride of 20km, I think the price paid was quite a rip off. Of course there were no taxi available in the village.
In conclusion, the most convenient way to get to and around Xijiang is having a private way of transportation, as the public transport is discontinuous and offers very limited routes to the area around. When relying only on public transport to Xijiang, is important to take these limitations in consideration and plan ahead.
If I had to redo this trip again, I would probably stay in Leishan and use it as a base to explore the county; Leishan coach terminal in fact offers a lot more routes throughout the Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture, allowing direct connections to Kaili, Xijiang, Zhaoxing (the biggest Dong Minority village)…
As I mentioned at the beginning of this blog post, my opinions about Xijiang are mixed.
Xijiang is indubitably a beautiful looking village, and from an architectural point of view it has some really interesting points.
Staying at a local hotel can provide an interesting experience about these kind of architecture and construction methods (beware though that most of these buildings don’t really have real insulation or sound proof, so if you are a light sleeper like me, pack some earplugs or be prepared to face some serious sleeping challenges…).
The surrounding landscape is really nice too, making of Xijiang a quite photogenic place with a really well maintained vernacular component.
Though If you are looking for an off the beaten path destination where to experience the real life of the Miao Ethnic group, Xijiang is NOT the place you are looking for.
I was in fact been warned that Xijiang is a touristy place, but I still hoped for something less commercial. Well, I got to see it with my own eyes!
The atmosphere has been completely spoiled by the mass tourism development, at the point that seems to be in a Theme Park. I am sure that locals still live there, but there is no visible trace of village life and culture. The impression is that everybody local there, young or old, is working for this huge money making machine, and every single activity is turned to the tourism industry.
It’s interesting to witness how this kind of Ethnic Minority Tourism developed, influenced and radically transformed a place and the life of the local inhabitants: in one hand bringing a significant source of income (the tourism industry) for the villagers, but on the other hand to excessively commercialize the cultural identity of the place. A trend through all China which is increasingly affecting the many of its cultural minorities an unique cultural heritages.
I personally find the Miao culture really unique, beautiful and fascinating, and I really loved the visit of the other authentic Miao villages and the beautiful lush nature; for this reason I considered the effort to get to Xijiang worth it and valuable after all.
If was not for this second, more authentic part of my stay, I would not have found in Xijiang the kind of experience I was looking for.
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