Longshen

On arrival in Guilin at just after midnight, I checked into the guest house. Had biscuits that they gave me in the plane for dinner and booked my tour for the next day. Then off to bed for mandatory sleep...

I had to get up at 06h30 to meet the bus at 07h30 and off I went for a day to Longshen and Pingan to see the famous Yao people with their long hair and the Dragon's Backbone Rice Terraces.

Guangxi roughly translates as "vast, boundless west", and for centuries its remoteness and challenging topography kept it poverty stricken and undiscovered by tourists. Still today it is not a common tourist area. So off the beaten track I went and into Longshen village to see the cultural heritage and rituals of the Yao people.

Longshen Village located on the Li River




The Yao people believe that woman rule. How wonderful. I love this place. Yao ladies don't ever cut their hair and they can have hair of more than a meter long. As they hit puberty they cover their hair and the first person after this to see their hair again is their husbands. It is believed to be incredibly bad luck if anyone else sees their hair and they would even go as far as demand that that person marry them to cancel out the shame.












A minority culture that are still incredibly attached to their culture and beliefs from a hundred years ago, I did not know places like this still existed.

They have wonderful rice wine....