Arriving in YuanYang we found out that our accomodation was not a 5 star one this time. ;)
From my point of view, the fact of the matter was not that the toilet was the same as the shower, but rather that it was freezing cold. There was no heating at all. You could see your breath when you were outside. When we went to the reception desk to ask for a recommendation of a restaurant, we met a two other Germans who just arrived. As they had not yet had dinner either, we decided to go somewhere together. Finally, we ended up in a local restaurant. They even brought us into the kitchen so that we could point out the things that we wanted. Besides the meat and vegetables that we ordered, they served us a complimentary chicken broth. You can see it in the picture below. Actually, it's a picture puzzle - who spots the chicken feet and the pecker?
The next morning, we got up 5.30 a.m to see the sunrise at a rice terrace. I was wearing my jogging pants under my jeans and 4 layers of shirts under my jacket in order to keep my warm , by the way. When we arrived at the scenic spot, there were already other Asian tourists waiting for the sunrise. Well, during the next hours we could see dark fog turning into bright fog. But unfortunately no sun was anywhere to be seen. So we went to a local market in a small village called Bada. Yunnan province is home to 6 different ethnic minorities. Two of them - the Yi and the Hani people live in the area around YuangYang. That market was really authentic as people were wearing their traditional clothes and were selling their own vegetables, poultry, cakes, ...
When we came back from our tour that day, we saw an add "Sophia - English speaking trekking guide". As we were interested in hiking - and seeing more of the rice terraces - we gave her a call. Fortunately, she had time to walk us around the next day. First Sophia took us to the wet markets of YuanYang. Like the one in Bada village, we saw Hani and Yi people wearing their embroidered clothes doing their daily grocery shopping. And again, you could get everything from vegetables over fruit to living poultry and piglets as well pork meat and roasted dog.
If we would have been in the mood for something new, we could have even got our hair cut...
As we were done with the shopping, we started hiking to the rice terraces. Since 2011 these terraces are part of the 45 world heritage sites in China. If wikipedia is right, Hani people started building the terraces 1,300 years ago.
Our hike led us through some very small villages. It seemed that life has not really changed for the last 100 yours in these villages. They were still drying animal dung for heating and had a well to get water for the village.
As the sun was shining the whole day, it was just great hiking through the terraces together with Sophia. Actually, she is one of the English teachers of YuanYang. But she enjoys showing foreigners the rice terraces more than teaching at the school. So she even hosts a blog about her trekking tours (if you are interested, just visit http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_728728280100smyf.html).
