Tiantou: Village in the Rice Paddies
Jia's extended family is pretty sure we won't be able to figure out trains on our own. They've been taking care of every anticipated need, up to and including packing snacks for us. But we're striking out on our own anyway, to hike in the rice terraces and then go climbing.
They're not totally wrong– Jia's Mandarin is native, but she doesn't care enough to haggle with the touts who meet us at Guilin station and want to arrange our bus ride to Dazhai. We definitely overpay for the walk to a tuk-tuk shuttle to a two hour bus.
The tradeoff is acceptable in that we don't have to figure anything out and the bus is only $10 even at gullible foreigner rates.
So an hour and a half later, I'm cracking peanuts from the bag in my lap as we careen over the potholes in the winding mountain road- up into the cloud layer, passing all other traffic. The left edge of the road drops away to stunning waterfalls, a tumbling river.
Eventually, the bus parks. We swing on our packs and start up the gravel road through Dazhai town. It's about an hour, we've heard. Go straight, then left.
The ascent is a steady heat-generating upward trek on pink mud and gravel. As we peel down to t-shirt layers, we can feel fine moisture droplets breaking on our arms. Each breath is sweet with the smell of growing things.
An hour later, we're still climbing. There's a town coming up, but it's a collection of looming concrete hotels-in- progress, scaffolded with bamboo supports between the levels. It doesn't look like anybody lives here. We haven't seen anybody in a while, actually, or signs for the village where we're going. So when a car comes by, we flag it down and ask the driver: which way to Tiantou? He waves his hand down the hill we've just climbed.
We turn around and start back down the hill.
Jia keeps toggling between satellite view and a trail map app which shows a trail network for this area. We're hoping for options- some way to stay on our contour rather than going back down to the bus parking lot and starting again in a different direction. But the satellite image is outdated and only shows roads, and the trails app doesn't distinguish what's a road.
I see a big sign with pictures of a restaurant, reading 20 meters from the turn-off, so we go to see if we can solicit directions and perhaps a meal.
This restaurant-hotel, like all the others, is huge. But though the water-heating machine is on, no one responds to my calls of "ni hao!" So we go to the restaurant terrace to get our bearings.
Spread below us is the long valley of rice paddies. We are above clouds. Pine trees poke through the swirling white that covers the river valley.
But though we can see a few villages from here, we can't match them up to the map.
Back out on the road, an old man is trudging up as we trudge down. Jia asks him for directions. Tiantou? There is a worker trail, keep going down to a trash heap and then look for a small path.
Sure enough, five minutes' walk back down, I spot a turnoff so small we didn't even see it on the way up. It's muddy and steep but paved with stones. I turn to Jia. Shall we try it?
A few things that make me unaccountably happy: big caves, undeveloped hot springs, aesthetic and promising paths with uncertain destination. This one has a little footbridge! We take the path.
Though at first we're unconfident in our route, our concerns are allayed when we reach a junction. Past the footbridge, through the forest, across the rice paddies, there's a public toilet nestled into a valley. A stone placard at the junction is engraved with a few arrows and place names in Chinese and English. This way to Tiantou!
Across a covered bridge and up a rise, we reach Tiantou village. It's a small town, but popular in a different season- there are so many hostels along the muddy labyrinth of paths that it takes us a while to find ours.
The hotel owner is delighted to see us. She had worried we might get lost! She shows us to our room upstairs. Despite the rural setting, our room is modern and beautiful: floor to ceiling windows look out at the rice terraces. Our beds are fluffy and snow-white.
In the evening, I can hear frog-song through the walls: a thousand rice paddies means a thousand thousand frog homes. I go out to the balcony of the hotel and stand listening in the warm evening breeze.
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