We left the province of Guizhou for the neighboring province of Hunan 湖南. This province of China has number of tourists sights that deserve visiting. Hunan is probably most famous for their most famous son, Mao Zedong known the world over as one of the most influential people in China during his time.
Hunan province is a rugged province with limestone mountains, lakes and rivers. The name of Hunan province comes from it’s location with respect to the Dongting Lake, in this case it is south of the lake. Hu 湖 means lake and Nan 南 means south, thus “south of the lake” or Hunan. All provinces in China have a short name, Hunan’s short name is Xiang 湘. Hunan is inhabited by a lot of minority groups like the Miao 苗族, Tujia 土家, Dong 侗族 and the Yao 瑶族people. They have lived here all this time and still keep to their customs and traditions.
Our first stop in Hunan is the ancient town of Fenghuang 凤凰 which literally means phoenix. It was established in the 7th century and still stands to this day. It encorporates Miao and Tujia architecture into their buildings. The town straddles along the Tuo River and is bounded by mountains. Looking at this I wonder if the founders of this town every imagined it to be this picturesque.
We first bought our tickets for our onward journey but since there is will a couple more hours left before the bus leaves, we decided to do a little exploration of the town. We took a cab from the bus station outside the town into the old town of Fenghuang. There were a lot of people doing their own business, some just going about their daily lives, while others are more oriented to the tourist trade. There were a lot of people who were offering to be guides here but since it would be in Chinese and I do not want to strain myself understanding them, we declined. Hey I don’t want to be my friend’s interpreter.
From the main road we walked towards the Tuo River, apparrently there was some rain not too long ago since the river was swollen and is a muddy brown color. Along the river were old Chinese houses from the Ming and Qing dynasties. The houses are mostly brown in color and really look authentic, so it is difficult to tell which ones are the old ones anymore.
However, there is really no denying how charming this ancient town is. Walking by the Tuo river feels like you have been transported back in time to ancient China. In fact, there are some minorities who wear their traditional clothes, most especially the older women. Then I found out that it might be just for show since they started asking me for money to take their photo. I really didn’t like that but I guess they needed to earn a living.
We passed by the hostels I will be staying at and had a look around. I would be coming back here after a few days so I think it would be best if I scouted for my place. Satisfied we continued our exploration. But then it was already lunch time so we first need to satisfy our stomachs. More on that in my next post.
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