As mentioned in the previous post, the second tour guide whom we met in the morning for breakfast told us that we ought to visit Biasha - a village in Congjiang county famous for the hair shaving and shooting gun performances. And so, our dear tour guide friend swiftly made arrangements for us to head to Congjiang city in Congjiang county, coordinating both the transport there and our accommodation.Â
Our transport there was kind of arranged via uber-like system on Wechat, and our driver was a guy who looked like a gangster but had the most adorable daughter, and his wife with him in the car. He drove us safely there for approximately two hours and we arrived in Congjiang city safe and sound.Â
After reaching our hotel and checking in, a bunch of guys, slightly younger than us, reeking of smoke, came up to us, offering to drive us up to Biasha village, just about 5 kilometres away from the city. Our alarm bells really should have started ringing, but our naive selves had experienced too much goodness in Kaili that we quickly agreed to their offer without really thinking. The moment we entered the car, we quickly regretted our decision to join them. They were smoking iNSIDE the car, and the driver told me he started driving when he was 15 years old even though the legal age to drive is 18 years old in China O.O Nevertheless, thankfully, we safely made it to the entrance of the Biasha village, where we were promptly stopped as foreigners needed to pay the entrance fee of 80RMB.Â
Because our second tour guide friend told us to meet her friend at the entrance of the village, we decided to wait there for him. But the gangsters were unhappy that they had to wait so long for us, and quickly got angry at us. We told them, very happily, that they should just go ahead, and they sped away without turning back (which we were really happy about). The performance was supposed to start at 3pm, and we were already kind of late, but we thought best to wait for the guy outside. While waiting, we chatted with the employees at the entrance booth, and since they were around the same age as us, we got along with them quite well. After a while we gave up waiting and decided to just go in. They had some discount for students, and so we passed them our student card, which was all written in English, and thankfully our new found friends believed us.Â
We went up the stone path they told us to take, and reached a pavilion with a preserved tree bark in the middle. Biasha village is a Miao village, and although it reads basha in hanyupinyin, Biasha is the original Miao way of pronouncing it. This particular village believed in tree gods and had a particularly old tree, which was taken away by the government when they collected famous treasures around China when Mao passed on. The people were so moved by the cutting of the tree that they surrounded the tree and cried. The government found this scene very touching and thus built this pavilion to commemorate the tree. Or so the story goes.Â
Further down the stone path we reached a small museum that had some photos of the village in the past, and how it was eventually turned into a tourist attraction. Walking further down the stone path brought us to an open area - the village square, I suppose - where the performances are supposedly held, but we arrived too late to watch the performances. Nonetheless, we decided to just walk around and speak to villagers.Â
The village was pretty quiet, and because we didn’t know how to speak Miao, we weren’t really able to converse with the locals. The village was really beautiful, with its wooden houses in layers with the mountains and skies as its background.Â
In particular, we chatted with one old man selling fruits by the roadside who turned out to be our biggest help. We were stuck in the village, on the top of the mountain, with no way of returning back to the city. In fact we had an appointment with another of the tour guide’s friends at 6pm, but we were still in the village at 5.30pm. Thankfully, the old fruit seller also had to go down the mountain to the city, and he gave us a lift to a point near where we were supposed to have our next appointment.Â
