Full Circle
Day 71: Guiyang

The villagers rush out to see us, many of them holding half-empty lunch bowls, jaws slack with disbelief. The women laugh, the men frown. One family allow us in to their house. They are sitting around a table on a mud-baked floor. Beside them is a brick hearth in which charcoal smoulders. Bowls of pork, chillies and sunflower seeds are on the table. In the room off to the right is bedding and a strip light; in the room off to the left there is a water buffalo.
We are the first people from the West they have ever seen. I ask Priscilla what strikes them most about us. She laughs with embarrassment as she translates.
'How do you say... big noses?'
As we look around the village I notice that some progress has reached Shimeng. There has been electricity here for the last nine years. There are a few lights, a radio. Not much else, but it must only be a matter of time before television comes and then a road and cars and motor bikes and the wider world.
Choose another day from Full Circle
PALIN'S GUIDES
- Series: Full Circle
- Day: 71
- Country/sea: China
- Place: Shimeng
- Book page no: 103
Bookmarks will keep your place in one or more series. But you'll need to register and/or log in.
RELATED LINKS
- China
- Day 43
- Around the World in 80 Days
- Day 76: Shigu to the Tiger Leaping Gorge
- Himalaya
- Day 44
- Around the World in 80 Days