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Full Circle
Day 71: Guiyang
Shimeng is another Miao village on the edge of plateau surrounded by a patchwork of green and gold rice terraces. It can only be reached from a dirt road by walking for half an hour along an intricate system of narrow mud causeways. On either side the wet earth is being turned with a wooden plough consisting of a single curved shaft with a steering handle at one end and a blade at the other, yoked to the shoulders of a water buffalo. It's a slow process, only as fast as the beast itself, which plods on, great eyes gazing forward, occasionally glancing wearily to the side. I watch a very old man communicate with his animal by a series of short, sharp hisses interspersed with loud grunts. It seems to work.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.
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PALIN'S GUIDES
- Series: Full Circle
- Day: 71
- Country/sea: China
- Place: Shimeng
- Book page no: 103
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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
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