Surrounded by scores of villages, some lush countryside and a nuclear reactor,
KAILI , 170km east from Guiyang, is a moderately industrialized, easy-going focus for China's 7.5 million
Miao , though migrations and forced resettlements since the Tang dynasty have spread their population from Sichuan right down to Hainan Island. They were formerly treated as slaves by the Han, and many Miao popular heroes were rebel leaders, such as
Zhang Xiumei , who seeded almost twenty years of insurrection against the Qing in the late nineteenth century before finally being defeated outside Kaili. His suppression left Guizhou in the desperately poor state witnessed by the Red Army sixty years later, when, understandably sympathetic with the Communist cause, the Miao were rewarded for their help by being given their autonomy. The Cultural Revolution set things back, but since the late 1980s the area has received government assistance in schooling, medical services and transport, and today there's no doubt that Miao culture is flourishing.
The Town
Small and compact, Kaili is orientated around the
Beijing Lu -
Zhaoshan Lu (spelt "Shaoshan" on road signs) intersection. Split by the crossroads into east and west sections, Beijing Lu holds most of Kaili's shops and businesses, while Zhaoshan Lu extends a short way north into the older residential end of town, and south past more shops into the countryside.
To get your bearings, head up from the crossroads to the northern end of Zhaoshan Lu, turn east along Ximen Jie , and then follow the backstreets through to Dage Park , a shady hill top inhabited by old men who gather to smoke and decorate the trees with their caged songbirds. There's also a pagoda to climb, its wooden interior home to a mix of Buddhist and Taoist statues. From here, you can see the town spreading out on to an unusually level valley ( kaili is a Miao word roughly translating as "prepared fields"), while Xianglu Shan (Incense-Burner Mountain) is the flat tableland rising off to the northwest, an important landmark for exploration farther afield.
Back down on Ximen Jie, head west for 500m and you'll end up at a busy produce market filling Huancheng Lu, active daily but packed on Sunday mornings with Miao, Yao and Dong in town to sell their wares. They also visit stalls near the Zhaoshan Lu-Beijing Lu crossroads, where you may be able to pick up items of clothing and jewellery, and you can't go near the Yingpanpo Binguan on Yingpan Lu without being accosted by Miao women hawking bundles of embroidery. Even more is on sale in shops around the entrance to the Yingpanpo Binguan, some of whose stock is very good - nicely patterned jackets and full headpieces in alloy, not silver - though it's much pricier than out in the villages.
Fifteen minutes south of the crossroads at the end of Zhaoshan Lu, Kaili Museum (¥8) is a disappointingly lifeless array of photographs, costumes and artefacts, housed in an apparently derelict building hidden behind a wall - make enough noise and the caretaker will appear with a bunch of keys. It's probably more interesting to carry on walking for another thirty minutes south of here to Jinquan Hu Park , where the conical wooden Gulou (Drum Tower) is a full-sized Dong construction painted in blue and white. Built for tourists in 1985 and stuck way out here, it's fascinating nonetheless, assembled without nails and sometimes serving as a meeting place for locals.
