Jianxi - Wuyuan county
I hopped on a bus from Xijiang (1.5 hours), then another from Leishan (1 hour) then bought an overnight train ticket for that night from Kaili to Yingtan (3 hour wait, 17 hours on the train). At lunchtime I arrived in Yingtan and straight away bought a ticket to Jingdezhen (2.5 hours wait, 3 hours on the train). I missed the last bus to Wuyuan but got in a scammers bus to Qinghua instead (1.5 hours). On the bus I met a very pretty Chinese girl called Xiao Huan who was on holiday with her mother and friend from school. The four of us ended up staying in the same hotel that night. By the time I went to bed I fell straight asleep, that was 36 hours after I left Xijiang.
To my amazement, just before 6.30am in the morning the young Huan knocked on my door and told me they wanted to leave soon. On the bus we had talked about seeing the sights together but I had no idea it would start so early. I was dressed and ready in 10 minutes and we all went to see the nearby Caihong bridge.
A little later the four of us, with another 3 Chinese guys, chartered a mini-van for a day. Using the van to get to the nearby villages I reckon saved me a couple of days in time and a whole lot of cash.
The first stop was a village that I had never heard of (not in the Lonely Planet). It turned out to the best of the lot because of the architecture, location and lack of stalls selling tat to tourists. I think it was called Sixi. Had I not been touring with this young Chinese crowd I would certainly have missed out on the best village in the area.
While touring around in the bus I noticed that this area had an unusually large number of women labourers. Women working in the fields, on building sites and manning the food stalls. This crowd were very cheerful.
As the day went on I realised my Chinese was nowhere near good enough, if it were not for Xiao Huan I would have not been able to talk to the others in the group very easily. She payed me an enormous amount of respect and constantly asked me where we should go to make sure that I was happy.
We next went to Xiaolikeng but all found it to be too touristy. Funnily, I was the least to complain about the over exploitation of the villages. They had effectively become tourist centres with the architecture a mere sideline.
By the time we got to the last village, Xiaoqi, it had started to rain, that along with an overwhelming feeling of tiredness prevented me from really enjoying it. Actually the last two villages had far too many stalls aimed at tourists for my liking. That was almost the end of my tour of the villages of Wuyuan. It would have been had the hotels in Wuyuan not been booked out. I returned to Qinghua with the driver to find a room there. The others all found a place to stay in Wuyuan.
By an amazing coincidence, on my return to Wuyuan early the next morning, the lovely young Chinese girl Huan spotted me at the bus station. I was just buying my onward ticket and she bounded over all excited to say hello. They were also getting an onward bus so we quickly swapped email addresses and said goodbye.
