Anshun

The ancient temple now becomes an elegant tea-house.

A big reservoir.

The sightseeing bus costs ¥50 per person and is valid for three days. The escalator costs ¥30 one way or ¥50 round trip.

The vast cave network snakes through twenty hills just 17 miles (27 km) SW of Anshun and 100 km (62 miles) SW of Guiyang. Dragon Castle and Tianchi Lake, the Underground River Karst Cave is 15 km long and is the longest water Karst cave in China; Dragon Gate Flying Waterfall - is the biggest waterfall inside a Karst cave in China. This is a mountain lake that is about 90 meters above the river bed below. The large lake was formed when water from the above cave broke an opening at the bottom thus creating a lake below. You can actually see the water rushing in and making a deafening noise.;
Despite the elaborateness of the Longgong park site, it represents only a small portion of the ninety or more caves in this network. However, like the Huangguoshu Falls area nearby, this region continues to be aggressively developed for tourism – and signs regularly appear pointing the way to modest new ‘scenic sights’ within the Longgong area. Only six caves, all connected by an underground river covering 854 m (2,800 ft), are open to exploration, accessed by boat through the flooded entrance, Tian Chi (Heaven’s Pool), which is partially concealed by a 40-m (130-ft) high waterfall. Inside, the largest cavern is about 80-m (260-ft) high. The caves are filled with colorfully-lit stalactites and stalagmites, and numerous oddly-shaped rock formations. During the rainy season, the boat ride ends at Tiger Lair, a broad platform from where visitors hike out of the caves and walk back to the entrance through an attractive stone forest of weathered karst spikes. The cave is visited by taking a boat tour through the cave but on the far side you have the option to get off and walk to the dry Tiger Cave. The mountain lake runs down to the river below in an impressive waterfall.;
Most other sights here will be anticlimactic after the Dragon’s Cave and many people continue on to Huangguoshu Falls after finishing their boat tour. But if you want to linger, you can follow footpaths to some of the more modest caves or continue on to Guanyin Cave (观音洞), the second biggest attraction in the park, about 3km away.;
To visit, you have to take a guided (Chinese-only) tour on one of the small boats, which lasts about 40 minutes (though in summer the flood of Chinese tour groups causes a watery gridlock that can draw this out substantially). There are three jetties inside the caves, and you need to change boats inside the caves in order to complete the whole journey. Life jackets are provided but choose carefully as some can be a bit dirty and smelly.;
The guides give a little geological background on the caves, but mostly they just point out the various karst formations with their flashlights and let everyone play ‘What does it look like?’. The recorded music and coloured spotlights here can feel a bit over the top at times, but most travellers enjoy drifting through the caves anyway. When busy it can feel very rushed with little time to appreciate the beauty of the caves. It is like a tourist production line. The boat guide uses a green laser to point to interesting features within the cave for half a second and spits out its name but you couldn't see anything because it is all too fast.;
Walking into another cave is quite challenging for older visitors as it is dark and wet in some places, and it is necessary to walk 6 floors down and 6 floors up steps along narrow limestone walls, but mostly the steps are low riser-types and there are sturdy handrails. Taking a lift to avoid climbing a staircase 10 stories high costs ¥25 one way. There is also a flying fox option for younger more adventurous visitors.;
At the end of the walk, there is the choice of taking a tourist bus for ¥20 or walking another 7 km to get back to the starting point or entry. Entrance fee for seniors is only ¥5. Hiring a tourist guide for a group is ¥150;
There are a few small restaurants serving farmers’ or villagers’ meals but at distinctly tourist prices.
Not far away from the exit of the caves, there is a piece of grassland with a large Chinese character "dragon" and there you can take beautiful photo shots.

Over 600 years old, this little Bouyei hamlet is packed with small stone houses, cobbled lanes in a lovely setting is not far from Huangguoshu Falls. Everyone here who is not involved in farming seems to somehow be involved in batik production, and you may be invited into a villager’s home to watch the process. This is becoming a popular stop for Chinese tourists and you can see efforts are being made to spruce the place up for travellers; some of the village equipment has bilingual signs explaining its use and the ponds across the street from the village have been landscaped and are dotted with a couple of small waterwheels. Definitely the Dali and Lijiang influence is strong here.;
An hour or two would be more than enough to see it all, and a stop here is a pleasant diversion either on your way to or back from Huangguoshu Falls. However, the karststudded landscape surrounding Shitouzhai is lovely and some travellers may consider hanging around to explore some of the villages spotting the nearby hills or to do some of the lovely walks that would be possible in the area.;
Sleeping & eating;
There is only one guesthouse open year-round ;
Shítouzhai Jingqu Zhaodaisuo (石头寨景区招 待所; Tel: 1376-536 4841) Just a few metres inside the village gates and run by a lovely family, this place has simple beds in dark wood rooms. The wooden floors are disturbingly creaky but the shared bathrooms and showers are clean and modern. A single room with a Ming-style ‘antique’ bed costs ¥150. Others are under construction and should be accepting guests by the time you read this.;
There are a couple of small restaurants here too, but they are only open in high season months (roughly April to September).;
Getting there & away;
To get here, take a Huangguoshu-bound bus from Anshun and tell the driver you are going to Shitouzhai (¥5-8, 30 to 40 minutes). You will be let off at a road forking away from the main highway. Follow the road for about 2 km until you reach Shitouzhai. You’ll know when you have arrived by the landscaping: there will be a pond with a waterwheel on the right, and, just afterwards, a clutch of stone houses on your left where you will find the village entrance. To leave, walk back to the fork in the road. If you are continuing on to Huangguoshu, most buses heading west will pass the falls; if you are going to Anshun, flag down any bus heading eastward.

Lying about 15 km (9 miles) east of Anshun, Yunshan is yet another fortified village, founded by Ming-dynasty troops. It is not hard to see why there were so many rebellions and uprisings in this area followed by large scale bloody massacres. This one contains a scattering of old structures, including the elegant Qiyan Qiao, a seven arch bridge. Tiantai Shan, 25 km northeast of town, is a 400-m (1,300-ft) hill with a cluster of thickly forested crags, whose summit is crowned by a Buddhist temple dating from 1616. Another 25 km southwest of Anshun, Zhenning County has a concentration of traditional Bouyi villages. The houses are built of skillfully laid drystone walls, with roofs tiled in hand-cut slates, overlapping like fish scales. The village of Shishao, built almost entirely in stone, is known for its Ground Opera, a regional variation of traditional Han opera, brought here by soldiers from Nanjing during the Ming era.

Anshun too, just like Beijing and Sichuan has its very own version of the art: ground opera. Called dixi in Chinese, ground, or ‘open-air’ opera, as it’s sometimes also known, dates back to the Ming dynasty. As part of the performance, actors wrap black see-through cloth over their foreheads and don traditional masks made from bamboo shoots. Up to 50 masks may be used in one opera. The colours of the masks are very symbolic: black denotes righteousness, red symbolises loyalty and bravery, while white indicates evil. Blue and green masks are reserved for monsters or particularly nasty bandits. Banners are also worn on the actors’ backs to denote rank, as in the Běijīng Opera. The operas originally served to drive out evil spirits but have merged with local religious dramas and Han classics such as the Romance of Three Kingdoms and History of the Sui and Tang Dynasties. The plots are livened up by gongs, drums, stilts, flags and displays of martial arts to keep the audience’s mind from wandering during the slow bits.