Yao Village in the Mountains
There are several villages in Lainshan Zhuang, Yao Autonomous County, Guangzhou province, China. This is the second Yao village we visited in 2017. "The Yao Village in the Mountain" is what I thought when I visited the village. We stayed in Qingyuan and used the town as a hub to visit a few villages in the area, and this village is the far most from Qingyuan. We drove up to the mountains!
This village was not like the first village we visited which was a regular Yao village where people lead their basic daily lives. However, this village is more like a "museum-like" village which you have to pay an entrance fee as "preservation fees" to protect the area. It seems that many Yao people live in the village, but it has a very different kind of atmosphere if you compare it with the first village we visited. There were a couple of restaurants for visitors (tourists) in the village and some stores which sell some souvenirs. The village seems that it has turned out to be as if a tourist attraction site instead of a real kind of Yao village in which they keep their traditions in their daily lives. 😅 But, please do not get me wrong that I did not enjoy the village. I did enjoy visiting the village so much! There were so many beautiful buildings which were constructed by stones and woods.
This is a picture of the restaurant we found in the village. My friend told me that almost all restaurants were customized for attracting foreign tourists, and also the price of the food is set for either tourist or for locals so it would be extremely expensive if you do not speak native Chinese 😅 We decided not to eat in the village, but enjoy the view and the atmosphere the village has instead. 😉
In the village, there were many steps so that I would recommend wearing hiking shoes if you have a chance to visit the village. As I hiked up the steps in the village, then when I looked back and saw this beautiful view of the mountains. It is such a beautiful place to visit!
The Pangu Temple in the Village
At the very top of the village, there was a temple called "Pangu Temple". Pangu is a mythological god which the Yao people believe in and worship. So, we decided to hike up to the temple to start our sightseeing.
Pangu - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangu
Therefore, we kept hiking up to the temple. As we hiked up to the temple, we saw many beautiful traditional houses along with the main street. Beside their houses, it seemed that they were cultivating some vegetables and raise chickens.
At last, we arrived at the top of the village where the Pangu Temple was located. It is very interesting to learn that the Yao people have their own religion to believe in even though the Communist Party of China bans all the religions in the nation. I guess they compromise some points to attract tourists and to preserve the Yao tradition. 😉
If you do not know what Pangu is, please check the video I found below. Before I visited the village, I did not know that there was Chinese mythology and they used to believe many gods and deities from the mythology like many other people in East Asia.
Only you can see this view of who came to the top of the village!
The view from the Pangu King Temple was just incredibly beautiful!! It was very tiring to hike up all the way up to the temple, however, for me it was totally worth visiting there to see this amazing view from the top. For my mother and my aunt, it was challenging since they were kind of elder, but they told me later that they had an unforgettable memory in the village.
Even today, I sometimes talk about the trip we had together, the steps we hiked together to see the Pangu King Temple, and the view we saw together. Traveling abroad makes our life rich in many ways and widens our perspective to others and accept the differences. 😃