Photos

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The terraced fields at Laohuzui near Yuanyang changed their colors accordingly to the direction and height of sun against your point of view. If you were not here to witness by your own eyes, you would not believe it.

For your reference, here are the links to the maps we used in 02-2005:

*Yuanyang County, MAP 1

*Yuanyang County, MAP 2

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Yuanyang update 11-21-2005


Ok, well even though I came armed with my Chinese speaking abilities, that sure didn't help against the weather!!! Over the three days that I was there, Yuanyang was completely fogged in. I didn't even find this hotel because we could barely see across the street!

If anyone else runs into this problem, you can take a bus to lower areas that also have good rice paddies. We took a bus to a town called Luchen, four hours away. After about an hour of driving out of Yuanyang, you will finally descend to lower areas and hopefully be able to see rice paddies. Some of them are impressive. Luchen has many hotels and the people are nice (and very surprised to see a foreigner). There are lots of women dressed traditionally there.

Even though I traveled on two overnight buses to get to Yuanyang (from Xishuangbanna), I wasn't that disappointed, because I got a lot of good pictures of the minority women (and there are A LOT of them). I only got a couple of photos of the paddies, from the window of a moving bus- yikes! But that's ok, because I've photographed a lot of rice paddies in the past.

And about the bus situation. There is a morning bus at around 10-something am, and a couple of evening sleeper buses from Kunming.

The bus situation in Yuanyang is a little different. When we tried to leave the town, there were no buses- all day. There was only a bus to Luchen, which is in the opposite direction, but we took it anyway just to check it out. From Luchen, it was the same situation. Just one bus we could take, to a place called Kaiyuan. That bus passes through Yuanyang and Gejiu as well, but you have to pay the full fare (50Y) all the way to Kaiyuan. I think the bus situation changes from season to season, or even day to day. We don't know why there were so few buses.

and if you do go to Yuanyang in this season (november), and have good weather, then you're in luck because it's apparently the best time of year because all the fields are flooded with water.

hope that helps

Update by Leslie Chambers


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