Travelling in Southwest China/Voyage au sud-ouest de la Chine (le français au 2ième paragraphe)

I took the bus back from Zhaotong to Kunming today (6 hours). The weather up there in the northeast was terrible. However, I had an amazing day high up in the mountains yesterday in the Shi Men Kan area (over the line in Guizhou province). The people there are the A-Mao (Big Flowery Miao) ethnic group. I was invited into a family there, and they were extremely warm-hearted and welcoming. They invited me to share a meal with them, which I did. Their oldest son, Wang …, 22, was there with his young wife - they had just delivered their first baby 14 days before, right in the house. I went into the bedroom to see the sleeping baby - he was beautiful! The young Wang also guided me to another neighbouring village. It had poured the night before so that the mud was dreadful, and terribly slippery. If it hadn't been for Wang I would have been humiliated in the mud many times. I don't know how they keep a footing in the clayey mud up the steep slopes. He stuck with me till I was able to get back to the road and hail one of the last micro minivans (carrying ten or more passengers!) down the winding, rough mountain road (about 2 hours) to Zhongshui on the main Guizhou-Yunnan highway. There I jumped into one of the fairly frequent buses for Zhaotong (half an hour). So, all in all, in spite of poor conditions for photography, it was a great day!