A Day Trip to a Heritage Village in the Jishou Area, Hunan Province, China

We left FengHuang after our two day visit there and continued our holiday in the Hunan region. Travelling around the Chinese New Year, all fast trains were fully booked. Therefore, we called a Didi, an equilant to our UBER in North America, and it took us to Jishou, our next destination in China.

We arrived Jishou late in the evening and checked into a hotel booked ahead by our friends for us. We were surprised by the sheer size of the lobby, the dining area and the modern design of the hotel. Having stayed in a number of hotels in China on this trip, we were not disappointed by them at all. We found that as passport holders, we could only stay at hotels with a special license issued by the Chinese government to receive foreign visitors. This makes sense as these hotels are always staffed with personnel who could speak English and have facilities meeting the needs of the foreign tourists.

We were grateful as our friend Weiwan, her husband and friends welcome us warmly to their home province. They arranged our accommodation, transportation and also acted as our tour guide. The next day in Jishou, they arranged their friends to come and picked us up in two cars for a tour of the area close by.

We were introduced to Weiwen's friend and family who drove us to visit another old town. On this trip to China, I noticed that there seemed to have been a revived interest and enthusiasm in heritage villages across this land.

We have visited a heritage village at every city we have visited so far. China has fifty six different minority ethnic groups with diverse customs, traditions, cultures and building designs. There are much to learn about them.

After our lunch at a local restaurant right in the village, we visited the site where three provinces met at a point. we enjoyed the scenery of the heritage village located right beside a river.

Though the lineup was long for the boat ride. we did manage to persist waiting in line and took a boa ride on the river running through the middle of the town.

Our second stop was up to the top of the moutain to view the newest bridge built connecting the two cities over a steep valley. There was a recreataion park where visitors could choose to take part in some gliding activity. Our friends treated us to dinner at a local restaurant. We got to know Weiwan's friend, a retiree, having served in the Chinese army.

This was our first time meeting and listening to a veteran soldier recounting some of his war stories. He got quite emotional after I asked him some probing questions about his army days. We are grateful to have wonderful friends like Weiwan who introduced us to her good friends while we were visiting China. We learnt so much today of China's past. It seemed like we had a history lesson from this great veteran soldier. Our friends also helped making our visit to this region of China a marvellous experience, thank you, Weiwan! RT, Jishou Area, Hunan Province, Chin 02132024