Basha Village
Location: Guizhou Province
Transportation: The overland travel route to Basha: One can travel by sleeper from Beijing to Kunming and disembark at the Kaili Railway Station. From there is available a long-distance bus to Congjiang via Leishan and Rongjiang. The entire trip may take three or four days. Basha is only seven or eight kilometers away from Congjiang. One may spend 40 to 50 yuan per day for food and accommodation in Basha. Plus expenditures on the way, a ten-day round trip may cost about 2,500 yuan.
Culture/History Rating: 4/5
Scenery Rating: 4/5
Hotels:
Tenglong Hotel: (TEL:0855-6412468)This hotel is located to the east of the Congjiang Bridge. The price for a single room is RMB60 and RMB80 for a double, both with independent toilet, shower and color TV.
County Guest House: This guest house is near Congjiang bus station in the western part of the county. The price for a berth here ranges from RMB10 to RMB25.
Summary: Basha Miao Village, home to over 1,000 residents living in more than 400 households, lies on the southern border of Southwest China's Guizhou Province, and is tinted with its time-honored Miao traditions and a strong local flavor. Though situated by State Highway 321, the Miao villagers here have maintained the characteristic lifestyle of the Miao ethnic group, still retaining the living customs and dressing code of the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties.
Description:
| Linked by the beautiful Duliu River to the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, the county of Congjiang is situated in southernmost Guizhou Province. There, alongside a high road a few kilometers west of the county seat, the Basha Miao Village is one of several sites called home by Miao people residing in Guizhou's mountainous areas. And there is perhaps no better place on Earth for one to observe well-preserved traditional Miao. In the county of Congjiang visitors sometimes encounter villagers in unique Miao clothes. From the nearby Basha Village, they are easy to recognize, particularly due to their headwear. From about seven or eight years of age, girls from the Miao ethnic group in Kaili City's Lushan, Huangping, Shibing and Zhenyuan wear pleated caps with flat tops, while their hair remains wrapped with purple handkerchiefs until they are married. Married or unmarried, all women in Basha have in their hair arranged in a chignon, as sculpted by a wooden comb. The day after we arrived in Congjiang, we traveled by bus to Basha Village, a place hidden deep in rolling mountains. Viewing the village from the distance, we could see crisscrossing footpaths in fields framing stilted wooden towers orderly distributed along the mountainside. |  |
 | At the entrance to the village, what impressed us at first sight were the rows upon rows of wooden trestles, four or five meters in height and three meters in width. These are used to dry gathered rice in the sun. In harvest season, locals place golden-colored paddy on the wooden trestles, adding a spectacular visual accent to the village. In the non-harvesting season, the wooden trestles are used to dry dyed cloth.Moving on, the stilted wooden buildings scattered on a steep mountainside caught our eyes. These are firmly connected to the body of the mountain. Stilted wooden buildings are an important type of local Miao residences in southeastern Guizhou. Usually such a building has two floors. The front part of the second floor is supported with pillars, while the rear part is directly affixed to the mountainside. Half the building stretches out, while the other half leans against the mountain. People reside on the second floor, and the first floor serves as an animal pen and storeroom. There is a stairway connecting the two floors. The stilted buildings in Basha are unique, for their roofs are mostly paved with fir bark, adding a primitive beauty to the village. All building materials come from nearby forests. All buildings retain the original color of wood, and they appear different in color only because some have faded with the passage of time. |
| Below the village are many bi-level barns. Grain is stored on the upper floor, which is supported by pillars embedded in the first floor so as to protect the grain from ground humidity. Barns are constructed apart from residential areas so as to reduce risk of fire. While villagers can rebuild their homes in case of fire, the safety of their life-sustaining grain is paramount. And the nearby forests supply plentiful timber, so constructing a house does not cost much. However, grain is vital because the fields amidst the mountains yield humble output. Local villagers eat much glutinous rice, and there are few tillable fields. The reclamation of a small plot of wasteland can expend much manpower. To transform mountainside wastelands into terraced fields for the growing of rice, locals first need to flatten the hillside, and then to prevent erosion they build stone ridges to enclose the fields. To ensure solidity, the pieces of terraced field is limited in area. It is quite hard to farm on such fields. Whether locals can realize a harvest or not depends completely upon the weather. Here, the buffalo is the only available aid to manpower. Each is cared for by a designated person in the village. They graze the cattle in the surrounding forests in the morning, and return them home at dusk. To a large extent, the villagers of Basha live a self-sufficient life. They create for themselves nearly all of life's necessities, from clothes, ornaments and bamboo baskets to farming tools. Their ethnic clothes and ornaments, in particular, showcase the cleverness and adroitness of the local women. All of their garments are made of gunny cloth. Locals spin long gunny threads, and then cut them into shorter segments of the same length. The shortened threads, after neatened, are used to weave cloth. |  |
 | On a road to the village of Basha, we met a group of local women, while they neatened gunny threads. In their agile hands, a bundle of 20-meter-long threads were strained into two layers of threads that were arrayed at regular intervals. The process required that a dozen laborers work in harmony. Woven cloth is then dyed with a pigment extracted from a species of plant called veined-leaf indigo. Egg white is also applied in the process of dyeing. The cloth dyed in this way is ultramarine in color and emits purple radiance. In addition, the mixed extract of pigments and egg white bestow to the dyed cloth a waterproof quality. The province of Guizhou abounds in rainfalls. Wearing a garment made of such cloth, one need not worry about getting wet in light rain. It is said that the Basha Village was first built in the late Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). Now the village has more than 300 households and a population of 1,900, all being from the Miao ethnic group. Locals consider themselves descendants of the ancient Miao people. The greatest difference between local villagers and other branches of the Miao ethnic group lies in male clothes. Local men coil their hair into a chignon on the top of their heads and, according to locals, this is a tradition handed down from their ancestors. However, modern civilization has to some extent cast its influence on local lifestyles. At present, only men below 15 years old or above 40 years old wear such chignons, and most young fellows prefer a modern haircut. Local men also distinguish themselves from other Miao branches with the bamboo basket hung on their waists. In the basket is a firewood knife, a necessary tool for working in forests. |