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South China Morning Post
04-07-2025
- South China Morning Post
A ride through Wanfenglin, Guizhou's best-kept secret
No matter how hard I turn the throttle, the most macho sound coming from this rental e-moped is a gentle whirring, not the throaty roar I am used to when renting motorbikes elsewhere in Asia. But even if green electric technology has stripped the growl from one of my favourite modes of travel, I have found somewhere in the southern Chinese countryside I can ride without a driving licence. And I have found a spot that seems perfect for motorised travel – offbeat and less visited. Wanfenglin labourers cut grass and arrange it into haystacks. Photo: Chan Kit Yeng In Guizhou's southwesternmost corner, Xingyi is a borderland that grazes Yunnan and Guangxi provinces. Closer to Yunnan's capital, Kunming , than to Guizhou's Guiyang, what Xingyi lacks in the Miao and Dong ethnic-minority character found on the eastern side of this hilly southwestern province, it makes up for with jagged natural beauty. Advertisement Less than 20km south of Xingyi township is Wanfenglin, a fertile valley of rice fields and quaint villages hemmed in by limestone karst formations that look like the forest-clad humps of a half-buried giant camel caravan. In many respects, the scenery rivals that of Guangxi's main tourist draws, Guilin and Yangshuo, as well as the rock pinnacles of the Shilin Stone Forest, to the east of Kunming, in Yunnan. Nevertheless, Wanfenglin ('forest of 10,000 peaks') remains under the radar. That may be because high-speed trains don't pass by yet. In fact, there is just one train from Kunming a day: the K1206, leaving Kunming at 7.58am and arriving at Xingyi at 1.58pm, taking six hours to cover the 285km. Alternatively, one could take a four-and-a-half-hour bus ride from the central Guizhou town of Anshun, 218km to the northeast. A farmer in Wanfu village rakes maize in front of a mural-covered home. Photo: Chan Kit Yeng In truth, Wanfenglin has not remained entirely untouched by tourism: it has been declared a scenic area, with an entry fee and opening and closing times – which nobody seems to collect or respect during my visit. In the tradition of scenic areas across China, tourist shuttles – large golf-cart-like vehicles with open sides and a plastic roof – leave from the car park at the valley's northern end, where the No 301 bus from Xingyi stops. The hop-on-hop-off shuttle costs 120 yuan (HK$131) for a full valley circuit, making 11 stops at photo-friendly locations that include Upper and Lower Nahui villages and the Eight Diagrams Field: a large paddyfield whose canals and terraces form concentric circles and geometric patterns. The price includes access to Wanfenglin's main tourist viewpoint. Before the ride ends, the shuttle stops at a karst formation museum near the valley's central village, Wenbeng. Unlike most other scenic areas in China, however, taking the shuttle bus is not the only way to get around Wanfenglin. Pretty much every little shop and guest house at the northern end of the 6km-long valley – where the hobo-chic Yi Yu Hostel, hemmed in by walls of golden, tall corn and paddyfields, has sparkling dorms and pleasant doubles – rents out pushbikes, electric mopeds and golf-cart-like three-wheelers. Costing 30 to 50 yuan per day, these electric vehicles are a dream come true for those who enjoy exploring independently, and mine has the word 'Sweet' stencilled above its front headlight. A street-food vendor in Upper Nahui village, where most of the stores also function as vehicle-rental shops. Photo: Chan Kit Yeng Eighteen years ago, when I was one of many foreign travellers exploring the domestic-tourist-free and hostel-strewn lanes below Yangshuo 's otherworldly karst pinnacles, I wished a place that begged to be explored independently could offer the simple moped rentals available across neighbouring Thailand and Vietnam , which contributed so much to making those Southeast Asian hotspots appealing destinations. Today, I am realising that Yangshuo dream 850km to the west.
South China Morning Post
03-03-2025
- South China Morning Post
Wine tours are the latest attraction to China's emerging Ningxia region
To the west of Ningxia's capital, Yinchuan, the four-lane Shenyang Highway pierces a sun-parched, rocky expanse. To one side are the city limits, to the other the eastern foothills of the Helan Mountains, a 200km-long divider separating the southern flanks of Inner Mongolia's Gobi Desert and arid – yet still fertile – plains. Advertisement The Helan silhouette hangs over the horizon like a mirage, its crevices hard to make out through the haze that blankets the sky even on this crisp and sunny October morning. Roads flanking the Helan Mountain range lead to award-winning wineries. Photo: Chan Kit Yeng 'It's a pity you can't see the view today, for it makes a very special start to the tour,' says 'Kiki' Chen Shu, my driver and the founder and main English-speaking guide of Ningxia Wine, a small company that organises winery tours in the Ningxia Hui autonomous region's Helan Mountains East. This wine-producing region was born in 1998, when, after nationwide viticulture research led to the improvement of the desert-encircled area's saline-alkaline soils, wine grapes were planted over 3,000 hectares of the barren expanse between the Helan Mountains and the alluvial plain of the Yellow River. Despite its relatively small size, Helan Mountains East – which encompasses subregions including Shizuishan, Yinchuan, Yongning, Qingtongxia and Hongsipu – has drawn comparisons to Argentina's Mendoza wine region, which is geographically similar. Advertisement Having what's considered China's most promising wine-producing area , Ningxia has established a provincial wine bureau and invested heavily in vine planting, and now has more than 200 wineries, three of which Chen will show me today. Helan Mountains East piqued international interest in 2011, when the Jia Bei Lan Grand Reserve 2009, a cabernet sauvignon by producer Helan Qingxue, won the international trophy in the Decanter World Wine Awards Bordeaux blend category.
