Hidden Tribes of China

A rare chance to experience China’s rural life, Hidden Tribes spins us well beyond the tourist-trod paths for a close and extraordinarily colorful look at the ethnically diverse villages of Guizhou Province, a festival of limestone karsts, spiky hills, and terraced rice fields located east of Yunnan, west of Hunan, south of Sichuan, north of Guangxi, and far, far from home.

We meet in Beijing, then fly south to Guizhou’s capital, Guiyang, for numerous days of drives, hikes, and creative wanderings in a series of villages set in bamboo groves by clear streams, atop misty hills, inhabited by Miaos, Gejias, and other minorities whose traditions, dances, costumes, and festivals (they hold more than a thousand a year!) are still rather mysterious to anthropologists (and probably the better for it). Hidden Tribes is a case study in the soul-enriching possibilities of adventurous travel.