Guizhou is China's greenest secret: waterfalls, terraces and the wooden villages of the Miao and Dong, layered on a plateau that most travellers skip. It's where the country's most colourful minority cultures still live by their own calendar.

What to See

Huangguoshu Falls is China's largest waterfall, nearly a hundred metres wide — and you can walk behind it through the Water Curtain Cave.

Xijiang's Miao village is the largest of its kind: stilt houses stacked up the hillside, their lights at night like a street in the sky. And Zhenyuan, tucked beside the Wuyang River, is Guizhou's answer to “slow.”

What to Eat

Sour fish soup is the province's soul: fish simmered in a fermented red sour broth with tomatoes and chilli, dipped in a sauce of chilli, coriander and fermented soya beans. Changwang noodles are Guiyang's breakfast of record — egg noodles with pig's blood curd and tripe in chilli oil. And silk babies, little rice-flour pancakes wrapped around a dozen raw vegetables, are the DIY snack of the city's night markets.

Folk Customs

Practical Tips

Photos: Huangguoshu Falls, Xijiang Miao village — via Wikimedia Commons, CC-licensed. Licenses and authors available on the original file pages.