Anshun

The old part of Anshun, which lies in the northern of the centre area, is a nice place for an evening walk.

There are lots of places to eat in Anshun, but precious little to recommend. There is a food market down an alley off Zhonghua Nanlu, just south of the Bank of China. There are some bakeries and several hole-in-the wall places on Gufu Jie. There is also a huge supermarket on Zhonghua Nanlu, perfect for picking up snacks for day trips. Be forewarned: dog is eaten in these parts… lots of dog. You will often see the skinned animals boiled and propped up outside restaurants as an enticement to customers.

The region produces a lot of batik (蜡染画; làrǎn huà), some of the batik you see in Dali and most of it in Yangshuo is from Guizhou. There are also various other handicrafts. There are a group of stores selling these and other tourist bric-a-brac along the west side of the main street just north of the bus station. The train station is at the south end of the same street.

The stretch of Zhonghua Nanlu near Zhonghua Donglu is where the city's big commercial stores and shopping centres are located. The Wholesale Market of Small Goods in Anshun (Anshun Laran Shichang; Zhonghua Nanlu; 中华 南路) is the city's main market and probably the most interesting place to prowl. For a peek at the more contemporary side of Anshun, Gufu Jie is a street of trendy clothing stores and bakeries, and snack stalls that get so packed on weekends it is hard to move. Several ethnic groups across southwestern China have been traditionally involved in creating batik. For almost 1,000 years, the Bouyi around Anshun have been using batik as a background to embroidery on clothing, and since the establishment of a factory in Anshun in the 1950s, have come to monopolize the indigenous textile market. The designs, which were originally of abstract plants and animals, are drawn with wax on cloth. The cloth is then dyed in indigo before being boiled to remove all traces of the wax, leaving the pattern in white on a blue background. The earlier monochromatic batiks have now given way to multi-colored, mass-produced designs, which include stylized representations of zodiac animals, scenes from Bouyi legends, and mythical creatures. Today, Anshun's batik is in great demand across China.

There are twin rooms for ¥100 just on the left when you leave the train station.

There is a lot of midrange accommodation in Anshun that is geared to Chinese tour groups, which is generally drab and undistinguished. Anju Binguan (220 1359) has budget rooms right next to the station but the bathrooms are tiny. Directly opposite is the Xixhiushan Binguan (221 1888) has doubles for ¥200-300 but the rooms are ridiculously cramped. Bathrooms are exactly the opposite – sparsely outfitted and often the same size or bigger than the actual sleeping area. Gongdianju Zhaodaisuo on (332 9124) Zhonghua Nanlu; 中华南路; only has basic little budget rooms with Chinese toilets and cubby-hole-like showers with no doors. Henghuangshan Dajiudian (Golden Phoenix Mountain Hotel (322 5663) with is garish classical Greek façade on Tashan Donglu; 塔山东路58号) has similarly priced rooms that definitely starting to show their age.

Among foreign tourists, the two most popular choices are the two western branded properties.

*Set on the edge of the beautiful Hong Shan Lake, but still in the city center, DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Anshun is adjacent to the municipal government, and offers easy access to highways, the train station and airport. Huang Guo Shu Waterfall is only 40 km away, and the Wen Temple of Anshun is within walking distance. Friendly staff greet you on arrival with a signature, warm chocolate chip cookie. Ask for a room overlooking the lake. They are slightly more expensive than the standard US$60 rooms, but are definitely worth it. The sunrise over the lake is breathtaking, and a fantastic way to start the day. Popular with business travelers on Hilton Honours Benefits. The view from the Executive Lounge is especially impressive. On the downside, even up here on the non-smoking floor, so of the rooms have really strong ashtray odours. A walk around Hong Shan Lake waterfront reveals swimmers in the lake and locals doing exercises. Ask the Concierge for directions to Gu Fu Jie at night, which is a buzzing food street. Tel: 851 3366 9666 No.42 Hongshanhu Road. *Howard Johnson Hot Spring Resort Anshun is 3 km from the airport and very convenient the high-speed railway station. Rooms and public areas are tastefully decorated with examples of local culture and characteristics. There is even a sky garden so that you can enjoy the surrounding mountain scenery By the time you read this, the hot springs will be open and operational. Special family suites make the place very suitable for those travelling with children. 219 Xihang Road.

Frequent buses travel between Guiyang and Anshun. The trip takes about 2 hours. There is still almost one hour's trip from Anshun to the famous waterfall, Huangguoshu.

Buses to Anshun leave from every one of Guiyang's stations (¥25, two hours, every 20 minutes from 07:00 to 19:00). Any Guiyang bound bus out of Xingyi or Weining will also let you off in Anshun if you tell the driver.

There are several bus stations in Anshun that are useful to travellers. The north bus station (客车北站; keche beizhan) has buses (¥34, three hours, every 20 minutes, 07:00 to 18:00) to Zhijin town (for Zhijin Cave). Almost every other bus now leaves from the new east bus station (东客运站; dong keyunzhan), 10 km east of the centre. Bus 16 (¥1) runs here from Zhonghua Nanlu opposite the Xixiushan Binguan. A taxi is ¥25 to ¥30.

*Guiyang ¥35, 1½ hours, every 20 minutes (07:10 to 19:10) *Huangguoshu ¥20, one hour, every 20 minutes (07:20 to 19:00) *Kunmíng sleeper ¥150, 10 hours, four daily (09:00, 10.40, 13:00 and 16:00) *Longgong Caves ¥10, 40 minutes, every 30 minutes (07:30 to 18:00) *Pingba ¥15, 40 minutes, every 30 minutes (07:30 to 18:30) *Shuicheng ¥60, 3½ hours, every 50 minutes (08:20 to 16:40) *Weining ¥90, five to six hours, one daily (10:00) *Yunfeng ¥5, 40 minutes, every 30 minutes (07:30 to 18:00)

Bus Number 1 zips around town from the train station and up Tashan Donglu, and on past the Hongshan Binguan. Bus 2 travels between the train station and the north bus station. Bus 16 runs from Zhonghua Nanlu to the east bus station. Buses cost ¥1. Taxi flagfall is ¥6.

Anshun is a popular tourist destination just south of Guiyang. Waterfalls, caves and cool temperatures make Anshun an ideal summer vacation spot. The average temperature of Anshun is about 21 °C in summer. The best season to visit it is from June to October. Anshun ranked No 2 in a list of the Top Attractions of summer 2018, released by China Tourism Academy in July, following only Kunming of Southwest China's Yunnan province.

Today's city survives on tourism, subsistence farming, and its traditional batik industry, which capitalizes on the highly developed textile skills of the local Bouyi minority. The road between Anshun and Huangguoshu is roughly where Bouyi country starts to get interesting, so you could take a break between the must-see destinations to walk the countryside and do a little exploring. The Bouyi number around 3 million and live throughout western Guizhou. A writing system for the Bouyi language was devised in the 1950s and is used to record their rich folk literature. Surrounded by karst hills, Anshun has one of Guizhou's most scenic landscapes in the province.

Central Guizhou is the most travelled region of the province and it is also where the province's star sights, such as Huangguoshu Falls, Longgong Caves and Zhijin Cave, as well as its capital city, Guiyang, are located. Tourists flock here to Huangguoshu, the tallest waterfall in China. While not very well known to westerners, the Chinese TV version of the “Journey to the West” being filmed here means that almost everybody in China knows this scenery. Located on the Baishui River in Anshun, it is 77.8 meters high and 101 meters wide. Tourists can view the falls from many different angles, at the six main observation decks. Other popular sites, include the kaleidoscopic Dragon Palace Cave, and the Getu Karst Park which hosted the 2014 Black Diamond International Rock Climbing Championships. The Great Arch has become a magnet for technical climbers. Measuring 70 metres high and seventy metres across it is one of the largest such formations in the world and a challenge to thrill seekers from around the world. The Dragon Palace Cave is a spectacular underground karst cave 32 km southwest of Anshun. You can take a boat into the cave to view its spectacular subterranean scenery.

This is not very far away from the fascinating Zhongdong or Middle Cave where until around 2008 around twenty families were living in a humongous limestone cavern 1,800 metres (5,900 ft) up a mountain. This used to be the world's only year-round settlement inside a naturally occurring cave in China. Fifteen kilometres away from the nearest town, it had its own classroom, and basketball court as well as village houses.