排卡 Pai Ka                                                             Eastern Guizhou    
I went to Paika on a tip from Alex, a Fulbrighter in Guizhou studying tourism in Guizhou. He had been there the day before with some colleagues from the Chinese NGO that he works with in Guiyang. He mentioned that there was a Lusheng maker there and that I should stop by. So, on my way further south, I detoured and went to Paika. After asking some locals and stumbling across a Lusheng performer, he brought me to Lixue's house. I visited for a while, they played some music on both the traditional style Lusheng and the modern Lusheng. After eating lunch with Lixue, he showed me in quite a lot of detail how the Lusheng is made and tuned. Pretty amazing experience. Click Here To watch and listen to his student play the modern Lusheng.

Lusheng is a mouth organ used by the Miao Ethnicity in their traditional music and dance. As I would later find out in Zhaoxing, their size can range from a tiny 1 foot long hand held style to as tall as 15 feet!


Finished Lusheng. . .


Instruments in the process of being made. . .


LUNCH! I know what you're thinking. . . eating, followed by two days of the worst stomach pains imaginable. Exactly what I thought. But I took a chance and it was actually VERY good. Everything straight from the fields and rivers just outside the village.




Pai Ka village



A water wheel next to the village. Scoops up water from the river in small, hallow bamboo segments and lifts it to a higher location. . . in this case a system of aqueducts that irrigate the surrounding rice fields.


Road back from the Village, snaking through the mountains. . .
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