You Want To Go Where?

Guizhou Province is landlocked in southwestern China and has few tourist attractions. It is a formidable place to live. In 1996 when Gwen Moore was planning her first trip to meet school officials there, she asked a colleague in Beijing to help with travel arrangements to rural Guizhou Province. "Why?" her friend asked. An early edition of the Lonely Planet's travel book, South-West China, references the province saying, "Pity poor Guizhou." The old Chinese proverb below aptly characterizes Guizhou: poor, rugged, and wet. Guizhou people are so poor, they don't have three coins to rub together. Guizhou land is so rugged, a patch of level ground is never more than three meters square. Guizhou weather is so bad, there's never sunshine for three days in a row. ~Ancient Chinese Proverb

Road from Guiyang to Luodian, December 1996

Guizhou Province & Luodian County

The location of Luodian County is indicated by the blue dot on the map aboveThe Province is part of a mountainous region of southwest China called the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau. The plateau is composed largely of limestone. Erosion produces fissures, sinkholes, underground streams, and caverns. The resulting karst mountains and the sub-tropical climate of portions of the area make for spectacular scenery, often depicted in traditional Chinese paintings.

Guizhou's capital is Guiyang, which is near the center of the province. Luodian County, the location of the village profiled in the Times story and where the Fund's work is conducted, is south of the capital. Luodian County borders on neighboring Guangxi Province.

By air, Guiyang is a 3-hour, 1,000-mile flight from Beijing. By train, the journey covers 2,536 miles, and takes 28 hours. Luodian County is about 100 miles south of Guiyang. The drive takes from four to six hours, depending on time of year and severity of monsoonal rains.