China Off the Beaten Path: Community Tourism and Meeting the Red Yao Tribe 

[Note: This trip to rural China was sponsored by Viori, and we’re very grateful to them for that! As always, everything we share on Tilted Map is our own opinion; no sponsor or affiliate ever has editorial control. For details, read this post about how this blog makes money.]

This is the story of a trip unlike any I’ve taken before. It’s community-based tourism at its best, in a rural part of Southern China. 

The region we visited, Guangxi, is most famous for its landscape of needle-like mountains – maybe you’ve seen images of them on Planet Earth, or another epic landscape show?

But what’s not so well known about this area, at least outside of China, is the indigenous Red Yao tribe. The Red Yao people have lived here in Guangxi for at least 800 years – many centuries longer than China has existed as a nation.

Red Yao culture is unique and distinct from the dominant Han ethnicity – the people we in the West often think of as “Chinese”. In fact, China has 56 ethnic groups. Yao is one of them, and the Red Yao are one of many sub-groups. This story is about just one thread of the rich fabric of indigenous China. 

And it was one of the unique features of their culture – the famously long, shiny hair of the Red Yao women ­– that brought us here for this adventurous trip.   

But we didn’t come to China just for hairstyling tips. And even though my husband and I first met in China, and both lived there for a year, we didn’t go back for a reunion tour, either.

We went because of a small shampoo bar company called Viori. (Regular readers might remember the name from my Viori review.)

Viori sources the most important ingredient in their bars – organic rice – from the Red Yao people, who live in a hilltop farming town called Longsheng.

Shampoo Bars and China Trips…?

Wondering how these two things fit together?

Here on Tilted Map, we talk about two things: Sustainable travel, and sustainable products.

The sustainable products side of the blog is mostly reviews of alternatives to everyday items we regularly buy. The alternatives are usually from small companies, are plastic-free, and made with ethically sourced ingredients.

A perfect fit with that philosophy, I reviewed Viori’s rice-water-based shampoo bars, and even though I’ve tested dozens of shampoo bars for this blog, I fell a little bit in love.

The packaging was stunning – despite being 100% plastic-free. Many companies would consider that a limitation, but Viori clearly took it as an opportunity. And the bars worked so well that my hair dresser complimented how shiny my hair had become.

Yes, shiny hair – just the thing the Red Yao women have become known for over the centuries. The magic worked on me, too, way on the other side of the world from the rice terraces of Longsheng.

So after sharing the bars with friends and family for a year, we jumped at the chance to see where it all started. Viori was in the process of designing rural tours to allow shampoo bar customers (or anyone) to visit their rice suppliers – who, as we saw, are also their friends and business partners. And they invited us along to experience the trip ourselves!

Now, getting back to the travel story…

Traveling to Longsheng, and its famously scenic Longji rice terraces, is quite a journey. In the process of getting to our “destination,” we got to explore Hong Kong, and several other parts of rural Guangxi. 

I’ll start from the beginning of the trip:

Day 1: Arriving in Hong Kong

Before this trip, it had been almost a decade since I’d been in China, and all I can say is wow, I forgot how long that flight is. From the East Coast of the US, we were able to take a direct flight on Cathay Pacific from Boston to Hong Kong.

Sustainability Tip: Of course, direct flights are almost always the best option, when you can get them, because they cut the carbon emissions of a trip. 

This one was 16 hours. Plenty of time to look out the window, contemplate life, watch movies, and let the mood of a new adventure settle into our minds.

Hong Kong & Logistics:

When we landed in Hong Kong, we took the metro straight to the Tsim Sha Tsui district – the center of Kowloon city. (You can also take a taxi or Uber in Hong Kong, although Uber is technically not legal there. For a lighter climate impact and less drama, I always take public transit whenever possible.)

What is Hong Kong?

One thing to know about Hong Kong is that it’s not just one thing. That’s true in many senses, like cultural and political, but let’s look at the simplest: Hong Kong is not just the massive Hong Kong Island. There are more than 200 other islands to Hong Kong, plus Kowloon Peninsula, which is on the mainland, sharing a land border with China.

If you say you’re going to Hong Kong to someone who’s been there, they’ll probably ask, “Kowloon side or Hong Kong side?” This is what they mean. The mainland, or the main island?

Sleeping in a real bed

Viori booked us a room at the very comfortable Royal Pacific Hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui – right in the middle of all the action in Kowloon. It was a large hotel, since pretty much everything in that neighborhood is, but not part of an international hotel chain. I took that as a reassuring sign that they were keeping our money local, right from the start.

The location was perfect. We could easily explore the heart of the city on foot, right outside our front door. We slurped back some noodles in a local shop before crashing for a good night’s sleep.

Food Tips:

Hong Kong is one of the hardest places in the world (that I’ve experienced) to avoid eating meat – and it only gets harder as you travel into rural China. (And I’m not even vegetarian, just… veggie forward.)

Our noodle soup was delicious. It had wontons stuffed with shrimp, which was the “meatless” alternative to wontons stuffed with pork. If you love shrimp and pork, you’ll love eating in Hong Kong. If you don’t, I’d recommend doing some restaurant research first.

Epic Travel Day: Hong Kong to Guilin to Langshi village

Day two of Viori’s itinerary – our first day waking up on the other side of the world – was a long one.

Jet Lag Tip:

I’d forgotten how intense the jet lag can be when you hop over a dozen time zones. We definitely recommend arriving a day early for this trip, if you can, just so you have one extra day to recover in Hong Kong before starting the adventure. I’ve also heard good things about the Time Shifter app for minimizing jet lag.

We had a few hours to take it easy and enjoy Hong Kong before our train to China, and let’s just say we took it a bit too easy. Even though we got to the train station an hour before our departure, we still missed our train.

Feeling a bit sheepish, I texted our contact at Viori, and he was able to get us new tickets in just a few minutes. Instead of going direct, as planned, we had to change trains in the city of Guangzhou, but China’s train system is so fast and efficient that we still got to Guilin only about an hour behind schedule.

Train Tip – Hong Kong to China:

If you’re a seasoned train traveler in Europe or even in the US, you might be wondering how it’s possible that an hour isn’t early enough for a train. (Not even boarding the Euro Star from London to Paris takes that long.) I would have wondered too, before this trip.

But as we shuffled through what I think were four separate immigration, security and paperwork check points, we started to realize it wasn’t going to happen for us.

Guilin, Guangxi, China

In Guilin, a Chinese city of only 5 million people (kind of like the “small” Chinese city I lived in), we didn’t need to recognize the driver Viori had sent for us. He recognized us – the only white people coming out of the station – and confidently flagged us down.

Driving through a light June rain, he whisked us away from anything resembling a city, while we did our best to chat with him in our broken Mandarin. An hour later, we arrived at Yangdi, a port town on the Li River in scenic Yangshuo County, and we stepped out of the car into what looked like another world.

Yangshuo County

After a few minutes of admiring the mountains through the mist, and the calm ambiance of the riverfront with hardly any tourists around, we noticed a long, old boat slinking toward us. Maarten, our contact from Viori and our guide for the next few days, was the only passenger.

Maarten helped us onto the boat, and the driver reversed course back to the East bank of the Li River. This is the route the boat driver does all day long – shuttling people and merchandise back and forth, like a bridge. (It’s a free service for local villagers; for tourists it costs 10 RMB, or $1.40, which makes a nice little tip for the driver.)

Travel Note: The currency in China can be called yuan or RMB (short for renminbi, or “people’s currency”). They mean the same thing. 

Packing Tip & When to visit:

April, May and June are typically the rainy season here in Yangshou County – but the rain can be kind of the point. It’s characteristic. It’s what this area is known for, and it creates those photogenic misty landscapes. Pack accordingly – for heat, rain and humidity, sometimes all at the same time. (We wore my favorite brand of merino wool the entire time, and it was perfect.)

Otherwise, the busiest season for tourists in the Li River and Longsheng area is September to November, when the weather is drier.

The river crossing felt like a metaphorical step back in time to our most rural destination of the trip: The four-century-old village of Langshi.

So far, the day’s journey had taken us from the subway in Hong Kong, to a high-speed train traveling through the Chinese countryside at 300+ km an hour (186 mph), to a modern car with leather seats, to a rusty old river boat, and finally, to the miniature wooden stools in the back of the electric tuk-tuk that would take us the final mile.

Ancient and new China

It was the perfect example of China’s extreme modernity bumping into its ancient history.

And that’s not just the travel writing trope of places where “old meets new.” In China, it couldn’t be more real. China’s cities are probably the most efficient, organized, technological places on the planet. Rural China is everything but.

And so, we all piled into the back of the tuk-tuk. Our host, Haibo, drove the shaky – but silent – electric vehicle 10 minutes along the Li River to his hometown.

Lao Jia Guesthouse, Langshi Village

If I’d tried to imagine a more different place to sleep from the modern, urban hotel in Hong Kong where we spent the previous night, I couldn’t do a better job than Lao Jia.

The stone building has been a guest house for about a decade, since Maarten and his business partner leased the dilapidated old house, renovated it with their own hands, and opened it as an Airbnb. (That was before Maarten worked with Viori.)

But local records show that the building itself dates back at least 200 years, to the Qing dynasty.

Homestays in China

The home’s history with Airbnb is tumultuous, too. Haibo has been managing the place since it opened – and even won an award for being the best Airbnb host in China. But since Airbnb stopped operating in China in 2022, the town has seen very few visitors.

[Related: Here’s my guide to more sustainable and inclusive Airbnb alternatives all over the world.]

It’s been a tough transition for a farming and fishing village of around 300 people that doesn’t have a whole lot of an economy without tourism.

Staying at Lao Jia felt like a special way to be the kind of tourists that locals actually want – and definitely not part of a crowd. We were the only visitors in town, and felt like part of the community.

Life in Rural China

The next day, we got to know not only the village, but Haibo’s family. His mom, Su Ayi – a fitness icon at 70 years young – took us on a hike to visit her goat herd.

Chinese Aunties: The term āyí, which is 阿姨 (pronounced “EYE-ee”) actually means a maternal aunt – as in your mother’s sister. But in China, it’s often used as a friendly term for any older woman, like auntie.

And when I say a “hike,” I mean straight up the side of one of those needle-like mountains.

(If you haven’t yet watched our YouTube video about the trip, I recommend you do that for more on this hike and the amazing scenery at the top!)  

Packing Tip:

I’d recommend packing light hiking shoes, or at least good athletic shoes with a decent amount of tread. You’ll definitely want them for this hike, but also for the generally rough terrain in a lot of areas coming up on this rural trip. (I wouldn’t say you need full-ankle hiking boots, unless that’s what you’re used to for any kind of hike.)

These Solomons that I have at home are what I wish I’d packed. Instead, I did this hike in my favorite flat street sneakers – which I continue to think are ideal travel shoes. I survived without falling down the mountain, but I wouldn’t recommend them.

Creating Sustainable, Community Tourism in Rural China

This hike is part of Ayi Su’s everyday routine. It’s also an activity that people who stay at the Lao Jia guest house independently can pay for, along with other activities that are part of local people’s lives – a boat trip to see a nearby waterfall, calligraphy lessons, and others.

But these weren’t paid activities before Lao Jia. The guest house really is bringing the benefits of tourism to people who didn’t get anything from the industry before. That’s exactly what Viori’s goal has been in creating these trips, so it was easy to see why Lao Jia fit in so naturally with their take on sustainable tourism in China.

More Photos: See my photo blog of Lao Jia for more from this special place – coming soon! (I took too many pictures to include them all here!)

Discount: If you’re interested in visiting Lao Jia on your own, they’ve offered an exclusive discount for Tilted Map readers – check back for that here soon!

What is community-based tourism? 

This entire trip is a great example of community-based tourism – the kind of travel that is on the local community’s terms, under their management, and designed to benefit locals, instead of siphoning off the majority of profits to other places. It often overlaps with rural and indigenous tourism, but community tourism can and should happen in cities, too. 

Day 4: An Electric River Cruise & Meeting the Red Yao Women

A boat cruise on the Li River would be the highlight of a lot of trips to rural China – the scenery is otherworldly. 

That’s why it made sense for Viori to take us out of the way, South of Guilin, to see Langshi village and a different part of rural Guangxi, before heading back North, toward the Red Yao village. It’s the kind of thing that’s so famous, and for such good reason, that it wouldn’t make sense to come all the way here without taking an afternoon for a Li River boat trip.

Floating the Li River in a Bamboo Raft

The Li River flows 100 miles from north to south through the mountains of Guangxi Province, passing through the provincial capital, Guilin, before eventually becoming part of Southern China’s famous Pearl River.

The part we motored down in our 4-passenger, electric-powered, “bamboo” boat was flat and peaceful.

Bamboo Rafts?

You’ll often hear this leisurely Li River cruise called a “bamboo raft trip,” but don’t be fooled. The boats are not actually made of bamboo anymore. (I know, I was a bit disappointed.) They’re just made to look like bamboo. And they have sturdy sides to keep you in – unlike the bamboo rafts that locals use. 

Not all tourist boats that make this trip are electric, but our guides said there’s been a push from the Chinese government to convert them. (The EV market in general is very developed in China.) Our bamboo raft cost an extra 30 RMB (or yuan, about $4) with the electric motor, and we were so glad Viori sprung for it.

It was completely silent, which I didn’t even realize until we passed a loud, rumbling, smelly gas-powered boat. The experience wouldn’t feel quite as peaceful on board one of those.

It was a fun coincidence that our boat driver was from Langshi village – and that she was a woman. (She said only about 10% of the drivers are women.)

China Off the Beaten Path? Xingping, Yangdi and Langshi

Because of its dramatic karst mountains, Yangshuo County has attracted tourists for decades. But not all parts of Yangshuo are equally busy. 

Our boat driver was based in Yangdi harbor, along with about 200 other drivers. The town of Xingping, where our leisurely river cruise would end, has about 400 boat drivers. That gives you a good idea of how many more tourists visit Xingping vs Yangdi and nearby Langshi.

When we docked near Xingping, it felt a bit jarring to suddenly see other tourists again (mostly Chinese tourists). In Langshi, we were the only visitors around, which is always a special experience.

Xingping Village

Where the boats dock, you’ll find a special viewing deck, which you have to pay to go onto. The deck occupies the best angle to see the exact view of the epic karst mountains that’s drawn on the back of the Chinese 20-yuan bill.

You can still get the general idea without going on the deck, but if you want to pause to consider the irony of this being a country that the West still considers “communist,” and what that even means at this point, this pay-per-view spot would be a good place to do it.

At the dock area, there are lots of little stalls selling snacks. Or if you walk about 20 minutes, you’ll be in the historic center of Xingping, which is where we went for a local specialty for lunch – fish from the river cooked in beer.

Tip: If you don’t want to or can’t walk, you can also buy a boat ticket that includes a transfer to town on something like a golf cart for about 10 yuan more (about $1.40).

Xingping is also a nice little town to explore, with some preserved historical buildings.

After lunch and a stroll, Viori had a driver take us to the Xingping train station for a 20-minute fast-train ride back to Guilin.

In Guilin, another driver picked us up for another drive with dramatic views – winding through hollows narrow enough to feel like Appalachia. Two hours later, we turned off the main road, and up a steep side road toward Longsheng: The Red Yao tribe’s autonomous land in the mountains.

An Indigenous Hotel in Longsheng

We arrived and checked into a gorgeous hotel owned by a family that’s part of the local Red Yao tribe – which isn’t a given, even here on tribal land.

If we hadn’t been with Viori, I don’t think there’s any way we could have figured out which hotels were locally owned. Many hotels in Longsheng are owned by businesses from other parts of China who set up hotels here because (unlike the village of Langshi) this area is popular with foreign and Chinese tourists in the fall and early winter.

Tip: How to Find Local Hotels?

Our guides said the easiest way to tell if a Longsheng hotel is indigenous-owned would be to look up the last name of the hotel’s owners – most Red Yao people have the family name Pan. But even that’s not foolproof (especially if you don’t speak or read Mandarin).

At this time, there’s no certification or other mark to identify indigenous owned businesses in the region. This is absolutely one of the reasons why it’s best to travel to a place like this with local guides, instead of going solo.

Meeting the Red Yao Women

After we got settled, some of the local Red Yao women who work with Viori stopped by the hotel to show us their weaving and the crafts they make. Viori supports this program by helping them find a market for their artisan goods.

Watching them work the traditional loom was such an impressive experience, and we had lots of time to chat (through our interpreters) and ask questions.

Real Artisan-Made Gifts: If you’re not planning a trip to rural China, but want to support this program, you can order embroidered bags, earrings and rings made by the Red Yao women from the Viori website, along with shampoo bars.

As night fell, we shared our first meal with the Red Yao women, and a few men. Some were shy. Some asked us lots of questions – in a mix of Mandarin and their local Red Yao dialect – while persistently refilling our tiny glasses with powerful rice wine.

Good to Know: This is something you’ll probably experience if you dine with local people, especially in rural China – they often refill your cup as a sign of respect; you’re their honored guest. (And in my experience, there always seems to be at least one person who takes it as a challenge to make you their honored drunk.)

Community-based Tourism with the Red Yao Tribe

Viori works with the local community in Longsheng through a few main programs: Embroidery, transitioning to farming organic rice and tea, supporting the local schools and, starting this year, tourism. Over the next two days in the community, we got to peek behind the curtain and see how each of these programs works.

But we took it slow to get started. After our big getting-to-know-you dinner with the Red Yao, the next day started with a quiet morning and a unique breakfast in Longsheng.

Local Breakfast: “Oil Tea”

The family that owns the guest house where we were staying gave us a rare opportunity to see how they make the Red Yao’s breakfast specialty: 油茶, or oil tea. (It’s spelled “you cha” in pinyin, but pronounced more like “YO cha.”)

It’s made with a special kind of wild tea leaf, which they fry in a wok before adding water, crisped rice, scallions and fried peanuts. There’s also some garlic, ginger and spicy chilis in there, which makes it about as far from a typical Italian breakfast as you can get. (Breakfasts in Asia are always a struggle for Emanuele, my Italian husband.)

Good to know: In case you were wondering, there are no Starbucks stops on this trip! Your meals are all authentic and homemade. You can forget about coffee at breakfast, but you will have plenty of tea. It’s a great experience. Embrace it. 

Our host family also lives in the back rooms of the guest house, so we were literally having breakfast in their kitchen. It was such an intimate experience, but also an incredibly eye-opening one. 

They prepared our oil tea over an open, wood-fired flame, in a kitchen with minimal ventilation. It was as smokey as if we were sitting around a campfire, so it’s not hard to imagine how a lifetime of cooking this way could lead to health problems.

Climate + Health Solution:

This is one of the reasons clean cook stoves are such an effective project to donate to, which you can do through reliable carbon offsetting programs, as I’ve written about before. They reduce carbon emissions, and they help cooks – usually women – avoid preventable health problems. Viori has actually suggested this to the Red Yao women they work with, but they weren’t interested. They love cooking over a wood fire, because it’s their traditional way of smoking meat. And after all, it’s their choice. 

After breakfast, we had some free time to explore the village and snap a few photos while Maarten helped a local shop owner install a stand selling Viori’s organic rice locally.

Transitioning to Organic

For now, Viori purchases all of the organic rice that the Red Yao farmers grow, which provides a guarantee and incentive to join the organic program. Viori brought in experts to teach sustainable farming techniques, and are financing the entire transition from traditional agriculture to organic. (They expect the organic certification process to be finalized by October of 2025.)

Not all of the indigenous farm land in Longsheng is under organic management. It’s only a 10-acre parcel so far, but it’s a start – and it’s the only acreage of organic rice farming in the whole area.

When one of the farmers took us to see that field, we could see the pride in his eyes, as he put it, “because we’re doing something good for the environment.”

You don’t hear that kind of thing when people are just doing what they’ve been told by some foreign company.

That good environmental deed also means that the farmers can sell their organic rice to Viori, who pays double the market rate. Currently, less than half of what they buy goes abroad to make shampoo bars. With the rest, Viori is setting up domestic sales channels for the farmers, like the stand they built that morning.

That revenue from local sales goes into a fund owned by the farmers’ cooperative. (It’s basically a gift from Viori.)

These kinds of collaborative projects are what makes this an excellent example of sustainable, community-based tourism.

Lunch at home with a Red Yao family

The meals we shared in people’s homes were some of the most memorable moments of this trip for me – and our first lunch definitely set a high bar. 

Everything was homemade. We sat together, on little stools around a round table, and ate, then listened to one of the women sing in the local dialect.

What to expect at traditional Chinese meals:

Lunches and dinners on this trip follow the typical Chinese homestyle fashion: Everyone serves themselves from communal dishes, which are usually placed on a giant lazy Susan. You put a few bites of whatever you want in your personal bowl of rice, and keep going back for more throughout the meal.

If you’re vegetarian or vegan, expect to break the rules while you’re here. Meat is served as an honor – families were butchering chickens for us, as their special guests. Even when our guides requested in advance that the cooks just prepare their delicious vegetable dishes, it was nearly impossible to not be served meat. Again, this trip gives you authentic, rural China.

The Red Yao Hair Care Routine

After lunch and the mini concert, we hiked about a mile down a trail in the family’s backyard to a hidden waterfall – the namesake of Viori’s “hidden waterfall” shampoo bar scent.

The hike was mostly steps, and we went at a leisurely pace, stopping for lots of photos, and listening to our guides chat in their local dialect most of the time. Just soaking up the experience.

At the bottom of the hike, the waterfall revealed itself, and since we were nearing the end of the rainy season, it did not disappoint. With the falls as a backdrop, three of our Red Yao guides demonstrated how they create their famous updos. The routine was clearly rehearsed, but nonetheless beautiful to watch.

Newly Organic Tea Farming

After hiking back out from the waterfall, we visited a small tea farm owned by one of the men who’d been driving us around. As of 2021, the farm is now fully organic. 

That’s only been possible because Viori paid for the organic transition and buys all the tea, with the aim of helping the locals build an economically and environmentally sustainable business.

Sustainable Business in a Nutshell: 

Locals in Longsheng often don’t have the money to purchase high-quality equipment to make tea, nor the marketing skills to promote it. Usually, this means outsiders come in, open a tea business, and take most of the profits back to the big cities, after paying locals a minimum for their tea leaves. 

That system creates some income for locals. But in an effort to fight poverty in rural China, Viori is trying to help the Red Yao pull it off themselves, so profits can stay with the tribe and local families. 

Tea Factory Tour & Tea Tasting with a Master

After seeing where the tea grows, we got to taste it, too. We headed to the only local tea factory (besides those in a few living rooms), which Viori works with to produce the organic black tea they sell. 

There, we tasted four kinds of tea, and learned that it is, in fact, “the concentration of the tea master,” who pays close attention to the temperature of the water, and the time the tea steeps, that makes the difference between good quality tea and great quality tea.

Tea Tips:

The traditional way of preparing tea in China is very different from in the West. This tea master surprised me by telling us to steep our teas for less than one minute. Following this procedure, you can steep tea leaves six to eight times before they lose their flavor!

Local jobs from tea & tourism

The tea factory is a new source of employment for the area, and it’s locally owned, too. (An equal partnership between our driver/tea farmer, the tea master, and Lily – a vibrant woman from Guilin who moved here to get involved. Just like with the rice farm, Viori is funding the transition to organic, but they don’t have any ownership of the factory.)

Our tea tasting flowed into dinner, and we shared another delicious meal, which featured lots of local vegetable dishes. Lily said that her mission with this business is to create employment in Longsheng so local youth don’t have to leave for the cities.

Fun Tea Fact:

In a short tour of the factory after dinner, we learned something I found fascinating (as a full-on foodie): Black, white, green, oolong and pu’er teas all come from the same plant! They just have different methods of drying and aging.

Our Final Day with the Red Yao

On the sixth and final day of this trip, we visited one of the elementary schools that Viori supports, walked through terraced rice fields (newly transitioned to organic), toured the small rice factory that Viori works with, and had our final long lunch with the Red Yao.

Viori supports several local schools, helping out with whatever they’re asked for. Sometimes it’s paying a salary so a local teacher can stay and teach, and families don’t have to move to a city to get a decent education for their kids. At the school we visited, Viori had funded basic infrastructure like a playground and kids’ desks.  

Final Thoughts on Visiting Rural China

Day seven was our journey back to the big-city kind of civilization we’d landed in a week before. The thought of Hong Kong – just 350 miles away as the crow flies – felt like a different world compared with the Longsheng rice terraces and everything else we’d just experienced.  

This trip was really remarkable.

I’m a huge fan of independent travel – where you organize everything yourself, without a guide or group, immersing yourself completely, and embracing the confusion and inevitable mishaps.

But honestly, that’s not how I would visit Longsheng.

The only reason I’d previously done anything even comparable to this kind of authentic, rural travel in China is because I lived in China for a year. And I had a good friend who brought me home to meet her family in the countryside. Without that lucky experience, even life as an expat in China didn’t get me anything close to this.

That’s why you should have a guide in rural China.

I don’t know how a Westerner who doesn’t speak Mandarin could set up an experience like this – while being sure to support local businesses and have meaningful interactions with local people – without connections like Viori’s.

It would be practically impossible to recognize an indigenous-owned hotel on our own, let alone get ourselves invited over for home-cooked meals.

And with the benefit of showing up as “friends of friends,” people here were friendly and open and interested in meeting us. It was really extraordinary to get to spend time with them, ask questions, and hear their first-hand stories of the impact Viori is having on the community.

A Model for Community-based Tourism in China and Beyond

It’s easy to be skeptical of projects like this, and label the companies with the funding as “white saviors” (even though Viori is a collaboration between Chinese and American founders). 

I was skeptical, too, and I included a section on this topic in my first post about Viori.

And everything I’ve seen here has been the opposite of that. It’s outstandingly clear that Viori knows its business wouldn’t exist without collaborating with the Red Yao tribe, and they’re working with them to help the community develop on its own terms. They’re asking people what kind of help they want, if anything, not telling them what they “need.”

This is a company using our Western appetite for traditional knowledge to help indigenous people, the ones who created those traditions, to thrive.

It’s sustainable, ethical, community tourism at its best. 

Travel doesn’t have to be exploitative, and neither does international trade. They can both be win-win, for both sides of the exchange, if we just decide to do things differently. Viori has proven that’s possible in a way I hope others replicate. If you have a chance to visit Longsheng, it’s a wonderful thing to see.

How to join Viori’s Longsheng trip:

Viori will host their first public trips to Longsheng at the end of 2025! If you’re interested, you can use the code TILTEDMAP to save $300 per person on their China trip.

(And that same code works for 10% off their shampoo bars – the very ones made with rice water from the fields we visited in Longsheng.)

More Rural Travel Experiences: 

Check out my guides and behind-the-scenes insights on these trips: 

• Rural Italy travel by e-bike
  • NOTE: You can join us on a tour this year with a local guide!
• Weekend foodie itinerary for the Adirondacks, New York
•  An unforgettable adventure in Baja California
• What I learned sailing with microplastics researchers in the Mediterranean

Help more people find this article! Share on: