Xijiang is the largest Miao village in the world — more than a thousand wooden stilt houses stacked up two facing hillsides above a river of terraced paddies. It has been the cultural heartland of the Miao for centuries and is now Guizhou’s flagship sight, complete with performances, silver-jewellery workshops and long-table feasts.
It is unashamedly touristy by day, and then the day-trippers leave. Stay the night in a hillside guesthouse: at dusk ten thousand eaves light up and the valley turns into a constellation, and at 7am you share the lanes with roosters and rice farmers. The viewing platform across the river is where the classic panorama lives.