by Brian K. Smith

I met Yanhua one December day in 2009 when visiting the Longsheng Rice Terraces in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Chinese security had closed the only road for a visiting delegation from Africa. Yanhua asked me if I wanted to follow her down a trail to Huang Luo, her village, where we could have tea at her family's hotel. I gladly accepted her invitation and spent a pleasant afternoon there before continuing on to Guilin.