Current Time in Kaili, China

Kaili is the capital of the Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture in the south-western Chinese province of Guizhou. It sits in a valley among steep karst hills, where terraced rice fields climb the slopes and the Qingshui River winds between limestone peaks often wrapped in mist. The subtropical highland climate is mild and damp, and the surrounding countryside is one of the greenest and most mountainous regions in China, long protected by its remoteness from the pressures of the outside world.

The city has a population of roughly five hundred thousand, and the prefecture around three and a half million, the great majority of them members of the Miao and Dong minorities. Kaili is the commercial and administrative hub for a largely rural region, with agriculture, forestry, food processing, traditional handicrafts and light industry as the mainstays. Tourism has grown very quickly in the last two decades, as travellers from across China and abroad have discovered the villages of the surrounding mountains.

The Miao, related to the Hmong of Southeast Asia, have lived in these hills for many centuries, having moved south over generations from the plains of central China. Their villages developed in relative isolation, preserving distinctive languages, dress, silverwork and oral traditions. The Dong people, famous as carpenters, settled the south-eastern valleys. Imperial control of the region was often nominal, and a series of uprisings marked the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The autonomous prefecture was established in 1956, and Kaili grew from a market town into a modern city with new districts, hospitals and universities, while railways and expressways ended centuries of isolation.

Most visitors use Kaili as a base for the villages. Xijiang, known as the thousand household Miao village, spreads across two hillsides in a cascade of wooden stilt houses and is the largest Miao settlement in the world, spectacular when lit at night. Langde, Matang and Basha offer quieter and more traditional experiences, while the Dong villages further south are famous for their drum towers and covered wind and rain bridges, built entirely of interlocking timber without nails, and for their haunting polyphonic choral singing, recognised by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage.

Festivals are the highlight of the year. The Sister Meal festival in spring, sometimes described as the oldest celebration of love in Asia, and the Lusheng festivals of autumn and winter bring thousands of women in embroidered costume and elaborate silver headdresses, along with reed-pipe orchestras, bullfights, horse racing and dancing. Silver jewellery, batik, embroidery and paper making are living crafts, and the Prefecture Museum in Kaili displays fine examples. The local cuisine is famous for sour fish soup, glutinous rice and rice wine.

High-speed trains now link Kaili with Guiyang, Guangzhou and Shanghai, expressways cross the mountains and a regional airport serves the prefecture. Several colleges and a university campus operate in the city.

Kaili is important as the doorway to one of the richest concentrations of living minority culture anywhere in China.