Xijiang is the largest Miao village in China — about 1,200 households and over 5,000 people in a continuous settlement of wooden stilt houses covering an entire hillside and its valleys, within the Leigongshan National Nature Reserve south of Kaili. The scale is what strikes you first: this is not a village of fifty houses preserved as a museum piece, but a living community large enough to have its own geography, its own internal streets, its own centre and periphery. The Miao population is 99.5% of the total, a demographic concentration unusual even in the ethnic minority regions of Guizhou.
The houses are built in the traditional pen-and-ganlan style — wooden frames on posts, with carved wooden balconies and tiled roofs that follow the contours of the hillside in tiers. The overall effect, from the viewpoint above the entrance, is of a hillside entirely covered in dark wood and grey tile, broken by the silver of rice terraces below and the green of the surrounding forest. The village entrance and main square have been developed for tourism with stages for cultural performances (daily at 11:30 and 5pm), shops selling embroidered textiles and silverwork, and a Miao museum with well-translated displays on the history and material culture of the people here.
The silverwork deserves attention. Miao silver — the elaborate headdresses, necklaces, and bodice pieces worn at festivals — involves techniques of filigree and repoussé that have been passed through families for generations. What's sold in Xijiang ranges from machine-made tourist pieces to genuine handwork; the women making silverwork in their doorways outside the main commercial street are the place to understand the real craft.
Xijiang is an hour from Kaili by bus (about ¥15, multiple departures daily from 9am). The village charges an entrance fee of around ¥60. Accommodation inside the village is available, and staying overnight — after the day-trip coaches leave and the village becomes itself again — is the most worthwhile version of the visit.