Jieyang is in Guangdong, in South China.
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Guangdong · City Guide
Jieyang, Where the Yingge Dancers Come From.
Overview
Why Go
Yingge is danced by rows of men with painted faces beating short wooden sticks in fast formation. Puning County has over a hundred troupes. A Puning team performing in London put it in front of a lot of people abroad.
Rongcheng's old city has 525 restored qilou, the arcaded shophouses of the south coast, with residents in the upper floors and shops below. It is eight centuries old and much quieter than Chaozhou an hour away.
Chaoshan beef hotpot divides a carcass into named cuts by exact muscle and prescribes a different dip time for each, from a few seconds upward. The menu is a diagram, and this is one of the places the practice comes from.
Yangmei in Jiedong handles a large share of China's jadeite cutting and trading, in workshops and street-level stalls rather than factories. The stone comes from Myanmar and is worked here.
Chaoju is sung in Teochew, not Mandarin, with its own instruments and a repertoire several centuries old. Troupes play at temple festivals across the region and in Teochew communities in Southeast Asia.
See
Arcaded streets, narrow lanes barely two shoulders wide, family mansions and a morning market that runs on beef noodles. People live here. Half a day on foot and no pass.
A Song-founded Confucian temple in the old city, rebuilt in the Qing, with carved stone, a full courtyard sequence and Chaoshan roof ridge decoration. An hour, and it is free.
A very large nineteenth-century official's compound in Puning, built as linked courtyard blocks with carved wood and gilt gables. One of the bigger surviving domestic complexes in eastern Guangdong. Ninety minutes.
A training and demonstration base at Nanshan for the fast-tempo Puning style, with costumes, face paint and sticks on show and live demonstrations. Ninety minutes, and it runs outside festival season.
A chain of falls and pools in a forested gorge in Jiexi County, with walkways up the valley. Cool in summer and busy at weekends. Half a day including the drive.
A headland at Huilai where the rock breaks into stacked flat slabs running into the sea, with fishing villages either side. Two hours, and the light is ideal early.
On the Map
Approximate locations of the attractions above, across Jieyang.
Eat
Clear beef broth and plates of cuts labelled by muscle, each with its own dip time. Start with the leanest, keep the timing, and use the sand-tea sauce sparingly. The beef is usually slaughtered the same morning.
Small squares of tofu fried until the shell is crisp and the inside is still liquid-soft, eaten with a salty chive and garlic dip. Sold from carts and eaten hot enough to burn the mouth.
Small steamed rice-flour cakes filled with a sweet paste of crushed seeds and sugar, pressed in a wooden mould. The name comes from the sound of the mould being knocked out. A festival sweet sold all year.
Rice batter steamed on a cloth with egg, pork and greens folded in, cut and sauced. The Chaoshan version is wetter and more heavily filled than the Guangzhou one, and it is a breakfast.
Do
Yingge troupes go out through the towns from the opening days of the new year, and that is when visitors see it in the street rather than at a base. Expect crowds and very loud drums.
The wall menu is a diagram of a cow. Ask the staff which cuts are on that day and in what order to cook them; getting the sequence right is the difference between good and wasted.
Some of the old city lanes are barely wide enough for two people. They lead to family mansions that visitors would never find from the arcaded main streets. Go in and keep turning.
Workshops at Yangmei cut and polish in the open with water running over the wheel. Watch rather than buy unless visitors know the stone; grading jadeite is not something to learn on the day.
When
Dry, warm and comfortable with the typhoon season over. The ideal window for the old city and the coast.
Cool and dry, and the Yingge season: troupes are out through the lunar new year. The one time to plan the trip around.
Warm and increasingly humid with the plum rains arriving in May. Still good for the inland gorges and the temples.
Hot, very humid and typhoon season, with coastal warnings that close roads and ferries. Indoors and the waterfalls.
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Jieyang is in Guangdong, in South China.
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