Shizhangdong Waterfall.  [Photo: China Daily/Li Xueshi]

By staff reporter ZHANG XUEYING

Northern Guizhou Province is one of the few isolated areas in China, due to its difficult access and inconvenient transportation facilities. Surrounded by mountains on four sides, the area has been cut off from large-scale development that has continued for decades outside of this fortress of mountains. But this omission has turned out to be not necessarily a bad thing: northern Guizhou has recently caught the attention of tourists for its well preserved primitive ecology and 200-year-old man-made sites. The obstacles of geography haven't, and shouldn't, deter those in search of a pristine natural environment and an authentic Chinese past.