Gugan 古敢, a remote township surrounded on three sides by Guizhou province, is the home of Yunnan's Shui ethnic minority. In their villages, in the beautiful Huangnihe Valley below towering karst mountains, time seems to have stood still: houses are built from rough unhewn stone, hot-springs provide warm water and not even the wheel seems to have been invented: bullocks and buffaloes pull sledges not carts.
