Cover of The People of Guizhou, which will hit the market in February 2010

I am a city boy, for sure. I think that is why Beijing felt like home the moment I stepped off the plane. The speed of the traffic, the cacophony of sounds and the buzz of construction are just like my hometown, Los Angeles. This has made settling into life in Beijing easy to say the least, sometimes even familiar, despite obvious language issues.

In October, 2009, as part of a continuing book series for the Foreign Language Press in Beijing, I was sent to the southwestern province of Guizhou to interview and photograph around 40 subjects and to experience a more rural lifestyle. Rural life was something I knew nothing about as the closest to the countryside, whether in China or in the States, was watching it on television.

Stepping off the plane in Guizhou's capital Guiyang, I was in for a shock. Mountains, green trees and blue skies had been substituted for the steel, glass and concrete that make up the larger cities in China. A second wave of shock ran through me when I encountered people dressed in the ethnic costumes of the Miao, Dong and other minority groups abounding in Guizhou. Culture is ever present in China but when you are working in the big cities, glued to a laptop as I usually am, you tend to develop tunnel vision about life around you. Here in Guizhou, culture was covering me like a wet t-shirt.

FEAST FOR THE EYES: Visitors are treated with a Nuoxi opera performance in Tianlong Township, Guizhou Province (YANG JUNJIANG)

Two experiences about the trip jump out as to just how much of a city boy I was. I say "was" because now I actually own a pair of hiking boots, so I feel more rugged, for sure. The concept of the book, interviews with a large cross-section of luminaries and local people so I could understand Guizhou through their eyes, took me all over the province from the major cities to deep into the mountains and among the farmlands. For many of the interviews, the location where the person lived or worked, was essential to their story, sometimes sharing equal footing. The unique karst landscape and terrain of Guizhou has created protected pockets of communities where their own cultures can thrive among the modern backdrop of today's world.

One of these traditions is Nuoxi opera and Guizhou is the home of this unique performance art that has a history rooted in shaman-type practices. When I traveled up into the mountains to meet a local Nuoxi practitioner and performer, I was in for a big surprise. Before I could get comfortable, practitioner Zhang Yuefu thrust a two-foot long bamboo pipe loaded with homegrown tobacco into my hand and poured a healthy cup of homemade corn wine. It dawned on me that the word performer was not all that accurate; he was a "medicine man." You don't meet many medicine men while wandering through Beijing and his interview was one of the most exciting and riveting of the trip.

Since traveling by car was the best and only way to travel through the province (the government is hard at work building new roads to connect the smaller villages and towns), I spent a good deal of time staring out the window enthralled by the sheer beauty of the environment. The flowing rivers, the lush vegetation akin to southeast Asia and the terraced rice paddies were so new to me that whenever we stopped I would run out to take pictures or just stand there trying to take it all in.

At one point, outside of one of the many rural villages I traveled to, I tip-toed out into one of the fields to run my hands along the top of the stalks of rice like in the movie Dances With Wolves. I made sure no one was watching, Kevin Costner I am not, but standing there rubbing the rice husks between my hands and hearing only the sounds of the wind blowing through the crop was, dare I say, peaceful. Something I have rarely experienced while waiting for the subway.

My journey through Guizhou was epic and eye opening. Each province of China is more like a small country with a unifying thread connecting them all together. Guizhou is unique in that it offers a high amount of natural wonder along with the cultural tourism. This was something I only scratched the surface of. I did not get to explore the many amazing caves that serpentine through many of the mountains or feel the mist of the large waterfalls. But that only gives me a good reason to go back and fully experience the countryside.

The author is an American, whose book The People of Guizhou will be published by Beijing-based Foreign Languages Press in February 2010