A rough track leads to the small, unhurried village. Set amidst rice paddies and low hills, it's indistinguishable from any other we've passed on the two-hour bus journey, indeed, from any other in the region. From a distance it looks ordinary, the smoke from kitchen fires drifting over dark tiled roofs. But something is not quite right.

I walk past a ragged-looking young boy poking a stick into the ground; he glances up but barely registers my presence. I smile and continue walking down the muddy, potholed track. After ten minutes of steady walking the village comes into sight, a dark mass in the quickening late afternoon light. Several young women are standing at the entrance to the village, dressed in colorful attire and adorned in silver jewelry. I draw near and from the gate at the head of the path a group suddenly bursts through, coming down the path with welcoming smiles. The young women come alive and walk toward me, small clay pots held aloft, and one pouring a drink into the container until it overflows. But the crowd passes straight by. I turn, and in the distance a small cavalcade of vans is slowly moving down the track. The first tour groups of the day have arrived.

A collection of wooden houses, cobblestone pathways, fields and wallowing farm animals, the small village of Langde is set on a hillside 25 kilometers from Kaili, the gateway to the enchanting minority cultures of southeastern Guizhou province. Once an isolated enclave, Langde is now experiencing the onset of tourism. The buildings are in the traditional style, but appear to be more affluent. There is a certain sheen to the whole place and as I stand contemplating this polished difference, the tour bus pulls up and disgorges a large group of wealthy tourists from the provincial capital. "It is not unusual for two or three groups to arrive each day in the summer," says Chen Zhang, a wizened, middle-aged man, carefully arranging a tray of souvenirs. "You are lucky today, because in the winter only one or two groups arrive each fortnight. Now you will be able to see the performance."

The women in the village are dressed in elaborate costumes and stand chatting and knitting, waiting to begin. The Miao are famed for their batik and embroidery skills, the excellent workmanship seen to full effect on festival costumes that can take years to make and, traditionally, were an indication of social status and wealth. In the main square of the town the villagers have gathered. The young women wear a selection of ornate necklaces, bracelets and extraordinary headdresses. A group of old women sit along the wall, tending to young babies. A group of men in long blue gowns smoke long pipes, eyeing the proceedings with a bemused and curious air.

After a short wait the dancers emerge into the square, swaying gently as they move in circles around the central podium. The dance lasts several minutes, before the guests are asked to join in. The crowd is now an odd mix: some wear the latest fad in footwear and fashionable Gore Tex windbreakers, their mobile phones dangling around their necks; the others, in their ceremonial costume, wear large buffalo horn headdresses, their trainers occasionally peaking out from beneath long gowns, evidence that the two groups inhabit the same period in time.

The Miao are China's second largest ethnic group, their origins variously placed in Mongolia, Tibet or the valleys of the Yellow River. Even the time of their arrival in Guizhou is uncertain, but it was probably around 1,500 years ago, during their gradual migration south into Indochina. Geographical factors, tribalism and a fraught coexistence with the Han Chinese have made life difficult for many over the decades. "No three li [a mile] without a mountain, no three days without rain, no man who possesses three silver coins," goes one old saying.

Opposite the village the river meanders slowly by, young children playing in the shallows, while ducks paddle and feed. A newly built "wind and rain" bridge spans the river, providing shelter from the rain and an ideal place to wile away a humid summer afternoon, the water-cooled breeze a welcome respite. Upstream a group of women are scrubbing clothes on stone tablets and a number of young men opposite wade ankle deep in the mire of a flooded rice field.

The signs of contemporary culture can be seen at every glance-satellite dishes gracing the wealthier establishments, a dusty transistor radio on a rickety wooden shelf-but the impact of tradition and religion is overwhelming, permeating every aspect of life. In the evening, once the tour group has left, the soft sounds of music and the muffled thuds of feet, dancing on bare earth, float on the chill evening air.

Leaving Langde I visit other villages on the return journey. They too are set in a spectacular landscape, a verdant collage of terraced paddies, and plots of wheat, maize, rape and tobacco. Men with baskets of piglets slung across their shoulders, and men squatted by piles of rough tobacco wait by the roadside for the local bus, heading to the local market. The other villages are, however, less affluent, less polished, the cobbled lanes and scruffy wooden houses still waiting to join the race for modernity.