Guiyang, the capital of Guizhou Province, is a natural fortress. The capricious weather and the hostile topography, giving Guiyang the resemblance of a castle in the mist, seem more at home in Transylvania. Few Han Chinese even knew these strange lands existed before the famed geographer Xu Xiake traveled here in 1636 as part of his 30-year trek exploring China's sacred mountains (on foot and unescorted!) Again and again he was confronted by "massive, labyrinthine heaps of rock towering ...