Hot and cold, but mostly cool
Wintertime visitors to the province's slopes and springs can spend days skiing and nights soaking, Erik Nilsson reports in Liupanshui and Tongren, Guizhou.
The untreated water is also drinkable and is sold as a bottled brand. It's also used to steep tea and make broth for meals served at the resort. However, they have discontinued the practice of boiling eggs in the actual hot springs.
Various pools are instilled with such substances as rose petals, green tea and milk. Perhaps especially unique are springs that churn with Sichuan peppercorns or with the main base of Guizhou's most famous dish, "sour soup", especially as this pool is brimming with floating toy vegetables like plastic eggplants, corn and garlic.
Visitors also heal their skin with special facial masks and exfoliation treatments in which guests sit in water while swarms of minnows peck dead skin off their feet.
Guizhou's hot springs offer ideal locations to melt away cold and stress and to dissolve into the sometimes-unexpected specialties of local culture.
As such, visitors will find that dipping their toes in these pools is to take the final steps of the dance of the "song of ice and fire" that gives rhythm to winter in Guizhou.
