Former Senator Anna Dominique “Nikki” Coseteng went to Guizhou expecting one thing and found another. She served in the Philippine House of Representatives from 1987 and in the Senate from 1992 to 2001, and she has since travelled widely.
“When I first decided to come to Guizhou, I didn’t know what to expect,” she says. “I just knew that Guizhou is very mountainous. There are many indigenous peoples and I didn’t know there were hundreds of different tribes. I was expecting maybe a smaller scale city and more, I’d say, laid-back, but no, it’s not. Guiyang is very vibrant and the whole province seems to be coming alive. It looks like they have improved so much from even just 10 years ago.”
She describes the experience as “breathtaking,” from the airport to the drive to the hotel. “I’m trying hard to stay awake and keep my eyes open, because if I fall asleep I’ll miss out on so much of that beautiful scenery.”
Her main reason for coming was a bridge. “My first attraction, to be honest, was the long, long bridge that would connect two great mountain communities, and as an added attraction they actually built a waterfall on the bridge. That was my original desire, the attraction to come to Guizhou.” The description matches the Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge, which opened in September 2025, rises 625 meters above the Beipan River and cuts the crossing from two hours to two minutes.
Time ran short, and her plans changed. “We have so little time, we cannot see all the bridges. But today I was so happy that I already forgot about my first original expectations, and that only goes to show I’m going to come back a second time.”
Instead the group visited another bridge—the Balinghe Bridge, which is 2,237 meters long and 370 meters tall. She walked it. “I have not been physically climbing to get to 370 m on top, walking through a bridge that’s 2 km long. And while the bridge is shaking, vibrating every time a truck or a car passes by, that was really awesome.”
Then came the waterfall at Huangguoshu, which is 77.8 meters high and 101 meters wide. Her group came outside the rainy season. “It was awesome. Too bad we didn’t come in the summertime when the water would really be gushing and you wouldn’t even see the rocks, just pure volumes of water. But even this time, it really sends a very loud and clear message.”
She names two messages. “One, nature and technology and construction can really create and generate tourism, which means income for the communities that are here. Secondly, the importance that they put into the design, that they consider the lives of the people that are going to be uplifted. Remember, that’s a 2 kilometer bridge, and the zigzag was going to take people 2 hours to cross that entire gorge. Instead with a bridge it will only take 2, 3 minutes. So you can imagine the impact for traders, for students, for workers, for farmers, for housewives. The entire community benefits from it, and that can spell the difference between prosperity and poverty.” Bridges are everywhere in the province: Guizhou has built or is building more than 32,000 of them.
The ordinary scenes along the way made an equal impression. “We went through small towns, through small stores. One thing you will notice, everyone is busy doing something. When it was lunchtime, the restaurants were full, and that was the only time I imagine that people were not working. That kind of environment says a lot.” She was struck by the cleanliness too. “You don’t really see people sweeping the streets and the sidewalks. Even in front of the restaurants and the stores, it may not have been as luxurious as this hotel, but it was just as clean as this dining room, and those are public places.”
She pays close attention to how visitors are received. “In the airport, it was seamless. We got down from the plane, got through immigration, got through the baggage carousel, got to the bus with no hitches. Everything was just smooth. Now, that takes a lot of study. That doesn’t happen automatically.” She sees the same preparation in the smaller places. “Even if you go to the smaller restaurants, the waiters and the workers are very well trained. They might not speak English, but you see they’re well trained. Before the multitude would come in and drop in on them, they have to lay the groundwork first. You want 10 million people to come every year. Where will they stay?”
Safety was part of her comfort. She has travelled elsewhere and had bad luck. “I went to Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, you name it, and we got robbed. Our backpack got opened. Our companion’s wallet was taken. In New York, my grandson’s earphones were stolen twice, and his brand new bike was stolen on the campus on his first day of class. You have to feel safe. You have to feel comfortable. You have to feel that you don’t have to look over your shoulder. This kind of security and safety makes me feel comfortable, and this is the reason why I come to visit.”
Her comparison with the Philippines is direct. “Tourists have different budgets, all the way from $20 a day to $2,000 a day. You have to address the needs and the affordability of the tourists. You must have programs that will attract different kinds of people. Some want a convention, some a weekend by the beach, some the mountains, some shows, some golf. Your advertisements and even your materials have to be different. It cannot be just one kind of brochure for everybody. The doctors have different needs from golfers, from housewives, from kids.” She says Philippines is not doing it. “We’re just doing knee-jerk reactions. Oh, there’s a nice beach there, let’s promote that. That’s not the way to do it. You’re promoting an entire country.”
She also thinks tourists respond to how a place treats its own people. “People don’t want to see poverty during vacations. If you are able to lift your people out of poverty, not throw them away and hide them in some place where they won’t be seen, if they have genuinely decent incomes and decent living situations, then that in itself is an attraction, because that will tell the tourist we are taking care of our own people.”
On prices at home, she is blunt. “Food costs have gone through the roof. Try to eat in a mall, not just fast food, and you will need at least 800 to 1,200 pesos per person. So all this is affecting the middle class the most.”
She sees change in the people, too. She first came to China in 1989, she says. “People would still be pushing in a crowd. Now, on the escalator, they let you go first.” Her hope is that Filipinos can one day have the same. “I want to be able to build those kinds of projects for our own people. If I can learn it from China or from elsewhere without having to kill anyone, without having to enslave anyone, then that’s what I’d like to do.”