Blogs from Lijiang, Yunnan, China, Asia - page 28

We went to see Ljilijana, Stevan's mom in China. She has been living in Beijing for the past few years. It was great to spend some time with her and see Yunnan province, which we did not visit during our first visit in May 2002. Our first visit was much easier than our second, mainly because we had Chinese-speaking friends in Hong Kong and Beijing who really helped us get around. Ljiljiana has picked us quite a bit of Chinese, but we still had problems communicating. Many Thais and Cambodians speak a bit of English, so it was easy to communicate in those countries. This is not the case in China, where even our efforts at hand gestures were ineffective, though they did seem to understand when I pantomimed a chicken and an airplane. We traveled ... read more

While the opportunity to frequently travel overseas on business sounds very appealing to most people, it also has its drawbacks. Often you tend to just move from plane to hotel to office and then back in reverse and don’t get the opportunity to see much of that country or experience its culture. And so it was with China, where I made many visits in my commodity trading days between 1999 and 2007, but the majority of these were to visit our key customer, Cofco, at its Beijing offices. But when a couple of us travelled over there in February 2006 to finalise the negotiation of a long term supply contract and then to complete the ‘signing ceremony’, a very important part of the process in China, I suggested that for a change we do this away ... read more

While I am looking down from the airplane, the city Lijiang hiding in the mountains is few thousand feet beneath. Some villages with the pitched roof buildings spread out between the terrace fields. It seems like I am flying back to the lost memory of my dreams. And after a turn, the plane landed on a tiny airport with all the montains surrounding, it gave me quite a nice feeling. After I stepped out of the aircraft, I felt the sunshined softly on my face just like in San Diego, it was very sunny but cool with breeze. Not as cold as I expected in such a winter time. I followed the flow to the exit of the airport, it seems everybody knows where they are going. Except me, I was looking around the parking lot ... read more

During the waiting time for the Laos visa I went for a visit to Lijiang. This town, about ten hours by sleeper bus away from Kunming is where the Naxi people live. The Naxi are one of the many ethnic minorities in Yunnan and Lijing was once the capital of the ancient Naxi kingdom. What is left from those times is the old city of Lijiang. Unfortunatelly it has been badly damaged by an earthquake in the 90's and after the Chinese goverment financed a rebuild they are now exploiting it as a tourist attraction. This means that nearly all the houses in the old city have been converted to souvenir shops... Early in the morning with no tourists it is still possible to anticipate the beauty and peacefulness the alleys once must have had. Less ... read more

Arriving in China was cool. Always going to be the highlight of our trip, it was nice to reach here at last. First stop was Kunming, which although there wasnt much to do, was a nice with a friendly atmosphere, and a good place to get our first taste of chinese life and the delicious chinese dumplings! A couple of days spent, then on to Dali. Dali is a purposely built tourist town (by the governement) and is very nice and pretty with good chinese architecture, though it feels slightly like disney china. Another couple of days here spent mostly shopping for the warm clothes needed for our himalaya expidition. Similar to Dali, was Lijiang, only bigger. Again very pretty, we shopped again and saw an ethnic minority show/dance which was a bit dodgy. Unfortunately we ... read more