Blogs from Yunnan, China, Asia - page 17

Shuangbai is one of the less visited county in Chuxiong region, if not for the tiger-dance festival...there wouldn't be any development I would say！but once they discovered there still some villages practised this ancient tiger-dance and decided it needed to be protect and preserve by....made they perform in any occasion the government wanted. so it became a dancing team for celebration in the county nowaday. now you seldom see they perform it in their village（perhaps one wouldn't get pay now but....it wasn't for the money before someone said they needed to be protect and preserve？！？！）where they belong, and...tradition....supposed to be protect and preserve....was dead or...been transformed manipulately. anyways...with more tourist facilities. that was great for me...as lodging are better and in reasonable price, almost all the guesthouse charge only 40 yuans for a single roo... read more

Kunming (the capital city of Yunnan province) Kunming was my first city in Yunnan. I took a 21 hour train from Loudi to get there. I was glad I had bought a Y450 "soft" sleeper ticket because the bed was much wider and the room came with a door. I really lucked out when I discovered that the other occupants of my cabin were 3 lovely Chinese girls. I joked with them in both Mandarin and English. They giggled when they saw the enormous amount of hair shown on my passport photo. The whole trip we noshed on Chinese snack foods (spicy tofu bites, sesame cookies, chicken wings, noodles, shatian pomelos, and mandarin oranges). I stayed at the Kunming Cloudland hostel for 4 nights. It's rooms were cozy and the shared bathrooms all got fresh flowers ... read more

Lahu was the main theme of my newyear tour this year. I picked the Lancang region as they said the Lahu has a series of action during the Chinese newyear period. to avoided being stuck in other places as bus services were limited around newyear time, those were the specific moment greedy bus drivers willing to gave up overloaded their bus with human flesh！I arrived Lancang 2 days before new year. Thank god...the renovating work had been completed！the town is more tidy and less dusty. a new quarter had been created around the river side and seem like going to expand more in the future. it should provide more lodging choice on arrival Iater. Everyday seem like market day as newyear was near. people were shopping crazy, brough in more than they need. they argued for ... read more

After deciding to stay on the bus at Tiger Leaping Gorge we continued to drive through to Lijiang which added another two hours onto our day. We had visited Lijiang in 2005 so was familiar with the general layout of the city. It was however, like all Chinese cities we had previously visited, so much larger than we remembered. Lijiang has as it's backdrop the impressive slopes of Yulong Xue Shan, usually totally capped in ice and snow, but looking devoid of both when we arrived in the city. We had seen it's icy slopes on the opposite side of the mountain though on the bus trip earlier in the day. Lijiang's old town is the original capital of the Naxi people, a group of Tibetans who moved to this region of Yunnan in the thirteenth ... read more

Our bus trip (33 yuan each) from Dali was eventful. We passed by many weddings - at one stage the bride and groom tried to catch the bus but we were already over loaded. Another wedding we passed had a rather inebriated groom, half undressed staggering down the road, surrounded by other drunken men and trailed by his poor bride and her friends. The sad part was that they were all very young. We came close to having a collision - the bus braked suddenly and we were all thrown violently forward. We felt very vulnerable for the rest of the trip whenever we came close to other vehicles. The last bit of excitement was a drunk or drugged man, covered in blood, standing in the middle of the road attacking vehicles as they went past. ... read more