Advertisement
Published: November 28th 2005
We left Kunming by bus for a four hour trip, 390 kilometres north west to Dali, along the famous Burma Road, built during the Japanese occupation of China. The four hour trip ended up taking 6 and half hours due to heavy fog and a lost passenger at the lunch stop. We stopped for lunch at a service area which had dozens of buses waiting - I presume the lost passenger boarded the wrong one - it certainly wouldn’t have been hard to do! After the usual arguing between staff and endless recounting of the buses’ passengers we eventually left, minus the passenger, only to hit a very thick patch of fog. Thankfully the driver slowed down as visibility was almost non existent. The country side was very scenic and the road wove through a succession of mountains passes with tiny villages, which were full of women wearing traditional dress, nestled in valleys. The population of Yunnan Province is made up of 50% ethnic groups so different traditional costumes are easy to see as you travel throughout the area. The ladies we saw were wearing trousers, blue tunic vests and a Mao style cap coloured beige. The houses were quite large
Typical Dali Architecture
This beautiful building was the local museum.and made of wood. From the eaves wooden fish were hung as a symbol of good luck.
We arrived in Xiaguan, also known as Dali City, late in the afternoon. We were headed however to the ancient town of Dali, half an hour away. We had to catch a local bus which we found eventually. By then it was raining lightly. We arrived in Dali and got off at the first stop which was at the city gate walls. It was really busy as the square in fron t of the gate was crowded with tour parties and we were immediately swarmed by touts trying to sell us accommadation and souvenirs. I had already booked a room from Kunming - all we had to do was find it! Pushing our way through the crowds we headed in through the gates of the city wall. Neither of us could believe how busy the place was! The streets were lined with souvenir shops and thronged with Chinese tour groups trailing around behind leaders holding flags on sticks. It was the most tourists we had seen since the Forbidden City in Beijing! After wandering around aimlessly looking for our hotel we found
a couple of western tourists who sent us off in the right direction. We commented on the crowds and they laughed and told us ‘This is quiet compared to Lijiang!’ Lijiang was next on our itinerary…
We found our hotel (right beside the second bus stop in Dali - if only we had stayed on the bus) but as we were so late arriving the only room they had with our name on it was dingy, damp and noisy. Luckily we bumped into a lady we had met in Yangshuo who recommended another hotel nearby. This hotel was in an area of Dali known as Foreigners Street and it was much quieter then the middle of the city. The hotel was very comfortable and clean and we were happy to pay 110 yuan a night, less then AUD $20. It included free use of their washing machine! The hotel was very close to the city wall and we had a great view of the 4000 metre high Jade Green mountain behind the city. We set off to explore the surrounding streets and found a great restaurant, with fabulous food, fast internet connections and great music (mostly jazz and world
music). It became our ‘home’ for the rest of the days we spent in Dali. We liked the feeling of space in the cafe as it had high ceilings and big glass windows to watch the world go by. The staff were very friendly and we found out later that most of them worked there for no money. They were tourism students and came to the restaurant for two month periods to improve their service skills and English.
The ethnic group who live in this area are the Bai people. The women are very pretty and their beauty is highlighted by their traditional costume. The most stiking part of the costume is the headdress which is like a solid crown, heavily embroidered and hung with fringes. The costume is comprised of white trousers and shirt, the edges of which are embroidered with flowers, birds and butterflies. They wear a pink tunic over the top which is tied with an embroidered belt.
We also saw many women at the markets wearing a traditional costume of a green outfit worn with a pink tunic covered in a lot of sequins and gold embroidery, plus a black scarf headdress. Many of the
Men fishing with 5 metre long bamboo poles.
These men were fishing along the edge of Er Hai Lake in Dali. ethnic local women also wear handmade embroidered fabric shoes. I would have loved to take more photographs of the costumes but they really didn’t like having cameras around them. Our first day in Dali took us to the nearby lake, Er Hai Lake, which is 250 sq kilometers in size. It is a 50 minute walk from Dali but as it had started to rain lightly we caught a local taxi - a horse and cart. There were dozens of these outside the city walls and they were widely used by the local people. We saw them regularly on the main roads loaded with villagers coming home from the markets. Jerry and I didn’t use them on the main roads but enjoyed the rides locally that we had in them. The lake side area was busy with people fishing and enjoying meals in tiny shore side cafes. There were many ferry boats to take locals and tourists to the many villages on the other side of the lake. We had already decided to visit the villages on the other side via local buses and had planned to do that next day. After wandering around the area we caught the same
taxi back to Dali. We had to wait for the owner to reshoe his horse. By then it was raining and unfortunately that was to be a regular occurrence over our next three weeks in Yunnan. I guess we couldn't expect anything else as we were traveling in the monsoon period.
Dali became our favourite spot, outside of the Tibetan Grasslands on our holiday. We loved it - it had plenty of good western food, was very relaxed and though the area was well on the tourist trail we found plenty of places to get away from other people. The area was beautiful and though we didn’t see the top of the mountain range often it was spectacular even covered with clouds. Once we became familiar with the layout of the city we spent many hours exploring the narrow cobbled backstreets. There were really only half a dozen streets which were covered with tourists and it was very easy to find local areas to explore. However we did enjoy browsing through some of the shops and thought the prices, once you had bargained a bit, very cheap. We bought some things, mainly embroidery to frame upon our return to
Buying fruit in Dali
Note the beautiful embroidered shoes! Australia.
Our second day in Dali we decided to visit the market in Yousuo which is the largest market in Yunnan. It is held every five days and on this particular day it fell on the same day as the Shaping markets. The markets at Shaping are the ones that tourists usually visit and many buses go from Dali to Shaping. Yousuo was in the mountains and was a 1 and half hour bus trip away. We found the correct bus which left from a very muddy bus park outside the city walls. The trip followed the mountain range and was along minor roads, not the main highway. On the bus we met a young Chinese uni student who was visiting a town on the way. Jerry and he were having a great conversation when the young man asked why we were in China. Jerry said that we were English teachers here - he looked shocked and then said ‘if I had known that you were English teachers I would not have spoken to you as my English is very bad’. Such a typical response - and we could barely get him to utter a word for the rest
Embroidered apron ties.
These pieces are attached to the aprons the women wear - they sew one end to their aprons and then thread tie pulls to the other end to fix the aprons around their waist. of the trip.
The market in Yousuo was amazing. There were no tourists there (probably because of the clash of days with the Shaping markets which were much easier to get to from Dali, and much closer) and we had a fabulous time wandering through the stalls. It was however very wet and muddy which did spoil it a little. The locals were covered in sheets of plastic, fertilizer bags or the local raincoat - a heavy cape made from rush worn with a wide conical hat. There were stalls filled with every imaginable item. There were lots of colourful vegetables, meats, chillie powder and plastic, tin and basket ware plus many stalls selling ready made traditional clothes. We watched roadside barbers cutting hair and roadside dentists pulling teeth! It was incredibly busy and though we drew some stares most people were just too busy to take much notice of us. It was difficult to pick way around the puddles between the stalls and a constant battle with umbrellas, which are widely used throughout China, rain or shine. We spent about three hours at the market before the mud and rain got the better of us. We caught another
Market day in the rain!
This market was at Yousuo, a small village in the mountains north oF Dali. bus back to Dali the whole area was becoming even busier - we got caught up in traffic jam of horses, mini buses and motorcycle taxis leaving the town.
Next day we caught another bus to Xizhou, another old town 18 klms north of Dali. We left the bus at the highway and walked to the town from there. Xizhou is renowned for its’ architecture. Dali also has similar architecture but there is a lot more of the original Bai mansions in Xizhou. Ninety of these large courtyard houses can be found there. They are painted white with coloured pictures on the walls and very ornate eaves over the gates surrounding the courtyard. We explored the long main street which was very traditional and then decided to walk to the lake - we thought that the village was lakeside but the map was deceptive. We had a long walk through the rice fields - the rice was very long and nearly ready to be harvested - before we came to another village. This village was even older and was full of cobbled streets. Whilst walking through the village we were asked into a house which was full of old
Yunnan raincoats.
We saw these being used often, particularly in the fields. They would have been good protection from the rain when they were bending over planting etc. Bai ladies with amazing wrinkled faces who were wearing blue tunics and head scarves and lots of green jade jewellery. We spent a little time with them - I couldn’t get away easily as one of them had an iron grip on my hand! No idea what they were saying to us though! We did eventually find the lake shore where we watched the local fishermen for a while. We walked back into the village where we caught a horse taxi back to Xizhou as it was raining - again - quite heavily.
Next day we spent the day wandering the streets within the city. We found an amazing Catholic church and visited the museum. I loved looking at the food displays outside the many street restaurants - it was full of colour and contrast. We walked through the mud to the Three Pagodas which were outside the city walls. They are a very impressive group of pagodas built in 850 which makes them some of the oldest standing structures in south west China. The tallest of the 3 has 16 tiers and reaches a height of 70 metres. To reach the pagodas we walked down streets full of
Amazing face!
This lady was selling tiny red berries from a bag over her shoulder. marble workshops - the streaky grey marble mined here is inlaid into a lot of the Chinese furniture sold all over the world. However it started to rain very heavily as soon as we arrived at the pagodas so we turned back. By the time we walked back to the street near our hotel we were wet and the streets were flowing like rivers. It took a long time for the roads to dry out! The streets in the city were lined with open gutters of water and you really had to watch where you were going as it would have been easy to step into them. In the morning you would see a lot of people in the side streets washing their clothes, dishes and themselves in them.
Our evenings in Dali were spent mainly at Cafe de Jack though we did also try a few other eateries out. Whilst at Jacks one night we got into conversation with a young American couple, Shannon and Michael, who were on a 12 month honeymoon around the world. They were a lovely couple who we were to spend more time with over the next couple of weeks. We had previously
noticed them in Yangshuo - they were also guests at the hotel we stayed at in Yangshuo but we hadn’t spoken to them there. After six nights in Dali we left by bus to go further north to Lijiang. From there we planned on traveling to Tiger Leaping Gorge and maybe further north into the Tibetan area close to the border of Tibet of China. The town we hoped to visit was Zhongdian or as it is known today - Shangrila We had really enjoyed our stay in Dali and planned to spend at least one more night there on our return trip to Kunming
Advertisement
Tot: 0.082s; Tpl: 0.02s; cc: 13; qc: 27; dbt: 0.0384s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Pam Crouch
non-member comment
Photography - excellent
Linese, Many thanks for your studio class photography - we certainly will never see any of these in reality so you have done us a wonderful job in presenting them for us - love your text as well. Hope you and Jerry are well - we are all well here thank you.