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Published: November 18th 2010
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Three happy characters
These are the three kids we literally ran into coming around a corner in the town by the lake. They thought the encounter was quite amusing. I often wonder what the lives of kids like these will be like and China continues to evolve. The weekend Saturday was supposed to start slowly but there were some really weird noises very early in the morning. I may be a city boy but it sounded like pigs to me. Turned out it was. The family next door butchered a huge pig in the courtyard below our room. We had quite the view of the operation. The butcher was a real craftsman and very particular about his job. When he was finished and they carted the sections of pig away, the clean-up was meticulous. When everyone was gone you would never have guessed what had gone on that morning. But we have pictures!
This excitement made breakfast a bit later than usual but not late enough to deter Linda and Dianne from setting out on the trip to XiZhou that Dianne wrote about in the last blog entry.
Peter's day off While they were out and about, I spent the time updating my notes and cleaning up some computer files I had been accumulating. I got to eat what turned out to me my favourite meal in Dali: the Sleepy Fish’s Chicken Pasta. Yeah, yeah, I could get Chicken Pasta anywhere…. but this was
Home suite home
This shot of our roof top deck was taken from the door to our room. The windown is in Linda's room. From here we got the great views of the Sleepy Fish's garden on one side and the family courtyard on the other. really good. For exercise, I took a walk around the outside of what remains of the old wall.
The four gates have been restored to their old glory, more or less. They make for an interesting entry into town. When I got to the South Gate, I decided to go inside the walls to see if I could climb up to the walkway. As I walked toward the entrance, two soldiers calmly stepped into the entrance. Hmmmmm. One just shook his head slowly from side to side. Apparently I couldn't go this way. I showed him the map, pointing to the South Gate. He just pointed further down the wall. I thanked him and continued. I found the real South Gate which was crawling with tourists. This is the tourist entry into town and there were many busses in the parking lot. Later I discovered the area I was trying to enter was a secure military installation!
The wall on the south and west sides of town are accessible. I climbed up to the walkway at the south gate and headed for the west gate. Great views of the town and even the lake. The only problem was
Men at work
We were still in bed when the action started so by the time we got outside the butcher was well into his work. that just before the west gate, the wall walk stopped. No stairs. Hmmmm. Some Chinese tourists laughed when they saw my predicament. They pointed and pantomimed where I had to go: back where I had started. They were laughing because they had just realized they had to do the same return journey! I stopped for a cappuccino at Café de Jack and enjoyed some quiet time with my book.
When I got back, Dianne and Linda had just returned. Dianne wanted to do the wall tour too so off we went. I was able to use knowledge gained on my previous trip to shorten the trip. On our way back we stopped for cappuccinos at the German bakery. Life is tough.
Sunday was supposed to be a travel day but since our flight to ChongQing had been cancelled, we were “stuck” in Dali for another day. During one of our walks, we had noticed on one of the city maps posted all around the tourist areas that there was a Catholic Church in town. We searched it out and joined a group of locals and about 12-15 other tourists for Sunday Mass. It was great to share this
Apparently not just tourists found this interesting
The action drew quite a crowd even though this was going on in their backyard, not out in public. time with strangers even if we couldn’t share the language. Speaking of not sharing a language, when the priest came out to talk to us after Mass, he spoke French! As did all the other tourists, including Linda. Our high school French didn’t quite stand up to the test.
After lunch, Dianne and I decided to strike off across country to see if we could find one of the villages on the lake. It was supposed to be less than two kilometres. How lost could we get? We had reasonable verbal directions from our hosts so off we went. Along the highway for a short distance then follow the nice paved road that heads off towards the lake. Simple. Except the road petered out (no pun intended) several hundred meters from the highway. Hmmmm . We guessed we should just follow the beaten track the farmers use to access their fields. We continued towards the lake passing through fields in different stages of harvesting. Some of the pictures came from this trip and some from Linda and Dianne’s adventure the day before. The fields looked deserted but as we worked our way along the track we encountered lots of
To market, to market to sell a fat pig...
The head was carried off on a platter. We have had this delicacy at a wedding so I am sure someone was really happy. The rest was treated a bit more casually. people working away. Tough, mainly manual labor.
Eventually we came to the old gate for the ancient town. We were really coming into town by the back door. The streets in this part of town were in pretty bad shape, partly due to the recent rains. We finally found the old “centre” of town, a few stores and lots of old timers sitting outside watching the world go by. Based on the stares we received, not too many tourists come this way. We eventually found the lake and the walkway along the shore. We followed it for a while and discovered where the real tourists hang out. There was a huge traffic jam as cars were trying to pick up and drop off people at the ferry terminal for travel across the lake. Lots of tour buses were disgorging their loads into the area. It was pretty crowded.
After a few minutes, we decided we had had enough of crowds and retraced out footsteps. We tried to find the road on the other side of town but things seemed to be getting more and more confusing. Just as we turned one corner, three kids came running around it,
Calm after the storm
OK, this was actually taken the day before the pig operation. But it looked just like this after they all left. Dianne liked the picture of the gardens. not realizing we were coming. We all jumped at the surprise of the encounter and had a good laugh. They were very happy to have their picture taken. We did find our way back to the old gate and found a new beaten path to wind our way back to Dali. Linda had taken a nap then a bus to the same place we had been so we had something to compare notes about during our Happy Hour.
Our last supper on our Chinese Holiday was at Stella’s Pizza! It is owned by the same fellow who owns Café de Jack. Pizza is everywhere in China. This guy was also the developer of the building where our hotel is located. He is reportedly not yet 40 and started Café de Jack 20 years ago. Lots of entrepreneurs in China.
What's next? Monday was a travel day and we came home with some great memories. Now the long haul until Winter Vacation in January. Things will be pretty quiet. If you don’t count our weekend in Dalian to celebrate Diwali and my birthday, Christmas weekend in KaiFaQu and the three day New Year’s weekend in Shanghai. Dianne does
Catholic Church, Chinese style
We believe this building was built in the 1920s although Catholicism was introduced in the area in the 1870s. The statues inside showed a definite western influence but the architecture showed the influence of the local Bai culture. manage to fit in a lot of work around these trips. I manage to do a bunch of support work such as PowerPoint shows, Excel spreadsheets and a few Word documents. Life is never dull. As I publish this entry, there are only 60 days until we leave for Winter Break in Canada (I built a spreadsheet to automatically calculate important information like this).
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