Return to Dali....

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Leaving Weishan by minibus (23 Yunnan each), we arrived on the outskirts of Xiaguan (new city, 18 kilometres south of the old Dali) an hour later. We passed many small workshops making the stone pieces for use as tomb entrances. It would have been a major task carrying the twenty or so pieces of grey stone to where ever they were needed as they looked extremely heavy! The bus dropped us off on the highway at the edge of the city where we caught a moto taxi (5 yuan) to the train station where we knew we would be able to find transport to Dali. You feel quite vulnerable in those tiny little motorbike taxi amidst the traffic, particularly when surrounded by larger buses on both sides! We were really shocked at how the city had grown since 2005 - there were many large apartment blocks and construction sites everywhere we looked.

We left immediately on a local bus (1.5 yuan each) and half an hour later we arrived at the West Gate in Dali. The old town (that is the area within the walls) covers an area of 3 square kilometres and is situated 2 kilometres from Er Hai (ear shaped) Lake which stretches 40 kilometres along the valley. Dali is situated at the base of the Cang Shan range of mountains which affords the city a picturesque backdrop. We were familiar with the layout of the old city as we spent a few days here in 2005 - then it was a laid back Western friendly place with few local tourists. How it had changed! The streets were literally thronged with Chinese tourists, and there was barely a Western tourist anywhere. We tried to find a guesthouse, owned by an Australian man, just outside the old town but gave up eventually and braved the crowds inside the walls. We booked into the closest guest house, the Four Seasons Youth Hostel (YHA) for 150 yuan a night - clean, good wifi but very hard beds! And the girl on the front desk was bemoaning how quiet Dali was....Thankfully we found a lovely cafe across the road - Sweet Tooth - run by deaf and dumb staff, with great coffee and cakes. It wasn't cheap though but it was peaceful.

We needed to book flights from Lijiang back to Kunming as we already had a flight from Kunming booked and had decided to book a connecting flight, mainly because of the distance getting back to Kunming from further north and also the fact that bus prices had risen considerably since our last visit. Factoring in time saved, taxi fares between stations etc if you got a cheap ticket it wasn't much more expensive. This proved harder to do than we expected and after getting no help from agencies advertised in our guide books we eventually found a lady who (with mime and written notes) was able to find the flight we wanted at the price we wanted to pay. However she had absolutely no idea how to type our names into the booking screen - which surprised us as she seemed to understand written English. We gave up in the end - it was just too hard. We couldn't book them online ourselves as they would only accept a Chinese credit card. Later on that evening another lady was on duty in the same office and we were able to get the flights booked (our written note was conveniently still on the desk) but somehow we ended up on a different airline to what we requested! Life as a tourist in China certainly has it's frustrating moments!

We wandered the streets for a short while at dusk but they were lined with dozens (hundreds) of shops all selling the same unattractive tourist tat. Thankfully we had no pressure put on us to buy - it was obvious that for the most part western tourists were just too much trouble and with the multitude of local tourists they really didn't have to make the effort. We ate that evening in a restaurant (Cafe de Jacks) we had frequented previously but again were given the distinct feeling that we weren't particularly welcome there. Next morning after a fabulous breakfast at Cafe 88 (highly recommended - their walnut and potato bread was some of the best bread we've ever eaten and the homemade raspberry jam was pretty good too) we moved across to Jade Roo (by chance after breakfast we passed a staff member in the street who gave us directions) where we passed a lazy day relaxing in their courtyard. No problem with the youth hostel but it was too full lounging young Chinese constantly on their phones who we fell over every time we wlkedin the entrance. Everybody here of all ages seems to be permanently attached to their phones - and they speak very loudly on them...

We did venture back into the old town late in the afternoon and wandered the back streets which were much quieter. We particularly enjoyed one street lined with food stalls and little boutique style shops that the local teenage entrepreneurs had set up. The shops were full of quirky little gift lines and homemade trendy clothes. We ate at Jade Emu (companion guesthouse to Roo) but the food wasn't brilliant. We booked a day tour next day with the guesthouse - a trip around Er Hai Lake. As we were leaving early the next morning we decided to eat breakfast at the hostel - it was ok but I missed the walnut bread! We had a great day out with the hostel though - good value at 90 yuan, including a tasty packed lunch. We spent the morning in the village of Xizhou, the most important Bai town in the area. The Bai houses are large houses, built around internal courtyards. All have very elaborate entrance gates - the Chinese in general are very good at entrance gates - and the houses are painted white and decorated with grey and black paintings. All have grey curved tile roofs. The traditional houses were mud covered bricks - today they tend to be cement. We were wandering whether the Chinese Government has insisted that any new houses be built in the traditional style or whether the Bai are just very proud of their heritage and build only in the old style because of this. They would not be cheap houses to build as they are very large, have at least one courtyard, all with ornately carved window shutters and door frames. We toured one of the old village houses where we saw a lady making cheese which was stretched onto bamboo frames to dry and then rolled onto sticks before being grilled. The soft fresh cheese tasted a bit like fresh mozzerella. The streets in Dali were lined with people grilling the cheese over charcoal fires. We tasted it grilled but didn't particularly like it. Maybe if we had tried it dipped in a rose flavoured syrup which they eat with it, we may have enjoyed it more. At the time we thought the dipping sauce was chilli flavoured.

We wandered the narrow cobbled streets of the village which didn't appear to have changed much at all and enjoyed the local pizza (filled with pork and onion) cooked in a tin under charcoal. We saw a lot of the elderly ladies in traditional dress selling produce at the market. The traditional clothes comprise of royal blue and black tunic tops and trousers won with embroidered sash belts and turban shaped hats with a tail of pink or white wool hanging like a tail from the back. The hats are heavily embroidered as well but the women cover them with scarves - I presume to keep them clean. For festival days a lot of silver jewellery is also worn - there was a lot of imitation Bai silver for sale in all the markets. I wonder how much of the heavy silver jewellery is still owned ( though I think the true Bai silver is not silver as we know it) - I guess much would have been sold to collectors years ago. The elderly women today all wear gold and jade earrings. As we walked the market streets we were amused to see the live chicken stall, next to the lady who killed them and plucked them - across the road from the BBQ'd chicken stall. Also we got a cheerful wave from a Chinese medicine practitioner who was talking to patients from this tiny surgery.

Our next stop was at a tie dye workshop where the royal blue and white tablecloths were made. I bought a few last trip and use them constantly and love them so had to purchase another. It is a traditional art where somehow the length of white fabric is twisted,then sewn tightly, before being boiled in indigo dye. The threads are then cut and the pattern revealed. After seven years of use the colours are still as bright as ever though I'm still pulling out loose threads occasionally still from the dyeing process. The people who owned the fabric workshop were building a new family courtyard house which they proudly showed us. It was enormous, being built in the traditional style and was obviously for more than one family. I had previously used the toilets there - trench toilet with no doors or running water so was amused to see the row of western style ceramic toilets lined up ready to be installed. Though the villages surrounding the lake are a lot bigger there is still plenty of shore line free and we spent a little time walking along it and watching the fishermen with their cone shaped nets and tiny wooden boats. We were rowed, by an elderly Bai lady, across to a tiny island with a small temple on it to eat our lunch. It was one of those places that looked better from the shore as when we got there we found the grounds surrounding it were used for evening food market and the ground was filthy with grease and charcoal remains, plus dirty trestle tables and rubbish. After another stop to feed the seagulls - the Chinese love these birds - we slowly made our way back, unfortunately through the edge of the new town (it was on the shore line). We did stop at Dali Beach in the new town where we watched some intrepid elderly men swimming (all attached to blow up fluro orange float balls) in the freezing waters of the lake. Anyway we had a really enjoyable day and after a lovely meal at Cafe 88 we headed to bed.

Next morning we were planning on visiting San Ta or the Three Pagodas, proud relics of Dali's past history and today symbols of the ancient city. The pagodas are three kilometres from Dali and are layered cream coloured pagodas curving upwards. The centre pagoda (Qianxun) is the most simply decorated one, with a square base, it's height is 69 meters and it is a century older then the two smaller octagonal pagodas. It was built in 850 when the region was a major Buddhist centre. They are very impressive from a distance as the green slopes of the Cang Shan Range behind them really accentuate them. Even more impressive is the very expensive, very wide and total extravagance of a road that leads from nowhere to the entrance of the complex. We decided to walk from the entrance down to the shores of Er Hai, leaving our visit to the pagodas to latter in the afternoon - hopefully to miss most of the Chinese tourists who were alighting from dozens of coaches in the car park. We walked the length of the road that went nowhere admiring the dozens of flower beds which edged it, all attractively filled with dead plants, before crossing the highway and heading off into the fields which fronted the lake. It took a lot longer than we anticipated as it's actually hard to follow any sort of straight path when you're walking along and round the edges of tiny fields. We eventually made it to a village but it wasn't on the shoreline - we ended up walking through a second village before we reached the water where we followed a path around the shore to the pier (an area we remembered from before), planning on taking one of the horse and cart taxis from there back to the temple. We enjoyed the walk immensely as we love walking through the fields in China. It immediately takes us back to 2005 and Guangshiui where we used to walk in the rice paddies nearly ever day of the twelve months we lived there.

At one stage a man invited us into his house and proudly showed off the new wall paintings he was in the middle of doing. When we first saw him he was busily painting white lines between all the besser blocks. The horse taxi driver wanted 200 yuan ($32) for the ride back which we laughingly refused before catching a taxi back to the pagodas for 20 yuan. In hindsight I actually don't think the horse and cart could cross the highway any more (they did in 2005 but it was nowhere near as busy then). After paying (121 yuan each) to get into the pagoda complex we wandered the site, now empty of virtually anybody, until closing time. It was an enormous complex with the three beautiful pagodas at the front and behind row upon row of brightly coloured enormous temples. We never thought we were going to reach the back of the grounds - I actually gave up before Jerry. One particular temple was strung with thousands of yellow and red ribbons which were hung on the trees and fences surrounding the temple. It looked very pretty in the late afternoon sunshine. However I doubt if any real worshipping is done at the site - it was just too big and too new. In fact I think it was all for show as there didn't appear to be much true spirituality around the temples. Only one (probably the one strung with ribbons) dated from the ninth century - the remainder were built in 2005. Having said that though it was worth paying the entrance fee to see the Three Pagodas up close and from all directions. They are very impressive. With sore feet - we had walked a long way that day - we caught a tuk tuk back to the old town for dinner before going back to our room to sort our bags yet again. Next day we were heading further north to another of the tiny tea horse villages of Shaxi, hopefully away from crowds and noise for a few days. However before we left we revisited a man's stall under one of the wall's arches where we purchased from him a few pieces of beautifully carved bone discs. We had watched him the day before carving, with tiny hand tools, intricate designs and shapes into these small disc as and selling them all for under 15 yuan a piece. So much work for such a small amount of money....

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