Xi Shan or Western Hills

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Xi Shan, or "The Western Hills Scenic Area" stretches along steep (straight up and down) cliffs near Kunming. There are giant pines and many ancient temples. Old narrow pathways, all built along rising slopes, twist around to places surrounded by ancient trees and shrubs. Covered stone corridors connect each pavilion and room, so one has the feeling of coming indoors and outdoors, again and again. The whole place seems to reflect a combination of Buddhism and Taoism. It took 72 years for stonecutters and artisans to build this hillside combination of grottoes, walkways, pavillions and mansions, during the Qing Dynasty, from 1782 to 1854.

To get there our guide took us in our bus up an extremely narrow and winding road, filled with foot, bicycle and car traffic, for about 5 km (yes everything here is measured in metric, so get used to it!) till we arrived at a chair lift and were hoisted up over the shores of Lake Dian to the summit. The view, of the lake and Kunming in the background, was spectacular.

But then it was time to go down, and the walkways were terribly steep, and so narrow in several places that only one person could pass at a time, and suddenly all those hoards of people we had passed in our bus, Chinese people who had been walking up the hill, who were young and spry, were crowded together there and the traffic was two-way!

I would have enjoyed this amazing place much more if it had not been so crowded, and if I had not been so concerned about where to place my next footstep, and afraid of falling behind my group. Some fit older Chinese women gave me "thumbs up" and gestured to suggest I was doing great holding my own, which was quite heartening. It was an amazing and beautiful place. At a certain point Bob and I gladly took the "electric car" (those elongated golf carts one sees in airports) down the last part of the mountainside which was lined with vendors, stopping only to buy one little stone frog. The return bus trip also was harrowing, seeing the bikers and pedestrians in front of our bus scatter just in time. A day to remember!

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