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Published: October 15th 2009
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goin to DaliOK, so obviously (or maybe not) I am not actually in Yunnan Province right now but sitting in relative comfort--on my butt numbing back-ache of a chair shifting from one unlady-like pose to another--at my computer in Sichuan Province. Since my topic today is about Yunnan Province however, I felt it a fitting pick for the map today. My not-Tibet trip turned out to be what I could boil down to a bus ride through Yunnan Province. Of course since the trip consisted of so much more that sitting on a bus (regardless of the fact that time-wise it maybe took up at least 1/3rd of the trip) I will try to elaborate. If one must be stuck on a giant made-for-tourists bus with 17 other people of various obnoxious personalities and quirks, then Yunnan Province can be one of the best and worst places to drice through for the same reason: its beauty. On one hand even if you decide you cannot stand to be around
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rice fields any of the other 17 people not only is the bus big enough for everyone to hog two seats, but the landscape is so beautiful that you would decide it was worth it in the end. On the other hand, everthing is so beautiful that you constantly want to stop the bus and escape to take non-blurry pictures without that frustrating dirst smuged piece of glass in the way. Happily to say, Yunnan was way worth it and I even liked the other 17 people in the bus (though there were a couple painful times when we were all a little delicate).
We spent our 8 or 9 days of traveling pretty evenly spread across the four places we visited: Kunming, Dali, Lijiang and Shangri-la. If you did a double take on the last name don be too suprised. Rather recently (in the past 10 yrs or so) one of these little towns in Yunnan suddenly became a big tourist hit when it was renamed Shangri-la and now it is high on the list for tourists (escpecially Chinese tourists). I don remember its old name unfortunately. Since the purpose of our trip was to learn more about the minority
ethnic groups (of which there are 56 in all of China) in China, all our guides were from different minority groups (we had a different guide each city we went to, our bus driver was the only thing that stayed the same): Yi, Bai, Naxi, Tibetan. I got to watch a couple dance/music performances connected to these minority groups and by the end of the trip I had fallen in love any number of times with the dancing men. The first performance was definitely the most exhilirating, escpecially since most of the men had free flowing locks longer than my own hair and they kept tossing their heads every which way as they banged the drums and leapt around the stage. I admitted later that though all of the men were "hot" while they danced, only a few remained so once they had stopped dancing. Similarly in Shangri-la I was only one of a number of the girls in my group who professed to be in love with some of the male dancers. Though it was a fascinating trip where I not only learned a little about about minority groups but also met foreigners from other places, and I made
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on a boat going to an island in Dali (one that was created as a result of a dam that was built a number of years ago) a couple good purchases along with a couple really bad ones...there were a couple things that dissapointed me a little. Well, it was mostly the touristy aspect of our trip that got to me after a while. It was great that such a trip was arranged (so I actually had something to do over the break) and in a group our size it would have been difficult to avoid doing so in a touristy fashion but it still left a slightly sour taste in my mouth. Though Im not sure how I would do it any differently (especially with my current lack of language), I would love to go back someday on my own terms.
Just a brief list of some of the places we went: -Stone Forest
-Tiger Leaping Gorge (3rd deepest in the world i think)
- Erhai Lake in Dali
-Three Pagodas in Dali
-Lijiang Old Town
-Black Dragon Lake in Lijiang
-Pudacuo Park, SHANGRI-LA
-Tibetan family visit
Though I could not really communicate much of anything with the bus driver he was a genial man and we all came to really like him by the end of the trip since he did such a
good job of taking us everywhere and he was a good and cautious driver. He also played his own selection of music for us on some of the longer trips which ranged anywhere from Chinese Pop songs to Michael Jackson. I hope to find some of those Chinese pop songs before I come back...I became rather attached to them after hearing them playing quietly in the background seeping into my subconscious....probably delivering some good communist subtle messages but since my Chinese is not that good it doesn really work on me. Speaking of songs, I got the chance to grab the tour guide mic at the front of the bus and sing Sitraka (a malagasy song) for everyone on the bus...and though my nerves clearly showed everyone still seemed to think that it sounded good on the mics tinney amplification. One of the adults (the mother of one of the girls on the trip who came specifically for this trip---an a bit of a nirse to boot) later really complimented me on my singing....one of the most genuine feeling compliments I have been able to accept so far...maybe because she had no prior connection to me and her compliment came
way after the fact (the day after we got back to Chengdu).
Though I am pretty good at falling asleep in some rather challenging situations I managed to fall out of conciousness a number of times on the bus (some of our 4-5 hour drives)...really a challenge when you consider the honking horn. One of the things that made our bus driver such a good one (in the sense of safely but as quickly as possible taking us to our destination) was his ability to weave around obsticles in the road (other cars, people, the occaisional yak). But of course his main weapon of choice is the horn which he honked any time he wanted to let people know he was passing if they wouldn go any faster, and at seemingly any other possible chance to let the mountains know our presence (or possibly to jolt any sleepers awake since thats exactly what it was capable of doing).
Though we were given plenty of warning that we would be in high altitude and should take precautions against getting altitude sickness we still managed to have two pukers by the time we reached Tiger leaping Gorge (on our way
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dried fish and similar water creatures to Shangri-La). Not sure if it was altitude sickness on their part though the fact that one of them was hung over fromt he night before coulnd have helped. We were able to laugh about it though in a fashion...neither of them were big complainers. When we got on the bus the next morning, Mugs (one of our adult sponsors/site directors) ceremonially presented the two buckets and a couple towles he had bought from a convenience store the night before in case problems persisted--I don think we had to use them though.
A Little Verbal Detour The day before we left one of the girls severly sprained her ankle but she sorta kept walking on it the whole next day but by the afternoon as we boarded the plane she was in severe pain. She was strictly told to stay off her foot (by our mother/nurse/sponsor) which made getting through the airports fun. We managed to get a wheelchair for her but in the next two airports we had to either wheel her around on a baggage cart and even a wheelie, spinny office chair at one point. One of the boys carried her a short distance from the
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leaving the buddhist temple tarmac to the shuttle bus. She got a piggy back ride back to the dorms...now she hobbles around with crutches not made with the users comfort in mind. Her injury has seriously cramped her style since she is a lot like Caroline and Peter in the active "What fun thing can we do next" attitude. My knowledge of Chengdu (from wandering and visiting places) is infantile compared to her. She has been good for me in that spending time with her forces me to get out a little more than I would otherwise...though recently that has not been easy not only because of her injury but because our schedules are considerably different. Still, I have not done too bad exploring a little on my own which I feel realitvely comfortable doing here despite my limited knowledge of Chinese (particularly aweful when put under pressure).
Back On Track in Yunnan, in High Altitude With A Couple of Pukers Though I certainly felt the altitude a couple of times I had to hike up a number of steps, I felt pretty good the whole trip through. The park we went to in Shangri-la was high enough that we even bought some
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incense burning oxygen tanks to go with us. Though I did not need to use them, I tried a couple of times just to see what it was like. Unfortunately every one else in the group was so busy passing around the tanks and sucking on the oxygen like junkies (or little kids presented with a novelty candy-- one girl even claimed the oxygen tasted like chocolate though i heartily disagree) that by the time I got to any of the tanks, they were empty. I was left trying fruitless, and looking foolish, trying to breath the oxygen and repetedly saying "I think its empty". I finally gave up and contented myself with breathing deeply of mountain firs, wet grasslands and yak poop.
Speaking of Yak, I got to ride/sit on one.....It was definitely for tourists but I threw all dignity and self-respect to the wind (as well as 50 kuai=$7.35 into someones moneybelt) for the chance to sit on a Yak for 5 minutes as a man lead the yak into the middle of the river then took pictures with my camera (all the while directing me on the next pose to make---horns like a yak, thumbs up, arms outstreched,
now grab the yaks horn...bal, bla, bla). Another man came up and took my picture with a more professional looking camera. I later found out that it was so they could offer to sell me a photo of myself on a Yak. I declined since I had the same picture on my own camera. This is not an uncommon practice, It happened a number of other times on the trip where someone offered to sell me my own photo (like walking into the Tibetan performance and being blinded by a camera flash as someone put one of those white scarves around my neck presented to visitors and the like). I later found out that the Yaks were actually Yak-Cow crossbreeds. Which means that not only are they sterile like mules, but probably more docile and better able to live at a lower altitude more comfortably than real Yaks. I never did figure out why they chose to have them lined up in the river (as picturesque as it was) waiting for people to pay to be truged through the glacial run-off to the middle of the river or to the artfully made waterfall for pictures. It doesn seem completely healthy
to the Yak-Cows.
Tibetan Family Encouters Strange Creatures Called American (Girls) We also made bloody fools of ourselves around animals in general on the trip. When we encoutered pigs wandering around the Tibetan village in Shangri-la you could gaurantee that at least three or four of the girls would be grabbing for their cameras and snapping multiple photos of the piglets and seeing how close they could get to them before they grunted and waddled off. There was a little human grunting going on in attempts to communicate with the piglets. I refrained from such undignified behavior only to fall into it much worse when we met cats in the home of the Tibetan family that we visited. We got to see their house and sat down to drink Yak butter tea and eat tsampa (barley flour mixed with yak butter tea, yak cheese and sugar until it becomes a dough of sorts). The moment we noticed the cats (hard to miss since one of them was very vocal about wanting in on the tsampa) I fell into meowing with the rest of the girls (though Im pretty sure even a couple of the boys had joined in by
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prayer wheel with pagoda in the background that time)...worse than most of them actually since I was convinced that my cat meow was actually pretty convincing. It took me a couple times of realizing how silly we must sound--especially to the Tibetan family that likely has a much more practical approach to pets than most Americans--before I stopped.
Yak-Butter Tea Its really impossible to describe yak-butter tea but one definitely notices the difference in tast from other dairy animals. The cheese was rather strong and sour (which I attest to hate) and yet i found myself with a sort of like for the tast...Id try the cheese and get a moment of a mix between and "ick" and just "weird". It would leave me curious wondering which it was and so Id try some more (constantly with the same results of course). When I was 2/3 of the way done drinking my tea, I dumped a bunch of flour in my bowl and proceeded to mix it into the remaining liquid with my hand. With a liberal coating of sugar, my otherwise bland tsampa went down very easily (the best Ive had so far out of the 3 times Ive tried to eat tsampa)...the added bonus
being that i got to make it.
What else to say.........I think thats all I have to say for now. I hope I have sufficiently satisfied any curiousity for the time being. Look forward to my next post (should not take too long since I am doing it right after posting this, before my arm falls off completely), a short exposé on Toilets.
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