Mangshi and surrounding

---

Mangshi is the capital town of Luxi County, with an airport offered a quick entry point into Dehong Prefecture. The town spread wide on the flat valley with a small hill on the southeast end where stood the huge Dajinta Pagoda. Beside Han, the area live mostly Dai and Deang, couple of temples hidden inside the local living quarter offered a quiet hideout during the day, also a good place for meal as there are plenty of Dai homestyle restaurants scattered around the area. Sapi is the local speciality sneak(dish) in Dehong region, you could find it anywhere within the Prefecture. Sapi is a cold dish served with rice noodle and meat from different part of a buffalo, on the side it came with the sauce max from minced beef and liver paste with different spicies. There are 2 choice of sauce, the sour favour or bitter favour, the sour sauce made with fresh lemon juice, but the bitter taste came from the extract of the buffalo intestine, I like both!
In between festival schedule I of course visit some of the local market, Padi came with a surprise, I didn't expected to find any minority scene there as it was right at the main Mangshi-Ruili road, with the rainy weather I didn't even brought along my camera, luckily my phone work ok with snap-shot. quite a lot of Deang show up in Padi market. The bus journey to Mengga market offered rather pretty scenery on the back country road. The market was busy with great atmosphere, beside the Dai, Deang filled up the whole costume scene with their colour! The tight long sleeve jacket with 2 row of silver buttons on front collar, the jacket also decorated with many fluffy feather ball in different colour. Their skirt is typical lungee style in black and red stripe. headdress could be in 2 style most women wrap the black turban and tied with 2 ends split out from both side of their head like a swallow, some younger girl wrap their head with more colourful turban and left a trail of strings on the back of their head. There also one woman although has the same lungee skirt but wear jacket in green colour, and the headdress made mostly with glass beads, they could be came from Burma as I remember I saw similar dress couple years ago in Zhongshan market more close to the Burmese border.

note
bus Mangshi to Mengga 13 yuan
citybus Mangshi to Padi 4 yuan

---