China

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China

A Chinese Introduction

The plane taxi to our gate at the Beijing terminal was a pitch-perfect introduction. Helaine and I were en route from Bangkok and were originally scheduled to stay overnight in Hong Kong and fly to Beijing the next morning, where we would meet up with Anne and McCall for our trip through China. We instead hopped an earlier flight in Hong Kong and planned to just find a hotel near the Beijing airport when we arrived. Our flight arrived around 11:00 p.m. and we were hoping to make it to the hotel by midnight for a decent night's rest before starting our tour the following morning. Those hopes were quickly dashed as the bewildering plane taxi to the gate began. The taxi, along myriad runways in multiple directions, took nearly 40 minutes, constantly moving - it was unlike any airport arrival I’d ever experienced. Most perplexing of all, the majority of that time consisted of moving in a straight line for about 300 yards before making a 180 degree turn and heading back in the direction from where we had just come. Given the time expended, I thought perhaps we were taxying into downtown Beijing direct from the runway, but given the path we’d followed it was evident we were going nowhere. The Chinese passengers didn't seem to be the least bit phased, performing their usual ritual of snatching their bags down and jostling towards the front before the plane comes to a stop. Some melodious jazz tune blared overhead, as if its easy rhythm could make you forget your infuriation over the desultory path of the plane. Helaine and I both felt we were part of some bizarre social experiment. This was only the beginning, and after being harried by airport officials at immigration to stand in an exact single file line and struggling to communicate our desire for a hotel nearby, we finally left the airport around 1:30 a.m. It was fitting prep for travel in China. Exploring the land of the dragon is an indirect process at best, and most often the path is circuitous, frustrating, at times completely mind-boggling. But the rewards in a country of such staggering size and diversity are equally incredible, and traveling through China is a remarkably unique experience.

Beijing

Our room for the first night was at the “4-star” Sino-Swiss hotel near the airport. Exasperated by airport lines and the late hour, we just wanted somewhere close and comfortable. Downtown Beijing is almost an hour's drive from the airport. Let’s just say that the Sino addition did not go well for the Swiss. The hotel was a complete shithole, even though we were generously given the suite (the only room available, of course, for almost double price). After finally getting to sleep around 2 am, we were woken an hour and a half later by the sound of high winds buffeting the building. Apparently it was one of the powerful dust storms that blow down from the Gobi desert to the north. Wonderful. Then came the shocking 4:30 a.m. sunrise that lit up our room like midday. Needless to say, it was with very little sleep that we met our guide, Flora, around 8:30 a.m. and headed to central Beijing to meet Anne and McCall at the hotel we had booked for the next couple of nights.

It was great to see Anne and McCall after a couple of months on the road, and we caught up with them and dropped our things off in their room before leaving for our city tour. The stiff winds continued as we explored Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, but blue sky was temporarily visible. The Forbidden City was interesting, but it also contained numerous examples of the mystifying Chinese habit of repainting and retouching historic monuments. Half of the buildings we toured during our trip seemed to have been repainted within the last six months. It’s like someone just lathered the Parthenon in a fresh coat of white paint, not exactly my idea of an improvement.

In the afternoon we attended an acrobatic performance. While we were a little skeptical as we walked into the theatre (and because we were pretty certain Flora had just charged us triple the normal price for this little add-on), I have to admit that it was incredible. There were too many shocking stunts to chronicle here, but the variety of coordination and dexterity displayed were unbelievable.

Chinaspeak

While these first Beijing excursions provided a nice entree to the middle kingdom, it was Flora, our guide, who handed us the most insightful introduction to China. The Chinaspeak began within the first 5 minutes of our meeting her. As we began discussing the upcoming Olympic games in Beijing, she began by quickly rebuffing all rumors of air pollution in Beijing. The ambient air was perfectly clean, and the limpid blue that happened to be present that day was seldom absent. I had read that this was a standard misrepresentation by Chinese guides, and it had no doubt been highly encouraged in preparation for the games. Alas, the clear sky did not last, and instead a thick smoky haze settled in across the city, reaching its worst point on our last day. On that particular day, Flora greeted me in the hotel with a gratuitous weather report (mostly cloudy) and sought to legitimize it with the news that there was a major front moving through, including floods in the south of the country. The reason for her meteorological observations was evident as soon as we stepped outside. Horrific smog, haze, air pollution, call it what you want, but there wasn’t a single cloud in the sky.

But it was not this sort of intentional deception that was disturbing. We had been fully prepared for that. It was the systematic miseducation underlying her other statements that were most unsettling. At her announcement of “the greatly revered hero Chairman Mao” in the middle of Tiananmen Square, we managed to stifle a laugh. Once inside the Forbidden City, as she explained why a particular gilded urn had the outside layer of gold scraped off of it, she mentioned the “Allied Occupation” by the British and Americans at the turn of the 20th century. Since the date she mentioned was pre-WWI (not that an occupation of China occurred at that time either), I asked if she was referring to the Boxer Rebellion, where a coalition force of several countries landed in mainland China in response to the killing of hundreds of foreigners and diplomats by a xenophobic group known as the "Boxers". Blank stare. No response.

Flora's uniquely Chinese interpretations weren't limited to recent history. One of the things I had most looked forward to in Beijing was exploring the hutongs of the old city. These are the tangled old warrens lining narrow alleyways through much of the city that were built during the the time that the Mongols ruled over most of present-day China. Beijing was completely subdued by the hordes from the north. Hutong comes from a Mongolian word, meaning “water well”. Flora acknowledged as much (the linguistic origin) on our tour, but then proceeded to tell us how this name came about at a time of Chinese history during which many Mongolian immigrants (read: conquerors) had lived in the city in friendly co-habitation with the Chinese rulers and residents (read: unacknowledged domination and occupation by the Mongolian hordes). I was shocked at the outright denial, but the disturbing part was that just like the “Allied Occupation” story, she was not purposefully deceiving us. She was repeating what she had learned from history books, much the same as I might repeat the details of the Revolutionary War that I had learned in middle school. Of course every country has a certain bias built into his history, but she was repeating to every tourist that came along histories vastly different from that shared by every one else in the world. She simply didn’t know another version; thus, it was pointless to refute her. I at least felt compelled to remark what a shame it was that the government had chosen to completely remodel (complete with colorless, concrete block facades) all of the hutongs in the area we were touring since it was closest to the Olympic venues and the Forbidden City. Blank stare. No response. The hutongs we saw were deprived of most of the unique characteristics that had drawn us to see them in the first place, all in the name of improvement and progress in preparation for the Olympic games. Of course, these homes actually fared pretty well; they weren’t among the huge number that had been razed earlier in preparation for the games.

The Great Wall - Jinshanling to Simatai

The next chapter of our frustrations with Flora came with the battle to see the section of the Great Wall from Jinshanling to Simatai. We had changed up the normal itinerary when we booked the trip and specifically requested a visit to this less visited section of the wall, which included an option for a 10km hike along a very scenic section. Within minutes of reviewing our itinerary (no doubt the same as what she had previously seen), Flora began a campaign to convince us that we should instead visit the nearby heavily touristed section and then spend some time exploring shops in another part of town later in the day. As we rejected her suggestion, she resorted to more subtler methods, including guilting us into skipping it ("When I visit a place, I really like to see the culture and the people, not just the scenery . . . .") and lying about the driving distance from Beijing and the hiking time. I had researched it beforehand, so I knew her claims that we would have to leave Beijing at 5 a.m. and not return until 10 p.m. were simply lies. We finally told her that we refused to go to the other section and were doing the hike, regardless of what she said. She pouted in stunned silence for the ride back to our hotel, which was actually fine - a precious half hour without Chinaspeak was amazingly refreshing.

The Great Wall is one of those famed sights that lives up to all of the hype. In fact it far exceeds it. The section around Jianshanling was incredible, with the weathered ramparts of the wall riding the surrounding hills in both directions as far as you can see. We caught the world’s slowest cable car to the top and took a few group pictures before Helaine, McCall and I left on the 10km hike to Simatai, where we would meet up with Anne, Flora and our driver 4 or 5 hours later. The length of the hike allowed us to leave most of the crowds behind, and walking the wall from watchtower to watchtower, through fully reconstructed to completely crumbling sections, was one of the most unique hikes I’ve ever done. It was strenuous, especially considering the fact that much of the distance involves long flights of stone steps to a hilltop watchtower, before an abrupt plunge into the adjacent valley. We sidestepped the touts lurking in each tower and reached the Simatai section early afternoon. I hiked a little further west, reaching a section of the wall that is much more eroded and completely blocked off at the 12th watchtower, where the wall becomes a narrow smattering of stones climbing a 45 degree slope with a thousand foot precipice a few feet to its right side. It was getting late in the day, so I headed back to meet up with Helaine, and we took the zip line down from the Simatai entrance of the wall. The cable stretches over a large reservoir below the wall and loses about 700 feet in elevation over several hundred yards, making for an exciting ride down to the parking area below. Helaine is deathly afraid of heights, which led to much hilarity on the platform. We were the last people to come up for the ride down, and I convinced Helaine to do the tandem zip with both of our harnesses connected to the same carabiner. But when the time came she couldn’t bring herself to step off of the platform, so, much to the amusement of the woman operating the line, the 1st stage of our zip line ride involved me hanging off the edge of the platform as I tried to drag Helaine off of it, while she clung to a metal pole at the edge. I finally succeeded, although Helaine didn’t see much of the zip line tour with her head buried in my chest most of the way. We made it to the parking lot and headed back to Beijing to get packed for our flight to Xian the next morning.

Xian

Mary, our guide for Xian, was a welcome change - candid and full of information, she was one of the main highlights of our couple of days in Xian. And she was at least more ambivalent about the Chinese interpretations of history. On the ride in she asked if we knew the difference between Beijing and Peking, the current and former names of the capital. I said that I thought Peking was the original name of the city in Mandarin, and that Beijing was the pinyin (Latin) translation. The pinyin alphabet was almost adopted by the Communists at one point, as it was claimed it would modernize the largely inefficient use of Chinese characters. The decision was later abandoned, and the Chinese characters are now clearly here to stay. Mary listened to my explanation and diplomatically said she wouldn’t refute my “version”, but that she had a totally different story. She then went on to tell a convoluted tale of the origin of Beijing that involved it being a mispronunciation of the city’s name by certain minorities in the north. Strangely the original name they had for the city had very little similarity to Beijing, except for the letter B. My reaction: Blank stare. No response. I had read the Mandarin/pinyin explanation in our Lonely Planet and in a novel I was reading (and reconfirmed it with multiple internet searches after hearing Mary's description).

Xian, considered by many the cultural epicenter of ancient Chinese civilization, is now a huge cosmopolitan city, with around 8 million people populating the city and surrounding areas. It does retain some of its ancient character, if only because it is one of the only cities in China that is still surrounded by the old city wall. Xian was the capital under 13 dynasties and the eastern end of the Silk Road, but it is most famous for the thousands of terra cotta warriors which were found buried here by a peasant in 1974. The life-sized warriors were built to accompany the emperor Qin Shi Huang in the afterlife and included thousands of soldiers, individual weapons for each (later looted during a peasant revolt) and bronze chariots in the vast mausoleum. The features of the terra cotta warriors is remarkably human, and some claim that no face is exactly the same as another for the reason that they were each modeled after real people in the emperor's army. We spent a few hours exploring the excavated tombs outside of town; there are thousands more soldiers still waiting to be unearthed.

We also spent an afternoon exploring the large Muslim quarter of the city, where we visited the Great Mosque. We also went to the Big Goose Pagoda in the center of town. Mary emphasized many of the differences between Xian and Beijing, and it was clear that there is an ongoing debate between the denizens of the two cities as tow which is the true heart of Chinese culture. Xian seemed much more cosmopolitan than Beijing, in great part due to its location as a trading center on one end of the Silk Road and the resulting diversity of its population. We really enjoyed the people we met there, especially Mary. On the last day McCall and I decided to bike the full city wall. It was a great way to see the city, the only downside being we both felt like we had just chain-smoked a hundred cigarettes during the hour and a half it took to circle the ramparts. The level of the pollution was disconcerting, and it was supposedly much better than in Beijing. In that short time we both left with sore throats and felt like we had a minor cold the following morning. It’s difficult to imagine the health ramifications of everyday living in large cities in China.

On our last night Mary took us to a local restaurant to enjoy a dumpling feast, dumplings being one of the main specialties of Xian. There was a bewildering variety of fillings, from shrimp to vegetables and pork, all in a variety of shapes and sizes. Most were pretty tasty, which is very uncharacteristic of Chinese fare. Several were more typically Chinese in that they were almost inedible. After eating one that Anne and McCall had refused, I realized that there was a faint resemblance to something I had tasted before. And then I realized: it was a spam dumpling, the distinct flavor was none other than potted meat. I almost spit it out in my hand.

$50 Espresso

A novel I was reading while we were in Xian quoted an old Chinese proverb that says, “We can always fool a foreigner.” After our brief time in two large cities of China, we were certainly not strangers to this sentiment. In Beijing, we continually had the feeling that we were paying triple and quadruple price for things, and both our guides were full of offers for add-ons to the trip, whereby they surely received some cut. Our "last available" room at the Sino-Swiss was a perfect example. In Beijing Flora had convinced us to pay for a “special authentic hutong tour", which turned out to be neither. It cost about five times what they normally went for. As we waited on the pedicabs to arrive, we watched her walk around the corner and hire two at the normal price. When we expected them to at least extend the normal 20 minute ride, they refused to go any further. Afterwards, seeing we were a little chagrined, Flora enlightened us once more with the revelation that our two drivers were evacuees from the earthquake in Sichuan province, which had occurred a few weeks earlier. Perhaps the most frustrating thing about the half-lies and mild deceptions was that they required on the part of the teller an underlying assumption that you were a complete idiot. And if you protested at all, their perfect understanding of English suddenly became rather spotty.

While we all experienced this old proverb in subtle ways throughout the trip, unfortunately it was McCall who saw it in its rawest form. As we were at the Xian airport for an early departure to Guilin, she and I were both trying to find coffee in the airport. We almost gave up as we reached the gate, but McCall headed off to the other end of the terminal to see what she could find. We only had about 20 minutes before our flight boarded, and Anne, Helaine and I waited at the gate. About 10 minutes later, McCall returned to ask Anne for a little more cash, since there wasn't an ATM in the airport. I was reading and didn’t really pay attention to the amount, but Helaine pointed out a few minutes later that she just asked Anne for 300 yuan, or approximately 50 US dollars. We thought that was a little strange, but assumed she had found some souvenirs, maybe a couple of bronze terra cotta warriors. A few minutes later, just as they had announced that our plane was boarding, McCall came back, accompanied by a woman carrying two espressos. Very exceptional service for an airport coffee stand. I was just thankful for the coffee and we were rushed to get on the plane, so we didn't have time to ask McCall about the money until we were on the plane. As we were heading down to the plane, Helaine asked McCall how much she had paid for the espressos - as she told us "300 yuan", the American equivalent amount dawned on her at about the same time. That’s right, $50 for two espressos. It was unbelievable - who would even be brazen enough to throw $50 out there as the price? At least they were doubles.

Yangshuo

After leaving Xian the character of our trip changed entirely, and this is in large part a testament to the incredible size, and thus diversity, of China. Hiking the Great Wall was incredible, and we all enjoyed the warriors and the culture of Xian, but the large cities of China were not what we really came to see. We spent most of the next week and a half amid stunning landscapes and different ethnic minorities in a fascinating tour that included parts of Guangxi and Yunnan provinces.

We arrived in Guilin and met our guide Amanda for the drive down to the karst-studded landscape of Yangshuo. The trademark scenery of the area is the lush surroundings of the Li and Yulong rivers with a backdrop of rows upon rows of sharp limestone peaks fading in the distance - it's little different than the scenes that dominate many Chinese scrolls. One of the first sights as we wheeled out of Guilin was a woman leading about 50 ducks in double and triple-file down the sidewalk. A Chinese pied-piper of sorts - I laughed out loud, partly at the novelty of the scene, but mostly out of pure joy at our farewell to the smog-choked cities farther north.

The countryside of Yangshuo was amazing. We spent the following morning hiking up to Moon Hill, a viewpoint south of town that includes a massive arch at the top and 270 degree views of the surrounding landscape. In the haze of mid-morning, the karst-peaks took on a blue faded look reminiscent of the Appalachian mountains. The hike was nice, except for the tout parade that accompanied us to the top - their persistence reminded me of the women and children in Sapa, Vietnam, but we'd become much more adept at rebuffing them at this point in the trip. After the hike we left for the Yulong River, where we spent a couple of hours bamboo rafting down this limpid green sliver of water coursing between walls of bamboo and karst peaks. In the evening, we saw the “Impressions du San Liu Jie” show on the Li River. It was set on the river against the limestone peak backdrop and involved hundreds of people in traditional costumes; most of the show took place on gangways or boats on the river, with various lighting effects and all set to music, a pretty incredible show.

Perhaps the highlight of the Yangshuo area is exploring the surrounding countryside on two wheels. We spent quite a bit of our time biking and found a nice route that leads to the nearby village of Yima. The road from Yangshuo parallels rice fields and portions of the Yulong River before petering out into a dirt track near the village. From there it is mostly dirt paths through the surrounding villages and becomes more of a mountain biking single-track excursion. On our first trip, we headed down one of these paths and encountered a woman with a carrying pole loaded down on both sides with massive stones and a man leading his water buffaloes home from the field. The path was a thoroughfare of chickens, dogs, buffaloes and people. We met a guy from Seattle who was also biking out in search of Dragon Bridge, a span over the river nearby. We passed a line of graves adjacent to the path and watched a woman working silently in the riced fields with her husband nearby. McCall managed to run off of the path into a rice paddy, so she went to find a place to wash off and grab some water, while Helaine and I stood near the road and watched a shirtless old man, his ribs clearly visible, seated on a narrow path meandering through the rice paddies. It seemed to be his evening viewing sport for people returning home from the fields. I got a great shot of a woman passing by him, leading her buffalo down the stony path through the knee-high rice stalks.

On our third day in Yangshuo we planned a bike ride that required a bamboo boat ferry further south along the Li River. Amanda came with us, and we loaded our bikes onto the raft and set off for about an hour down river. Along the way we caught several glimpses of life along the Li - women with stones in hand beating clean their clothes in the edge of the river, an old man squatting on the bank smoking as his two buffaloes swam nearby, little more than their muzzles visible above the water’s surface. The Li is known especially for cormorant fishing, whereby fishermen tie a string around the cormorant’s neck that is tight enough to keep any fish from passing through to their stomach. The cormorants perch on the edge of the bamboo rafts, and, as they dive for fish and return to the raft, the “fishermen” pluck out the fish. They supposedly give the cormorant a few of the smaller ones at the end of the day. We never saw this, as the fishing all takes place at night, but we did see the homes of several fishermen along the river and noticed a few small fish farms along the way.

We unloaded the bikes at a tiny village with a dockside carpeted with ducks. Our plan was to bike back into town for a few hours along a small dirt road through the karst peaks adjacent to the Li River. We weren’t fated to take the same trip, though, and my bike return to Yangshuo turned out very different than what I envisioned - and much less scenic. Within minutes of starting off, I stopped to take a couple of pictures of everyone biking by at a slight bend in the road, where rice fields filled the background. Amanda, Anne, McCall and Helaine headed off around the corner, and that was the last I saw of them for several hours. Within a half mile after hopping back on my bike, I came to a distinct fork in the road, with the main path heading left and a smaller track snaking off in the other direction. I assumed that since they hadn’t waited at the turn that I should just keep on the main track until I found them. I kept expecting to see them over the next hill or around the next corner, but after 30 minutes of this, I realized what had happened. I was loathe to turn back at this point, because I still couldn’t be sure that was where I made the wrong turn and had been biking for a while. I asked a few people for directions along the road, and they assured me I was headed towards Yangshuo. But unfortunately, I managed to take the road more travelled, and the remainder of my ride consisted of dust-choked gravel roads followed by a busy highway that made for a miserable return to Yangshuo. I hoped that the rest of the group would just head towards the bike rental place, but a search had started back where we had lost each other. After making the turn, they had become worried and waited for a while. McCall went back to the turnoff, but there was no sign of me. Then Helaine and Amanda spent a couple of hours frantically searching while Anne and McCall headed back alone along our originally planned route towards Yangshuo. Meawhile, I sat on a stool along the street at the storefront with the owners of the bike rental place. After a couple of hours, they insisted that I share some fruit with them that they bought from a street vendor. A few minutes later Amanda finally called the bike rental and discovered I was there; she and Helaine had also taken my route back to Yangshuo, searching for me along the way. Disaster.

Ping An

After another night in Yangshuo and another horrible breakfast for Anne and me (Helaine and McCall had already given up) we drove north, stopping briefly in Guilin, where we discovered that our path to Shangri-La in the north was only one day ahead of the Olympic torch relay. People lined the streets sailing Olympic paraphernalia, and cars and faces were tattooed with the Chinese flag. We made a brief stop for lunch before beginning our 3 hour drive north to the rice terraces of Ping An. The drive was a scenic climb into the countryside, including a stretch of rolling green mountains before we reached the terraces. From a distance, they looked no different than the lush hills of the Appalachians, but as we drew closer, we could see that the greenery consisted of huge bamboos carpeting the landscape.

While our stay in China had forced all of us to be become acquainted with a variety of squat toilets and the various acrobatic stances they required, we reached a new level of toilets along this route. Anne and Helaine wisely abstained, but McCall and I each sampled a roadside stop that consisted of no more than a shallow, narrow trough in the center of a slab of concrete which you had to straddle. Needless to say, there was no effective flushing mechanism, and the resulting aesthetic, in sight and smell, was enough to trigger every gag reflex I possessed.

We reached Ping An early afternoon, where we had a 30 minute hike uphill to our lodge, which was perched on a point above the sprawling hillside rice terraces. This excursion was one of the highlights of the trip, as we spent a couple of days wandering along various paths through the terraces and surrounding villages. We had an eerie first night there, as a storm swept across the mountains and the electricity went out due to the high gusts. The lodge was completely exposed on the side of the mountain, which made the storm much more dramatic. Helaine and I watched the brilliant flashes of lightning and listened to the howling gusts from our window. After the power went out, we noticed small lights moving slowly across the mountain, swinging to and fro in the wind. We realized they were lanterns lighting the path of people groping their way across the mountain, probably going to check on their animals or making their way to a neighbor who had a generator.

I got up at dawn on the first morning and joined a few photographers at one of the main viewpoints to watch the sun rise as a thick morning fog swept across the terraces. We were early in the rice season, which is probably the least scenic time to photograph the terraces, but they were still incredible. The lodge owner had an amazing collection of pictures of the terraces - blanketed in snow, covered in a lurid green during the middle of the growing season, and wrapped in a deep golden hue near the fall harvest. He had taken a decade to build the lodge and had taken great trouble to incorporate many of the authentic cultural features specific to the area’s local minorities. The two main minorities in the area are the Zhuang and the Yao people. The Zhuang women can be distinguished by their bright pink head scarves, while the Yao women are known for their long hair. They coil it and keep it wrapped in a colorful turban on their heads. They also keep previously shorn locks of hair which can be attached with ease. They also wear extremely bright clothes, which stand out in brilliant contrast to the brown and green terraces. I took pictures of Helaine, Anne and McCall with a few of the Yao women above the terraces. At the lodge we also learned more about the planting and harvesting process and other aspects of life in the rice terraces for these groups.

One afternoon I hiked a few miles to a nearby village. On the way I passed through a bamboo forest and later encountered men harrowing with their water buffaloes along the terraces. A couple of miles along the path I saw two young kids round a bend of the mountain with their backpack; they were heading home from school, no doubt a daily trek of a few miles each way. As I reached the village, every person I met tried to coax me into coming to their house for dinner. In the terraces just outside of the next village I passed by a family having dinner in their small open air bamboo-thatched hut, the family horse hitched outside. It was a brilliant snapshot of life in the Chinese countryside. In the village itself I wandered around the traditional homes, which have ceramic tiled roofs and three levels with a siding made up of uneven vertical slats of wood - there were gaps of several inches in between many of the boards, and many parts of the homes were virtually open-air. The bottom level was especially rough-hewn and was solely for the animals, a practice similar to that we had seen in Bhutan.

Lijiang

From Ping An, we returned to our inadvertent parallel of the torch relay and headed into Yunnan province in southwestern China. We flew from Guilin, where we experienced our most annoying airport debacle yet (and there were many along the way). Security checks in a Chinese airport are one of the most challenging aspects of traveling there. Here we encountered one pedantic woman who insisted that our carry-on luggage fit in a tiny metal box constructed to measure them (no one actually abided by this, as it was about the size of a lunchbox). We spent about 30 minutes rearranging, checking new bags and paying overweight charges, and returning over 5 times to her, begging to be let through while trying to stuff our bags into this tiny container. She was adamant, but we finally got in, as another attendant came on duty. Just as Helaine and I were checking another bag, we looked over where McCall and Anne had finally passed through the first security gate and saw several Chinese with multiple bags at least our size stream right through.

In the evening we reached Lijiang, whose majority population is Naxi. Lijiang is well known for its fascinating old town, a maze of narrow cobblestone lanes and red storefronts, many of them selling yak meat in various forms. One sign proudly advertised “Yak Meat by Naxi Girl”, and it wasn't long before we would be sampling our first yak meat. Clear water from nearby mountain streams ran through the middle of town, and we watched people dipping drinking water directly out of the canals. The Naxi homes have a very distinctive tiled roof and design, and I hiked up above the town one morning to see the famed Jade Dragon Snow Mountain framed above the Naxi rooftops below. Our guide was Naxi, and he gave us some insight into the culture, taking us to a minority show in town one night, even inviting us to his friend’s wedding, which was taking place the day after we arrived. Unfortunately, we were exhausted from the last couple of days' travel decided to skip the wedding. We went to the lovely Black Dragon Pool Park on the north side of town, where we also visited a museum where we learned about the Dongba religion (shamanistic) of the Naxi, and spent some time relaxing at the Banyan Tree Lijiang just outside of town. It was one of the most incredible places I've ever stayed. The villas were all designed in the Naxi style and had views of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain and the surrounding peaks, usually only visible early in the morning. The torch was coming through town on the day we were departing, and our hotel had a huge celebration the night before we left. We had to depart for Shangri-La couple of hours early since the main road was going to be closed for the relay.

Shangri-La

Shangri-La was formerly called Zhongdian. The renaming was part of a tourist marketing effort on the part of the Chinese government - despite those efforts, this town felt completely off of the tourist track and was my favorite destination in China. It was also the final leg of our trip through the country. We drove north from Lijiang into the upper Yunnan, which abruptly changes from Naxi to Tibetan. Portions of northern Yunnan are over 90% Tibetan, and some say this area is now a better place to sample traditional Tibetan culture than Lhasa. En route we stopped at Tiger Leaping Gorge, one of the deepest canyons in the world, and hiked down to the bottom of the narrow canyon to see the crushing whitewater of the mighty Yangtze as it makes its long trek towards the sea from the Tibetan steppes. As we approached Zhongdian, we began to see Tibetans and their horses and yaks in the roadside pastures. I asked the driver stop at one roadside stand that consisted of several horizontal rows of yak-tail brooms. As we climbed higher, the views of the surrounding plateau and snow-capped mountains were stunning.

The one disconcerting thing we witnessed along the way was groups of Tibetans in traditional dress lining the highway with China flags in hand. They were clearly awaiting the torch relay, but given the history of China-Tibet relations and especially the recent protests and crackdown in Lhasa, we had to wonder about the sincerity of their sudden Olympic fervor. I would hate to know what friendly inducements the government provided for their participation.

We reached Zhongdian early afternoon and made a trip out to Songzanlin Monastery, which is modeled after the Potala Palace in Lhasa. The monastery grounds were a sprawling affair, topped by the brilliantly colored temples of red, yellow and gold. We spent a couple of hours wandering around this bastion of the yellow-hat sect of Buddhism. Anne and McCall saw one of the yellow-hat monks, and we watched young novices carrying out various chores, including hauling water and hoeing small gardens around the living quarters. Inside the monastery was the traditional courtyard filled with hundreds of golden prayer wheels. The rooftop of the main temple provided an expansive view of the town of Shangri-la and the nearby peaks.

After leaving the monastery we drove outside of town to the Banyan Tree Ringha, the most unique place I have ever stayed. The resort lies in the countryside, and it sits just above the banks of a lovely river, rolling hills to one side and Tibetan pastures below. It is adjacent to a small Tibetan village, and in the morning and evening we could sit on our deck and watch women, men and small children with their yaks, sheep and cattle heading to or from the fields or to the riverside for grazing. Apparently, many of the people leave in the summer for 3 or 4 months and take their yaks to the high alpine meadows to graze. They camp in the meadows and return to the village as the weather turns towards Fall. The villas we stayed in are refurbished Tibetan farmhouses, complete with an oxygen tank in the mini-bar (Zhongdian sits at around 10,000 feet above sea level). Helaine and McCall became oxygen junkies during our brief stay, as they began raiding the oxygen from each other's mini bar by day two. We also sampled some of the traditional Tibetan fare while we were there, which brought back memories of the challenging diet of Bhutan. There was plenty of yak meat and numerous other unidentifiable meat items. The yak butter tea was just as disgusting as you can imagine; the memory alone makes my mouth water, as in the prelude to puking. Helaine and I visited a Tibetan home one day, where I underwent the additional joy of a pinch of barley powder with my tea. No, you don't mix it with the tea. As instructed, I took half a handful of this gray looking powder and threw it into my mouth. I almost choked on the powder before washing it down with the putrid tea, Helaine laughing uncontrollably in the background.

After a couple of days in Zhongdian, Anne and McCall left for their flight to Shanghai, where they were staying for a night before their connection to the States. It had been an incredible trip through China, and it was so awesome that they joined us. We had seen so much along the way, and the diversity of landscapes and people made it seem as if we’d visited 4 different countries. We accompanied them to the airport and then left with our guide, Sandy, for a day trip further north towards the Tibetan border. Sandy found a friend who could drive us in that direction, and we spent an incredible day driving towards the massive Tibetan plateau in the north. We once again encountered the Yangtze river, now in its northernmost reaches and saw stunning vistas of the most mountainous sections of Yunnan province. Tibetan stupas lined the roadway, and it was difficult to drive a mile without seeing one. At one huge stupa a group of 4 old men and women sat at the edge of a precipice in the background, with the smoke from a smaller altar wafting off in the distance towards Tibet. We also stopped in the edge of a cornfield, where Sandy and I hiked up the hill so I could get a picture of a large white stupa. While I took a few pictures, Sandy went down to talk to a Tibetan woman working in the field. Sandy took up the Tibetan song she was singing and gave me a few refrains on the way back to the car. She was the most free-spirited guide we had in China, and she sang several Tibetan songs to all of us while we were driving around one day. Although I would have loved to have driven further, we reached a small town along the Yangtze and visited a remote monastery near there before turning back towards Shangri-la. There was no one at the monastery except for a few monks, and one of them took Helaine and I on a private tour. He had us circumambulate a huge mandala in the main building and light votive butter lamps along the way. At the end he gave me his (business?) card, a great momento from this temple that was totally off of the beaten path.

On the next morning I walked to the nearby Ringha monastery, a tiny hilltop temple surrounded by thousands of prayer flags. They were so thickly strung that they formed a virtual roof over the grounds surrounding the monastery. In the nearby village, I passed two men taking their yaks to pasture to graze, and I took a few pictures of the huge wooden drying racks that adorn most of the pastures in the area. Around another bend in the road came a woman and her daughter along with a giant menagerie, consisting of ducks, pigs, sheep and chickens - a small Noah’s ark of a procession heading down a Tibetan road in the Yunnan. A met a sheep in the middle of town; it abruptly changed directions and followed me all the way to the monastery entrance.

I could have spent weeks in our Tibetan farmhouse; just wandering around the surrounding hills was the highlight of our entire China trip for me. One afternoon I went hiking along the river, where the villagers were cutting trees and transporting them via yak back to the village. I watched a woman beside the river yoking her two yaks with an impressive load of lumber. After hiking a few miles along the muddy path adjacent to the river, I reached a more remote section of the forest and met a man and his son heading home. He insisted on looking at my camera and had me show him a few of the pictures I had taken. A little further on I heard a noise on the river bank down below. There were a couple of men cutting timber while their yaks grazed on the adjacent hillside. One stopped for a moment to tend their nearby fire; they were apparently camping here for a time. He suddenly began yelling at me, and I didn’t quite comprehend at first, but through various hand gestures he seemed to be inviting me to come down and drink with them. He mimed one of the universal signs of getting wasted, and I’m sure I’d have a much more interesting story here if I had joined them, but I had to head back to Ringha.

That evening we went into the old town of Shangri-la and watched traditional Tibetan dancing on the square. Half the town seems to turn out for this nightly event, and they play Tibetan music from a loudspeaker, while everyone lines up in concentric circles and carries out different dances, depending on the tune. We watched many of the old women in traditional dress lead the way, while others sat on benches nearby and shared the town gossip. It also seemed to be a meeting place for young adults (call it the local roller skating rink), and after an hour or so, they began to join in the dancing in large numbers. The storefronts of the alleys spiraling out from the square are lined with arctic fox pelts, intricate Tibetan knives, various animal skulls and Tibetan horns.

I had hoped to see the local horse races which take place on a seasonal lake outside of town, but Sandy informed me that they had been cancelled because of the Olympics. It was a sad reminder of the continuing repression of Tibetans and their culture by Chinese authorities. The protests in Lhasa ahead of the Olympics and the resulting crackdown by the government had already led us to cancel our trip to Tibet, which was scheduled for the two weeks following our trip with Anne and McCall. Being in Yunnan in the midst of the fascinating Tibetans made me regret the cancellation even more, but when we left for Thailand, Lhasa was still not open to tourists.

Impressions of China are difficult to sum up in a few words. It was no doubt one of the most difficult places I've traveled - the security checks and other transportation hassles, the language barrier, the misinformation, the rip-offs, deceptions and miseducation - at times it is almost impossible to get past these mounting frustrations. But uncertainty is an elemental part of interesting travel, and travel in China is an endless source of fascination. It is one of the most rewarding places I've ever traveled. In the few weeks we were there, I was stunned by the variety of beautiful landscapes, the depth of the history, the friendliness and humility of so many of the people we met, the staggering diversity of culture. And by the incredible changes sweeping the country. I have no doubt that the character of many of these places will have changed drastically by the time we come back, so I can only hope that a return trip is not too distant.

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