Dali & Lijang - a pictoral story

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Well they say a picture is worth a thousand words, so rather than bore you with another manuscript, and now that I have a computer at my disposal, I’m going put that theory to the test.

After Kunming, we went to Dali on the 6th of March, staying there until our departure for Lijang on the 9th March. Both of these places were beautiful scenic alpine villages, close to many of the colourful ethnic minority tribes who make the 8% of the population who are not Han Chinese. These tribes, such as the Naxi and the Bai, live much the same lives they always have, tending their crops and herds with very little evidence of modern intervention such as electricity.

Apart from Brendon getting struck down with food poisoning, we found an enormous freedom as we entered these places. Finally, we could do our own things, when we wanted, with no traffic, planned tours or opening / closing times to worry about. And the scenery - well that reminded us of home.

Here are a few pictures to tell our story.

Just click on the phots to see the bigger picture- and full text.

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Photos

Enjoying the warmth of Jim's Tibetan Peace House
Phew we've finally arrived and its freezing. Lucky someone speaks enough English to get us a room (Jim's currently away) and the cafe is nice and warm. Look at some of the photos Jim has taken in his travels.

The new 'antique town' of Dali
Once a beautiful alpine village, Dali first hit the tourist map as a beautiful, out of the way place for the odd hardy hippie. In the last few years, with the Chinese economy booming, a new type of tourist has hit town – Chinese tour-groups. Much like the Japanese tour groups back home, the wealthy Chinese believe that it is only the poor who would travel alone. Why travel by yourself when you can have a tour bus taking you wherever you want – and a guide who will even tell you when to take photos? A local resident told us that 26 years ago there were 6 shops in Dali, now there are over 3,000. All sell similar stuff – touristy renditions of local village handcraft, being sold at whatever exorbitant price a tourist is stupid enough to pay for. We were told to barter down to one-fifth of the asking price – we often did and still felt that we were being ripped off. Another price of tourism is that most buildings of the beautiful old town have been torn down as the lanes and paths were widened to allow cars – and tour buses. In their places hundreds of replica houses and shops have been thrown up – all looking old but all brand new. Here I’ve managed to escape the crowd for a minute to take a photo in relative peace.

Taking in the beauty of Dali.
The town itself is 1900 m above sea level & is ringed on one side by the beautiful Erhai Hu lake and on the other by the imposing 4000 m Jade Green mountains.

The new ‘old-style’ buildings in Dali
The day Brendon was sick with what we think was food poisoning (or was it Jim’s No.1 Special?), I wandered around the town and found that if you climbed up on top of the wall that surrounded the town, you elevated yourself above all the tourists and touts – to relative peace.

The Shaping Market
We had read about the ‘colourful Bai (ethnic minority) market’ at Shaping every Monday. Given that we arrived in Dali on Monday, we thought why not go and explore while we can. After somehow getting ourselves on a bus (well, actually minibus) where we spoke no Mandarin & they spoke no English, through hand gestures & our showing the symbols for Shaping, we managed the 30km journey with no more fuss than Brendon nearly missing the bus as he had gone off in search of a toilet & I was struggling to get them to wait for him to return. We hopped off the bus & walked in the direction the bus assistant was pointing. Lets hope she had understood what we were on about. They did. Within a few minutes we saw another European couple – actually very rare here - and knew we were on the right track. Unlike in SE Asia, white tourists were not common – so it was a matter of some occasion when we actually saw some. Here’s a picture of Claire, on the way to the market. Yes – that silver thing in my hair was probably worth much less than what they got us to pay for it.

Brendon the tourist
How do you get away when they know you’ve looked at their stall and started talking to you???

......Ask for the toilet of course!
What a mistake. Actually, having been warned in advance (& always carrying toilet paper with us – as you do not get it anywhere in China) it wasn’t too bad. Actually dare I say it was even quite liberating? I guess that this is how our ancestors used to do it – so what’s the big deal? What’s more the ladies who went when I was there didn’t stare at all – they kept to themselves – this was much better than the horror stories I‘d been told.

Brendon the haggler
This is more like it! Brendon the accountant working out how much he can get the prices down for the oranges. Note the local Bai women in their everyday clothes, going about their regular shopping. Don’t we look the odd ones out?

What a cool market!
Now why don't we see mushrooms displayed like this at Woolworths?

Hiking up Zhonge Shan (mountain)
Well if our China Lonely Planet was any better than the out of date (3 shops in a row we tried to go to in Dali no longer existed) too-light-on-information piece of crap that unfortunately it was (unlike the SE Asia one which was great) we would have known to have spent much more time on this journey. We would have known that this mountain was part of the 4000 m high Cang Shan (Jade Green Mountain) range that offered an enormous array of hiking for any who were interested. As it was, we had thought we were being hardy Kiwis by hiking up the mountain to the Zhonge Temple at 2600m. This is us at the start of the hike. Note the gravestones to the right of the picture – this is a local cemetery. Note also the girl with the (sun) umbrella – she’s one of the two Aussie girls we met on the way up. They were also starting to find the base of the track. Lucky we met them as there were just about no tourists walking the track as there were much easier ways....

Easy way up Number 1:
Here we were, climbing up the hill through the pine trees, inhaling the beautiful fresh mountain air and we hear a little tinkle of bells. Well I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve read too much fantasy in my time – but this really was like a scene from (insert the name of any fantasy story you have ever read here). Were they the bells of Tatiana and her fellow fairies? The gentle tinkles slowly got louder, and after a while we could also hear the gentle clop of horses hooves. Aha! I know what it is! The Elves from Lord of the Rings! And then they hove into view. It was a wee bit disappointing to see that it was just some Chinese or Japanese tourists travelling up the mountain on hired ponies. Their guide was walking behind & whacking the ponies with a bundle of twigs whenever they moved too slowly. The ponies did look cute though. That’s me behind them, doing it the hard way.

Easy way up Number 2.
A nice new chairlift. Hmm – what’s the fun in that?

Ok – now these guys make it look easy!
Now I feel like the lazy one.

Beautiful scenery at the foot of the mountain
How nice is this? Paddy fields in the foreground, a beautiful village behind that, one of the ‘Three Pagodas’ behind the village, and the Erhai Hu lake in the background.

Cheers!
After a hard day’s work what better to do than tuck into Jim’s Tibetan feast (they say you need at least 4 people – but really this could have fed 10 people) washed down with some of Jim’s No.1 Special – tasting a bit like paint stripper it's his very own home-made brew – with our new-found friends, Dutch couple David & Lisa.

Pouring Jim’s No.1
JUST LOOK AT IT!

The lovely Lijang
Well, on the 9th March, after ‘Chunder Bus number 2’ – I won’t go into the details, but needles to say, they were unpleasant – and having decided to travel together, Lisa & David (the Dutch couple) & Brendon & I arrived in Lijang, just 3 hours after leaving Dali. The four of us had decided, along with a German couple, Carson & Iris (who had gone to Lijang ahead of us) to tramp Tiger Leaping Gorge together. We had decided that there was safety in numbers on any hike, and Iris’ fluency in Mandarin (she had just completed a Masters in it) was an enormous bonus. But first, before the gorge, we had a couple of days in the scenic Lijang. Much like Dali, this is a lovely old town ‘done-up’ with new buildings (in old style of course). The good news is that they kept the streets narrow in Lijang – and allowed no traffic through the old town.

Sun at last!
Brendon, David & Lisa enjoying lunch & the warmth of the sun. Little did we know what the next few days had in store for us once we left this haven of warmth.

The Naxi Orchestra
You may have heard about these guys – they’ve travelled the world trying to keep the old Naxi (that’s another minority group) music & instruments alive. Although some of it was lovely, the high pitched, wails of girl imitating the swine herder, all in some minor key, were so painful that Lisa covered her ears. Ouch – it was so bad that even her fellow orchestra members looked pained. Very entertaining though. I kept myself occupied by wondering whether any of the old men who looked fast asleep would actually wake up when it was time for them to play.

Black Dragon Pool
Described as ‘the most obligatory photo shoot in South-western China’ I had to take a photo never the less – as it was Miranda & Graham’s pictures of the Black Dragon Pool that helped convince us to add China to our itinerary. Great work guys. China & Luang Prabang were our two favourite places on the whole trip (later the Thai beaches would also be added to this list). And that’s it for now folks. More updates on the rest of our trip – and our busy time in the UK to follow when I’ve got another 3-4 hours to spare.