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.