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Published: February 13th 2011
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Hmmm...sequels are always a bit of a disappointment, so I'll keep this brief and to the point. We left Kunming and headed to Dali by bus. Spent a few days hanging out at a lovely guest house run by an Australian guy called Dave. I did a lot of watching films n sitting in the sunny courtyard hacking up gunk and sneezing a lot. It was, and still is, Chinese New Year here (it seems to go on forever! It starts on the first and ends on the 15th day of lunar January) and a lot of Chinese tourists come to Dali to celebrate. Celebrating New Year involves cleaning the house, getting together with the family and eating a lot (unsurprisinglty!). People buy special New Year couplets (normally on red paper, which is a lucky colour) and give red envelopes to kids full of money. The kids then go out and spend their money on assorted plastic crap that will break in five minutes flat, in particular gigantic mega-sub-machine guns to practice blowing peoples brains out in their imaginary world of rural tranquility. Sitting on a bus in Kunming, I was slightly perturbed by the 6 year old by sat opposite
me resting a huge mock AK47 across his chest with the steady look in his eye of an experienced child-soldier. I almost forgot where I was. Thank God the Chinese don't seem to make anything that works properly. I make this comment soley in regard to the gun, although I can say it with assuredness, after the painful experience of purchasing 3 new kettles, 2 lamps and 2 coffee tables in the space of but a few months.
Ah, I digress. Chinese New Year was celebrated in Dali with a procession through the streets, which I will attempt to upload a video of in a second (though no doubt it will be sideways...still technically incompetent!). This involved some dragon dancing which was cool. This also goes on in Minle, where there have been processions and lion-dancing the last couple of days. Yesterday, we were in the offices at the Education Bureau sorting out some work and the march turned up at the door. They were entertaining at all the government buildings. We went down to check out the dancing, which turned out to be directed towards the front door where we were stood. Then suddenly, the lion and lion-tamer
(waving his big stick kung-fu stylee) charged into the hallway where we were stood and scared the life out of us. They then proceeded to dance around the building, eradicating the evil spirits. Firecrackers were let off outside the building, to the same aim.
In fact, the central theme of New Year seems to be the fireworks. There are enough incendiary devices on sale in Minle town centre to torch the whole country. Dali seemed to be the epicentre of all things explosive. We had a minor New Year celebration at the guest house, letting off rockets and the like, but the explosions started at sunset on the first, then continued all night. It was like holidaying in Basra. From then on, during the day, everywhere you went, small children could be seen scurrying away from small devices with a glint in their eye. Parents could be seen handing their children gigantic subatomic bombs and lighters to go play with, many of which would be dropped into water channels or planted inside bottles for interesting effect. The phrase...'Never play with matches' would seem to have fallen on deaf ears! Still, everyone was enjoying themselves.
As a place to
visit, Dali was quite pretty and still relatively relaxed outside of the hectic but attractive tourist area. We visited the 3 pagodas and some temples around that area which were worth a look. Most of the tourists were Chinese, and they came in their hordes. In fact, on our travels, despite finding the tourist route, the majority of the people we met were teachers, volunteers and engineers, all on their Spring break. We did meet a few travellers as well, but China isn't the easiest place to travel for international visitors yet I guess it could be frustrating trying to get basic things done. Many restaurants have bizarre ticketing systems or you have to be quite aggressive to beat the competition in order to place an order. Simple things like trying to find the right bus or bus station can be tricky. In Dali, the guest house organised everything though, and we were picked up from the courtyard...easypeasy.
On the bus to Lijiang, we met a fellow Kiwi teacher and traveller called Vincent who was good entertainment and a treasure trove of information on everything. We spent the next couple of days wandering around together in Lijiang and talking
endlessly, which was good fun. Lijiang was incredibly beautiful and you could have a wonderful lifestyle there as a teacher, surrounded by awesome mountain scenery and great hikes. Unfortunately, it is also the holiday destination of the super-rich Chinese from the big cities. One look at the prices on the menus in bars and restaurants in our local vicinity, and we were soon relegated to drinking in the park and eating at the cheapest shabby holes we could find. We had a lovely couple of days nosing around though and spent two evenings with some really friendly Chinese folk mostly from Shanghai, friends of a couple who owned a reggae bar here. These people had all the latest technology, could speak English pretty fluently and dressed with a kind of style that you'd never see in Zhangye.
Now we've seen how the other half live, it's easy to see the disparity in wealth between the cities and the country-people here. I didn't really notice it when I was here before...I guess you get used to it, but you need to get away to get an objective opinion.
The restaurants here where most people eat have shabby plastic seats
and paint peeling off the walls. The few posh places with classy rooms for banquets are for the odd big roller and the officials. The villages are another world. I guess in twenty years time, Minle might be a very different place. Still, taking the bus back from Lanzhou for hour upon hour along semi-tarmacked roads through desert scrubland and dried up river valleys where little can grow, the new world of the Chinese super-rich and flourishing middle-classes with their designer goods, flash motors, spikey film-star hairdoes and fat wallets seemed a long way away.
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Esther Menon
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rules for bus passengers
Were you allowed on the bus then? Did Sarah have to pretend she was your guardian? :-)