Dali!

So the first stop on our trip was Dali, a town in western Yunnan about 350 km from here. We took the bus over, enjoying the benefit of the giant, sparkling expressway liking Dali with Kunming (it reminded me exactly of an interstate, except three lanes in each direction for much of the time, and through huge amounts of mountains. And much smoother). The city itself has two parts: the modern town, with maybe 200,000 people, and about 15 km away the old walled city, where the tourists go. We proceeded post haste.

The old town of Dali is a pretty big destination, (especially for French people evidently; interesting) but with good reason. It’s a big square that was walled at one point though isn’t entirely now, located about halfway between Erhai Lake and the Cangshan Mountains. It’s a pretty nice setting, and combined with very pleasant weather and old history—Dali was the capital of the Bai state for a long time, and is still home to a large number of Bai people—makes for a good visit.

Dali Gu Cheng (this is out of chronology). The main part is the square in the center, and you can see the lake beyond it.

The first day, we didn’t do much besides walk around the town. It was kind of nice because a) it’s small enough that you don’t feel overwhelmed, b) even in the old city, there is a mix of tourist-oriented streets and local places. We were sort of surprised, but after you get off of Foreigner Street (its actual name) the place becomes much less visited. So we went to the local market and saw them moving chickens around:

Chicken-tossing!

Some other general Dali thoughts. One interesting feature of Dali is the omnipresence of marijuana. In fairness, this is a pretty stereotypical hippie haven: beautiful, laid-back, semi-tropical, in some exotic developing country, and even home to a huge batik industry. But still, we were impressed that during any walk down the street we would be approached by at least 4-5 people—almost always older women dressed up in traditional Bai clothes, sometimes with kids—and asked if we wanted to smoke ganja. In those words, every time. It was annoying, because we didn’t (or if we did, not from them off the street) but also kind of sad because evidently that’s what they have to do for a living.

The whole time we were in Dali, we spent our evenings at our hostel. It was interesting and kind of nice, though walled off—literally—from the Chinese world outside it. The owner was an Australian guy who had moved to Dali and seemed to spend most of his time chilling at the hostel and talking to his guests and friends, most of whom were other older British Commonwealth types with local romantic attachments. It was kind of neat to hear them talk about all these years of traveling around Asia and having adventures while they drank beer, smoked ganja and still destroyed us at pool. There were other people around too, and I learned how to play Chinese Chess from one! It’s pretty similar to Western Chess, except that instead of bishops and a queen you have elephants and cannons. I’ll let your imagination work from there.

Day 2:

Day two was started with a trip to the three pagodas, to some extent the logo of Dali located a little ways outside the city. They’re actually part of an enormous temple complex, but the rest of it was more or less destroyed during the Cultural Revolution and only rebuilt about five years ago, so has lost some of the atmosphere. Still, the pagodas themselves were pretty impressive:

The three pagodas.

After that we went for lunch with the family of a friend from Swat, who happen to live in Dali, and got a wonderful meal with most excellent conversation on everything from China and Yunnan to the recent Chinese milk problems to the Baha'i World Faith to events at Swarthmore. It was good.

We followed that with a bike trip outside the city. This is one of my new favorite pastimes: bike rides in rural China. The cities here are quite modern, and much closer to urban areas back home than you might expect, but as soon as you get into the countryside everything changes. Suddenly you’re surrounded by hundred of tiny farm fields, each only a hundred or so feet on a side and planted in a different type of grain, rice, or vegetable, and each of which is being cultivated by hand by someone using very little in the way of machinery. It’s absolutely beautiful, but also kind of shocking to see people living like this, especially after getting off the gigantic ultramodern highway and checking your email over broadband internet literally on the other side of the street.

Working the fields.

Looking back towards town.

Our bike route took us down an irrigation dike between several fields, which was spectacular, and eventually we reached the lake. It caught us totally by surprise: we came out of the fields into a village—totally different atmosphere than the modern city five miles away—and after wandering our way through a bunch of twisty streets and through what seemed to be people’s driveways and yards, we ran into all this water! We picked a direction, and pretty soon came across this strange pier sticking out into the lake with somebody drying out his harvest on it. We asked him if we could go out and he said fine, so there we were. Felt like we were very far out of where we would ever have imagined arriving, in a really cool way. The lake itself is big, but long and narrow—what I believe the Finger Lakes are supposed to be like, or else Lake Winnebago in Wisconsin. It was beautiful, and exceedingly pleasant to stand on the shore of. And while we were standing there, some guy came rowing by and asked if we wanted a ride. Kind of neat.

It's pretty spectacular.

Looking across the lake.

Day three was mountains. This was pretty sweet as well. Behind the city, the rise up about 2000 meters, covered in pine trees the whole way. Really, really pretty, and so huge. We took a cable car up (lame, I know, but it was pretty cool) and then hiked for about 10km in and out of two river valleys. Beautiful, and just what you picture of Chinese mtns, in a way: super steep, small rivers at the bottom, lots of crooked-ish pinetrees, and fog rolling in and out of the peaks. At least that’s how I pictured Chiense mountains. I don’t really know.

This is where we're headed.

Whee!! Up we gooooo!!!!

Pretty pretty...

Besides the main views down towards the lake and town, we also got great waterfalls, crystal clear pools, and probably the best geological signage I’ve ever seen:

This one's for you, Mommy.

All in all, it was a pretty good few days. Plus we got to see amazing collections of marble (the Chinese word for marble has “Dali” in it) and batik, another local specialty. And ate fried goat cheese on a stick, plus lots of other good things on sticks and in general. But we had to move on eventually, and next stop: Lijiang!