Yuanyang

June 16-17, 2009

We had time for just one more stop before our China visa expired.  From Kunming we headed southwest to the town of Yuanyang, to see the famous rice terraces there.

The bus dropped us off in Yuanyang’s old town (Xinjie).  A few touts were waiting there, hoping to convince us to stay in their hotel.  One of these guys, who goes by the name “A”, succeeded, and took us to the Photographer’s Hotel.  This hotel is pretty isolated, so the plus is that it’s quiet and the minus is that there’s only one restaurant (the hotel’s) and nothing else to do.  Also, on the plus side, the hotel is situated in a really good place, in the middle between all the good terrace viewing sites.  On the other hand it had a bad moldy smell, not surprising considering all the rain that falls there.

Anyhow, people come to Yuanyang to see the green terraced hills.  The place is very popular with photographers who attempt to get interesting shots at sunrise and sunset.  Pnina and I had seen a lot of rice terraces by this point in our trip, but the terraces here around Yuanyang are really special.  There are many viewpoints around Yuanyang, so you can easily spend several days here going from one to another.  But with our short time Pnina and I only got a chance to see one of them, a place called Bada.  Our hotel manager, A, took us there for 20 yuan each, and the plus was that he knew a good spot for photos that didn’t require paying the 30 yuan entrance fee most people pay at a certain white house with a viewing platform.  Bada is supposed to be the best place for sunsets, but when we were there it was too cloudy to get a decent sunset photo.  Still, the hills here were undeniably beautiful.

A map showing the different viewpoints around Yuanyang:

Pnina with our hotel’s manager (“A”), and another tourist, Ben.  Ben is from England, but he’s been traveling and working on the road for the last ten years (!!).  His main skill is as a chef, which he says is good for traveling because it’s easy enough to land a job as a chef in different parts of the world.  But recently he worked doing office work for an energy company, mostly because he can earn so much more in the same amount of time:

The terraced hills, viewed from Bada during sunset:

Workers in the field below:

Another shot with splashes of sunlight pouring between clouds:

The next morning I woke up very early to try to see the sunrise in another spot further away, but the weather was bad, foggy and rainy, so I bailed.  Instead Pnina and I slept in and started making our way to the Laos border.  But I can definitely see us coming back to Yuanyang again.

We didn’t take this photo – it’s a shot we found on the wall a the Photographer’s Hotel.  If you come to Bada in the right season (after harvest), the rice paddies are reflecting pools, clear of greenery.  In some cases a red algae can accumulate in dense quantities under the surface:

Kunming

June 13-15, 2009

After just one night and a morning bike-ride in Dali, we took a bus to Yunnan’s capital, Kunming.

The reason we rushed to reach Kunming was that we’d already made plans to stay with another couchsurfer there.  This was our fourth couchsurfing experience, but our first one in quite a while; the prior three were in South Africa (October 2008), Kenya (December 2008), and Ethiopia (January 2009).  There are a couple of reasons for our long hiatus from couchsurfing.  The first is that we traveled in Egypt/Jordan/UAE just after the war in Gaza, so we figured its best if we played it conservatively in those countries and stayed in backpacker hotels (couchsurfers tend to be an open bunch, but you never know).  The other reason is that it’s much easier to plan a stay with a fellow couchsurfer around flights (just after landing in a city, or just before departure), but for the last several months we hadn’t had any flights.

But here in Yunnan we decided to give it another go, so we contacted this guy Osama (AKA Sam Sam) and he invited us to stay with him.  When we reached Kunming we gave him a call and, funny thing, it turned out he was in Dali for the weekend too!  Too bad we didn’t call him before – we could have started hanging out in Dali and we could have traveled to Kunming together.  No matter.  We made plans to meet in Kunming’s big train station, and a few hours later he was there.

Pnina standing in front of Kunming’s train station:

 

Sam is originally from Pakistan, but he’s one of many expats working as English teachers in China.  We learned a few interesting things about the job.  Chinese schools pay the best wages to people who come from English-speaking countries: US, England, Australia, New Zealand.  Next up are a whole set of other countries, including former British colonies where English is an important second language (such as India and Pakistan).  And absolutely last come Africans (even African Americans!).  It’s totally racist, but that’s how it is – salaries correspond to perception.  Sam said that he can get a salary of just over $20,000 a year with his background (and his pay may be somewhat higher because he’s fairly proficient in Chinese, something that isn’t technically needed but never hurts).

For the first few years in China Sam worked in Shenzhen, and he obviously misses that place.  Shenzhen is more of a party town, and Sam is a party kind of guy.  He’s a bachelor, and he loves drinking, smoking, and going out to bars and clubs.  For Pnina and I it was difficult to keep up with him.  For one thing, by now you probably know that Pnina is not the biggest fan of cigarette smoke.  But besides that we just weren’t in the habit of staying up so late.  But it was still a good time.  I think Sam appreciated having companions for a couple of visits away from his quiet New Asia suburb and into the city.

Pnina and Sam in a fancy grocery store.  Sam gets three bottles of bottom-shelf whiskey.  Pnina gets one tiny bottle of Baileys.  I think that about sums it up

 

One of the nights we met up with two of Sam’s friends, Ruben and Shan Shan.  Ruben is from Belgium.  He dabbled in teaching English in China but now he’s setting up a fulltime photography business (http://studio.lemiengre.info/en/).  Shan Shan is originally from Kunming, and she still teaches English today.  Ruben and Shan Shan bought their apartment not that long ago, and we found it interesting how the apartment looked great inside while the building looked really run-down on the outside.  I guess that’s a common thing in many parts of China – people care more about making the inside of a home look good.

Pnina, Shan Shan, Ruben, and Sam:

 

Our Rough Guide described Kunming as the most laid-back city in the country, calling it “the Seattle of China”.  So of course we were looking forward to checking it out.  And was it that good?  Um, no, not really.  It was an OK town, don’t get us wrong, but it lacked the mountains and the lakes, the cozy neighborhoods, and the clean air.  It’s entirely possible that we’re biased   But anyhow, as far as cities are concerned, we would pick Chengdu over Kunming, and we would pick cities in other countries over these two.  Still, it had some good restaurants and a few interesting sights…

Probably our favorite restaurants in Kunming: Ajisen Ramen.

Cool statue of a guy trimming a bush.  Must be tricky for the actual gardener to get around the statue to trim the bush.

Don’t know why, I love this shirt:

 

We heard that there’s a certain “bird and flower” market in the city, where one can see not just standard flowers and birds, but also endangered species illegally “liberated” from forests in southern Yunnan.  We found the market, but it didn’t have any exotic animals, which is both a let-down and a very good thing.  Mostly we found cute puppies and colorful fish, which was good enough for us.

Even Pnina had to admit these dogs were very cute:

There were a ton of parrots of all kinds:

And so many aquariums:

 

We did just one major site-seeing trip while in Kunming: the Shilin Stone Forest.  This was actually 60 km away from Kunming so we went there as a day trip.  China has a few of these stone forest parks in different locations, and this one was not particularly cheap: 140 yuan.  But for us it was the easiest to reach, and it was definitely worth the money.  Like in Jiuzhaigou, this park gets a lot of visitors, but they mostly stick to a few high-profile spots.  So its easy enough to get away from the crush of tour groups by taking one of the quieter paths, especially in the eastern part of the park.

Pnina standing by some of the first stone pinnacles we saw as we entered the park:

Here, too, a lot of the Chinese tourists paid money to don silly costumes and have their photo taken:

We cross a zig-zag bridge and enter the main “grove” of stone pinnacles:

In some cases the trail between the stone giants was pretty narrow:

And in many places we climbed up and down stairs:

The most touristy place in the park is this little terrace, which is perched on top of one of the stones.  It really has a fantastic view so it’s no wonder it gets such a crowd:

This is the crowd looking to get off the stone with the terrace:

We managed to get a decent photo of Pnina up there:

But I had no such luck.  There were just too many people around.  Eventually I said “screw it” and asked Pnina to photograph me with the three women who stepped in our way last:

The view from above – this place is really awesome:

 

Back down from the terrace, we stop in a couple more sites highlighted on our map:

There were a few stones that were supposed to look like certain animals.  For some you really had to use your imagination.  Others were pretty obvious:

And eventually we reached the eastern part of the park, where we hardly saw a soul:

Dali

June 12-13, 2009

After the relaxing time we had in Shaxi, we took a bus further south to Dali.

On the bus ride to Shaxi, someone loaded two plastic barrels full of these slithering eels right next to me.

Dali was the third city we found in Yunnan that had a cute old-town neighborhood (the others were Lijiang and Shangri-La).  Of the three, Lijiang is still our favorite.  Dali has the benefit that the more modern part of the city is not as big and boring as the other two.  But the big downside with Dali is that it’s really really touristy.  As soon as the bus dropped us off, a few local touts ran up to us to offer us a hotel.  OK, no big deal, we’ve seen this sort of thing before.  Except that these touts just wouldn’t leave us alone.  Several of them followed us by foot into the city.  One of them even sat on the side while we ate lunch, waiting for us to finish, just so he can collect a commission if we happen to go to the hotel he represents.  The annoying thing is that we already know about all these hotels – they’re listed in our Rough Guide – so these touts are getting a commission for no useful work, which is very aggravating just on principle.  Anyhow, this was the first time we’d experienced this level of in-your-face hassle in China, and it immediately turned us off.  But we know our opinion is not typical; we spoke we lots of other tourists who fell in love with Dali and spent several days here.

Pnina in the main backpacker drag in Dali’s old town:

One of the big gates surrounding old town:

Garbage collection time.  This van come through playing music (like the ice cream man) and store owners come out to dump their trash.  Pretty good system:

A woman selling handicrafts next to a temple in the city:

Anyhow, we checked into the Tibetan Lodge, which was a decent place.  We had just a half day to spend here before rushing off to Kunming.  Our original plan was to hike up to the top of the nearby hill, but we canceled this plan when we noticed that the hill was completely consumed by clouds.  Instead we decided to rent bicycles and ride around.  And just for kicks we decided to rent a tandem bike.  This was our first time on a tandem and it was clumsy and hilarious.  As you can imagine, the bike didn’t really fit either one of us very well, especially me.  When I sat in the back, for each time the wheel turned I put my right knee into Pnina’s right butt-cheek, and then my left knee into her left butt-cheek.  It worked a little better when I was up front. 

Pnina with our tandem bicycle, outside Dali’s old town, riding towards one of the small villages by the lake:

I had no idea sunflowers could be this tall.  Later on the trip we saw others that were maybe twice this height:

San Ta Si, three ancient pagodas that are probably the top attraction near Dali.  The entry fee was over 100 yuan, so we decided to skip it.  This is a view from the outside:

As a cheaper alternative, we rode to Yita Si.  Here there was just one pagoda and it was perhaps less well preserved.  There was a sign outside saying that this park is closed for renovation, but there was no work being done at the time and nobody to keep us from going in.  The pagoda has a room at the bottom, and it’s possible to climb to some height inside (I couldn’t tell exactly how high because it was dark and I didn’t have my flashlight, and the climb looked a little sketchy):

Well, after this short bike ride, we hurried back to collect our stuff and catch the evening bus to Kunming.  We had already made plans to meet a couchsurfer there.

In the News

The US finally converted its over-the-air TV broadcasts from analog to digital.

Elections took place in Iran.  Ahmadinejad, the incumbent, was proclaimed winner with roughly 2/3 of the votes.  Second place Mousavi contested the authenticity of these results and encouraged his followers to protest.  Mousavi’s supporters gathered in big numbers in Tehran.  These images were broadcast around the world, and the US and several European countries voiced doubts about the legitimacy of the election.  Iran’s electoral board recounted the votes and announced on June 29 that Ahmadinejad did indeed win.  Mousavi said that 14 million ballots were missing, so there was plenty of room to manipulate the vote.

Shaxi

June 10-11, 2009

After finishing our hike at Tiger Leaping Gorge we continued south.  We stopped for one night (again) at Lijiang, and then took another bus to Shaxi.

The thing that drew us to Shaxi is that, from what we read, it was supposed to be far less touristy than our next destination (Dali), and therefore a better place to get a little closer to local village life.  Looking back now we can confirm that this is absolutely true – Dali is a total backpacker Mecca by comparison.

Shaxi used to be a major stop on the southern silk road.  Tibetans sold their horses and in exchange bought tea.  For this reason you see a lot of restaurants and hotels here called “Tea and Horse”.  There’s still a major market in this town every Friday.  People come from villages all around to buy and sell.  Tourists have to pay a fee to enter this market area, even on non-market days when there’s really nothing to see.  Pnina and I were thinking about staying in some hotel that turned out to be inside the market area.  When we realized we’d have to pay a fee just to reach our hotel (ridiculous), we opted for another hotel just outside the market, a place called Ou Yang Guesthouse.  This turned out to be a good choice.  For 20 yuan/night we had a huge room (bathroom outside).  Internet was free (with wi-fi too) and each night the hotel owners cooked a beautiful spread of local dishes for 15 yuan per person.

One of the dinners we had at the hotel.  The biggest surprise was that one of the dishes was exactly like potato latkes (not shown in this picture – it was a different meal):

A flower in the hotel’s courtyard:

On our first day at the hotel we found three Chinese tourists sitting down to make pot-stickers.  They invited us to join them and we accepted.  We had no clue what we were doing and even after making a couple dozen pot stickers we were still pretty clumsy compared to them.  It took us five times as long to put one together, and ours were lumpy and sad-looking by comparison.  Still, it was a lot of fun.

Making  pot-stickers – CC on the left, Kou (siitting down), Yau (in the back), and Pnina:

Pnina working the dough:

Hoping that this time I got the right amount of stuffing for my pot-sticker:

And, finally, stuffing ourselves silly:

After this huge lunch we had to walk off the pounds, so we set out to see the village.  It’s not a big place.  If you walk in almost any direction you reach rice terraces soon enough.  We’d seen a lot of terraces by this point, but we’d never actually walked among them, along the muddy ridges that separate one pool from the next.

In a different edge of the town we found these interesting tombs:

The next day we took a bigger hike outside the village.  We were joined by one of our pot-sticker friends, Kou (nickname Kou Kou), plus a couple other Chinese girls who were also staying at the hotel, Mia and Shabai.  We started by heading into a valley that had different statues and carvings on the sides of the cliff, some of them sheltered by impressive “houses”.

Mia, Kou Kou, Shabai and Pnina, standing with a friendly donkey we met along the way:

And a little further down the road we found an equally friendly goat.  Shabai made herself a tiara using branches she picked along the way, and the goat was very keen on eating it:

Heading into the valley with the rock carvings:

One of the edifices sheltering rock carvings.  The rock carvings were so-so, but it was interesting to see this structure in the middle of a cliff:

At the top of the hill we had a nice view over the surrounding hills and villages:

A little further down the road was the entrance to Shibao Shan, which is the major attraction by Shaxi.  It’s a nature reserve that has even more temples and carvings.  At this point we split up – Mia and Shabai decided to go into this sanctuary, but the rest of us had enough of these cliff carvings and decided to head further down the road in search of  a monastery where we heard we could get a great vegetarian lunch.  This monastery turned out to be much much further down the road, maybe 6 miles.  But eventually we found it and it really did have a tiny kitchen where they made a good vegetarian lunch.  Like in some of the monasteries in Emei Shan, the food was technically free, but we left a donation to cover the cost.  And the monastery itself was also interesting – it was a sprawly place with various imaginative statues and shrines scattered near the top of a hill.

Reaching the monastery after a long climb:

Notice this guy’s unusually long arm.  There was another statue with similarly long legs:

The meal we had at the monastery:

The next day when we left Shaxi, it happened to be market day (Friday).  We only caught a quick glimpse of the hub-bub before taking off:

False Advertising

This was obnoxious.  I bought an ice cream bar in a small store in Shaxi.  Obviously I couldn’t read the text on the wrapper, but the picture made it look something like a Snickers bar.  But when I opened the wrapper, what I found inside was vanilla ice cream coated in banana-flavored tapioca.  What the hell??  And this wasn’t the only time this happened.  Back in Juizhaigou I bought a pack of what looked like chocolate-covered coffee beans.  No wait, it actually said “coffee beans” in English on the cover.  But the stuff inside had no actual coffee beans, just a faint almost-coffee flavor.  That’s BS, man.

Thank You For Smoking

Here’s Pnina standing with a farmer and his baby boy:

What I like/hate about this picture is that the baby is holding a pack of cigarettes.  This is such a Chinese thing – it seems like every single man in China is a heavy smoker.  It’s a cultural thing.  People offer each other cigarettes all the time, it’s a way of showing respect or bonding or something like that.  We were offered cigarettes too on a few occasions.  But Pnina hates cigarette smoke more than anyone I know, so for her China was hell.  In particular there were a few situations where she just couldn’t avoid the smoke, e.g. bus rides where people smoked and there was no window to open.  A few times she broke social norms and (gasp) asked the locals not to smoke.  It was kind of awkward.  Smoking is such a natural thing in China that it’s like someone walking up to Pnina in America and saying “please stop drinking that water, you’re offending me.”  Anyhow, we loved the sights in China and we met some of the friendliest people of our whole trip, but when we eventually left China Pnina was definitely glad to leave all that smoke behind.

Bonus Picture

Farmers drying hay on the road:

Tiger Leaping Gorge

June 8-9, 2009

After our brief 1-night stop in Baishui Tai, we continued to Tiger Leaping Gorge.  The bus dropped us off at the eastern end of the trail, not far from the small tourist village called Walnut Garden.

Tiger Leaping Gorge is one of the star attractions in Yunnan and a big magnet for western (and local) backpackers.  It claims to be the deepest gorge in the world, but we’re not so sure.  Only a couple of months ago we were hiking in the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal, and there was a similar claim that the Jomsom side of the trek was the deepest in the world.  In terms of numbers, Jomsom is surely deeper because it has 7+ km tall mountains on both sides.  But the Tiger Leaping Gorge definitely feels more gorge-like: there are sections with near-vertical stone cliffs, and the water below is incredibly violent (we haven’t seen water this powerful since Murchison Falls in Uganda).

What’s with the name?  The legend goes that a tiger once escaped pursuit by leaping across a narrow section in the gorge.  There are three sections along the gorge where this may have happened – upper, middle, and lower.   In each one the canyon is very narrow, the water very gushy, and there’s a large boulder in the middle of the current that a tiger could have used to get across.

It took us two days / one night to do the hike.  We went east-to-west, which is the less common way to go because there’s more uphill (you’re going upstream).  The trek started on the road until we reached the small touristy village called Walnut Garden.  From there we took a detour and climbed down to the bottom of the gorge to see “lower tiger leaping rock”.  The path downhill included a few long ladders on the side of a cliff – very fun.  And when you reach the bottom you really notice the force of the current.  Then we headed back up and took a trail the rest of the way towards Qiaotou.  Overall it was a very good trek, though it rained pretty frequently and it was too hot to wear a rain coat comfortably.

OK, on with the photos…

As our bus approaches the trailhead, we start to see the gorge:

Pnina with Pan Yujie, a Chinese backpacker we met on the bus.  She was our hiking partner for the next couple of days:

Don’t know why, but I found it interesting that so many of the trucks in Yunnan had exposed engines up front:

Rice terraces:

At the end of the bridge is Tina’s Guest House (Walnut Garden), where we stopped for lunch before descending to the bottom of the gorge:

Going down long ladders:

One thing that was kind of annoying about Tiger Leaping Gorge, is that people nickel-and-dime you along the way.  It’s not enough to pay the entry ticket for the park (30 yuan).  If you want to take one of the ladder-rich trails down to the bottom, you need to pay another fee (usually 10 yuan).  And once at the bottom, if you want to walk over a small wooden bridge to the tiger-leaping rock, you need to pay another 5 yuan.  The actual fees aren’t big, but it’s annoying to keep paying them, especially considering that the people collecting fees are now basically getting money for nothing (there’ no real work to do to keep a little wooden bridge up).  When we reached the bottom, I forked over the 5 yuan to climb the rock with the good view, but Pnina said “screw that” and marched off to find her own rock to climb.  But all the other rocks here were very steep and slippery, and if you make a wrong move you can easily end up in the gushing water below, certainly dead.  It scared me to watch her prance around like that, but luckily it all worked out.

Pnina prancing around on huge boulders, looking down at the gushing water below:

The aforementioned gushing water:

Pnina and I on her rock (OK, yeah, I joined her):

Walking back up, this time a different route:

More ladders, yay!

Back at the top, we get off the road and start hiking along the trail.  Some parts of the trail were blasted through rock:

Jagged peaks poking through the clouds:

Hanging out with some other backpackers at the Halfway House hotel – Evan (Chinese), Pan, Pnina, Max (from Oregon), and Eli (French):

There must have been something very interesting on this branch because all these bugs were duking it out to claim this territory.  We saw the larger beetle (the black one) pick up the other one and toss it off the tree.  It was real National Geographic action:

Corn husks hung out to dry – a very common sight in northwestern Yunnan:

While we hiked, we had some interesting discussions with Pan; interesting both for what Pan knew and for what she didn’t know.  For example, that week, high-school students around China were freaking out because they were about to take the huge college entrance exam (things get pretty competitive when you’re in a country with well over a billion people).  Pan, who is already a college sophomore studying Sociology, told us about her experience taking the test and getting into university.  She knew a lot about that and her English was very good.  On the other hand, she didn’t know that China blocks certain websites, she was surprised to learn that Pnina and I ran into complications when we wanted to keep traveling in China after leaving Tibet, and she knew surprisingly little about the Chinese election process.  That in itself tells us a lot about what schools in China teach and don’t teach, and I guess we’re not surprised.

Baishui Tai

June 7, 2009

From Shangri-La we headed back south to hike the Tiger Leaping Gorge.  The quickest path would have been to head back down along the main road to Qiaotou and do the hike west-to-east.  But we decided instead to take a smaller road and do the hike east-to-west.  The benefit is that on the way to the trailhead we stopped at this beautiful spot called Baishui Tai.

Baishui Tai is similar to Huanglong in that it also has limestone-rich water flowing downhill and creating these crater-like terraces full of bright-blue water.  But Baishui Tai is much smaller, far less touristy, and far far cheaper (30 yuan instead of 200).  If you’re in the area, we would definitely recommend stopping here.

From far away, the Baishui Tai pools just look like a barren, eroded stretch at the bottom of the hill:

But up-close they are much prettier, just like the pools in Huanglong:

Horses wading through some of the shallow pools:

In some places we could move close and see the water trickling slowly over the edge of the pools:

Technically you’re not supposed to go to the actual pools (some areas are roped off), but this local family did.  The Baishui Tai water is considered holy to the local Naxi people:

Shangri-La

June 6-7, 2009

From Lijiang we proceeded north.

Our plan was to catch a bus to Daju, then hike westward along the Tiger Leaping Gorge to Qiaotou, and then catch a bus north to Shangri-La.  But at the Lijiang bus station we were informed that there’s no bus to Daju.  So, we reversed our plans and caught a bus straight north to Shangri-La.

Beautiful views on our bus ride from Lijiang to Shangri-La:

So, is this *the* Shangri-La?  No, not really.  The town’s original name is Zhongdian.  A few years ago the provincial government renamed it to Shangri-La in the hopes of boosting tourism.  The original Shangri-La is a mythical city from James Hilton’s novel, Lost Horizon.  It doesn’t really exist anywhere.

Still, it’s a nice place to visit.  Like Lijiang, it’s split into two parts: a boring modern Chinese-influenced area, and a pretty tourist-oriented old-town.  We found Shangri-La’s old town to be not quite as nice as Lijiang’s, but also not nearly as crowded.

Pnina entering Shangri-La’s old town:

My hiking pants were falling apart, so I was in the market for a new pair.  There are a lot of shops with outdoor gear in Shangri-La, but their prices were not much better than prices back home (obviously inflated).  While hunting around for a better deal, Pnina noticed a sign for a shop called Turtle Mountain Gear.  We eventually found the shop in a back alley.  It was run by three bold guys, brothers as it turned out.  In the yard in front of the shop we noticed a peculiar thing: they had one of those poles with arrows pointing to major world cities and giving the distances, and among the list was Seattle!  Seattle??  We asked why they included it, and sure enough – these guys are from Seattle.  They moved to China with their family nearly 20 years ago, and they’ve lived here ever since (they’re probably among the very few blonds who are fluent in Chinese).  They’ve been in Shangri-La for the last 10 years.  Their parents work for an NGO that helps local Tibetan villagers try to control environmental impact brought by tourism.  And the three sons run this Turtle Mountain Gear shop, where most of the proceeds go to the NGO.  Most of their money comes from motorcycle tours they lead into the mountains.  They also make a little money selling backpacker gear.  And their prices were much better – 35 yuan for a pair of “Columbia” hiking pants (as compared to 150 in other shops).  We didn’t end up joining them for any of the tours because we were short on time.  But if you’re in the area you should check them out.  They even have cheap *cold* beer!!

Pnina and Josiah in front of the Seattle sign at Turtle Mountain Gear in Shangri-La:

More random sights around Shangri-La…

Strangely modern furniture in front of a western-oriented restaurant in old town:

Pnina standing with a local woman in old town’s central square.  We saw a lot of women wearing these “graduation-style” hats in northwest Yunnan.  It must be a traditional thing for some tribe (there are so many different cultures in Yunnan, it’s hard to keep up).  We bought a bracelet from her stand just so we could take a photo

Yak cheese we sampled at the Shangri-La Cheese Shop.  There were two kinds: new and aged.  The aged one tasted a little like smoked gouda.  Both were good.  I was hoping to have a yak cheese burger, but unfortunately they didn’t have any.

Heading out of old town, we entered the modern part of Shangri-La.  Here we found another town square, a much bigger one.  In the evening people come here to play different carnival-style games.  In this photo you can see a bunch of cigarette boxes in the foreground; if you manage to roll a wobbly ring onto one of them, you get it.  In the back there’s a Thanka museum we chose to skip:

Huge crane statues in a lake on the opposite end of the same square:

Ganden Sumtseling Monastery

According to our guidebook, the star attraction in Shangri-La is the huge Ganden Sumtseling Monastery just north of town, so we went to check it out.  We climbed on bus #1, which we heard would take us all the way to the monastery.  When the bus dropped us off, we were disappointed – all the buildings were too modern and plain.  Then we realized that this was not the monastery at all – this was just the ticket office!  We were escorted to the ticket booth and then told to wait for a different bus to take us the rest of the way to the monastery.   Oh, and the price was not 30 yuan (as our book suggested), it was 85 yuan!  We later learned that all this stuff, the higher price and the shiny tourist busses, are all new as of one month ago!  What crappy luck.  Prior to that you could still pay 30 yuan and take the same bus #1 all the way to the monastery.  Today bus #1 still goes to the monastery but it won’t take any tourists.  This is all a fund-raising scheme for the monastery.  The guys at Turtle Mountain Gear said that the head monks at the monastery are some of the richest, most powerful people in town.  Strange.  We never thought of monks as power-hungry types.

Anyhow, the monastery itself was interesting.  It was pretty similar to some of the monasteries we saw on the way to Lhasa in Tibet, so if you’re not heading to Tibet this is a decent alternative.  More interesting for us is the fact that construction crews were in the process of tearing down one of the three temples at the top, in preparation for building a new temple.  We saw a big tractor carving away at a wall, destroying old frescoes.  Maybe there was a good reason to rebuild, but it was hard to watch.

Looking at Ganden Sumtselling Monastery from the front.  At the top you can see two temples.  The empty space in the middle is the third temple, which was almost fully town down:

Heading up to the temples:

Impressive, colorful woodwork:

Construction crew overseeing the tearing-down of the middle temple:

A tractor cutting away at the back wall.  If you look closely you can see some Buddhist wall paintings being destroyed in the process:

Huge Prayer Wheel

The Ganden Sumtseling Monastery was interesting, but we were still bummed for getting stuck with the inflated entry fee.  Pnina disliked the whole idea of paying to see a holy place.  In her mind it should be donation-based.  So we made a promise to each other that we wouldn’t pay to see any more monasteries in China

Back in Shangri-La’s old town we walked around and found another interesting monastery complex, and this one was free to enter so it was OK.  The monastery itself was nothing special, but at the top of the hill it had the biggest prayer wheel we’d ever seen, probably the biggest in the world.  Getting it spinning took quite a lot of force, best done with two or more people.

The huge prayer wheel at the top of the hill:

Several people working together to spin the wheel:

Bonus Picture

Tiny three-wheel cars are popular in Shangri-La and other towns in Yunnan.

Lugu Hu

June 3-4, 2009

After finishing our hike at Emei Shan we were looking to head south to Yunnan Province.  We had a few options.  Most tourists head straight south to Kunming, then head back west/north to the sights in upper Yunnan.  It’s by far the quickest way to go, but it’s also the least interesting.  On the other extreme it’s possible to head west to Litang and then turn south going along Sichuan’s wild western frontier.  We heard this route is beautiful in a Tibetan sort of way – high mountain passes, cowboy villages, etc.  But it also takes longer (4-5 days) and the travel here is less predictable.  We also heard that this route might be blocked for western tourists (in the same way Xiahe was off-limits to us just recently) and we didn’t want to take that chance.  So we opted for plan C, which is to go from Emei Shan to Lugu Hu, a lake on the border between Sichuan and Yunnan, and then to continue to Lijiang.  This was a compromise both in terms of time (2 days) and in terms of sights – it was a pretty place, but probably not as exciting as western Sichuan.

Pnina with Liu Cheng Hai, a Chinese backpacker we met on the way to Lugu Hu.  He was planning to stay for a while in some hotel and earn his keep by playing guitar in the hotel’s restaurant at night:

We reached Lugu Hu in the early afternoon and paid the 40 yuan entry fee.  There are several villages around the lake with different accommodations.  We had little information, so we randomly chose a spot in the southeastern corner of the lake, next to a thick marsh.

There was still enough time in the day so we set out for a short hike around the lake.  Here’s what we saw along the way…

Wooden canoes in the marshy area next to our hotel:

The pier of our little village on the southeastern corner of Hugu Lu:

The water was very clear.  Near the shore there was a large bright area formed by white flowers on underwater plants:

Some lucky dog got to build a house on this small private island:

We climbed up a hill full of pine trees with twisted trunks.  When we descended on the other side we found another small village.  The sun was about to set and the colors in the sky were fantastic:

There were a lot of other hiking options around Hugu Lu, but we had relatively little time left on our visa, so the next day we moved on.  We took a tuk-tuk around the lake to the larger lake-side town of Luoshui, and from there we caught a bus to Lijiang.

In Luoshui many of the tourist shops sell animal pelts (illegally):

Bonus Picture

Add another one to our collection of interesting mannequins:

In the News

Air France flight 447 vanished off the coast of Brazil.  There were 228 people on-board, all presumed dead – the biggest such disaster for Air France in many years.  The search for survivors went on for several weeks, but none were found.

In the MTV Movie Awards, Sasha Baron Cohen (the comedian who does the Ali-G and Borratt characters) descended from above, dressed as an angel with exposed buttocks, and landed on Eminem while he was attempting to announce some award.  Eminem’s crew tried to wrestle Sasha away, and Eminem stormed off the stage.  The jury is out whether this whole thing was staged.

Emei Shan

May 29 – June 1, 2009

After seeing the big Buddha in Leshan, we continued south to go hiking in the sacred mountain, Emei Shan.

Emei Shan has endless flights of stone steps leading from the base (at Baoguo) to the summit.  Along the way you see beautiful forests and a chain of temples and monasteries.  Originally, these were Taoist temples, but during the Ming dynasty (368 to 1644) most were converted to Buddhism.  Today these monasteries act basically as hotels for people on their way up or down the mountain – it’s a very strange experience to “check into” a monastery.

Emei Shan still attracts some pilgrims, though mostly you see hordes of Chinese tourists and a fair number of foreign tourists in between.  Those who have little time (or want the easy way) take a bus all the way up to a station near the summit.  From there it’s a further 1-2 hour trek up to the golden summit, or else an easy cable car ride up.  Those who have more time (and an inclination for a Stairmaster-like workout) go base-to-summit by foot.  It generally takes two days to climb up and one day to climb down, and most climbers attempt to reach the summit in time to see the sunrise the morning of the 3rd day.  But there are other ways to go.  Pnina and I took our time – we spent 2.5 days climbing up, then took the bus to the bottom.  It worked out pretty well for us.

All in all, Emei Shan was one of the better sites on our trip in China.  We’d definitely recommend it.

OK, on with the pictures…

An illustrated map of the mountain (not at all drawn to scale) showing the various paths and monasteries along the way:

Before setting off from Baoguo I treated myself to hot chocolate (or the closest approximation I could find in China).  Up on the mountain the food was generally boring and expensive:

Pnina in front of some shrine at the base of the mountain.  There were a bunch of picturesque sites like this – shrines, waterfalls, wall-carvings – before the actual trail started:

A museum at the base had life-size dioramas showing different aspects of monk life on the mountain in the past, including martial arts:

And the trail begins!  So far we have easy stairs – the hard ones come later.  Somewhere around here we paid the 150 yuan entry fee, which was good for 3 days:

The first monastery we visited:

These girls were so cute.  They came up to Pnina and I and gave us some Chinese candies, gelatin in little heart-shaped cups.  We thanked them and gave them some snacks from our backpacks.  Then one of the girls took off a bracelet and gave it to Pnina.  The gift-giving went on like that for a little while

Even the snails have to deal with stairs on Emei Shan:

Local women taking a break to play cards.  We saw lots of people playing this game with the elongated cards, but we never figured out exactly what it’s called or how you play it:

OK, now we have some real stairs:

Another monastery along the way.  Most of these monasteries had small kitchens/restaurants where you can get food.  Surprisingly, the food is free!  The monks see it as charity for pilgrims.  Of course, we left money in the donation box.

This is Niuxin Pavilion, the monastery where Pnina and I stayed the first night.  Our room (60 yuan) was the corner room on the first balcony of the building on the left.  It felt a lot like a Chinese hotel (a bed, a TV, a thermos with hot water) except that the building obviously had a lot more character:

The tradition at this temple is that couples have their names engraved on locks, and then the locks are placed on chain railings around the temple.  There were hundreds of locks everywhere:

More amazing wall carvings:

A natural-looking dam not far from the monastery (it’s actually man-made).  It may be synthetic, but damn it looks good.  The lake to the left really had this crazy aqua color:

Getting some corn-on-the-cob to go as we start hiking on the second day.  After all the crappy break-your-teeth corn we had in Africa, it was really nice to have decent corn here:

Monkeys are a big thing at Emei Shan.  They are simultaneously a big  attraction and a big nuisance.  Our guidebook warned us to carry a bamboo cane and keep some rocks in our pockets, you know, just in case.  And it was good advice.  The monkeys at Emei Shan are really aggressive – they’ll jump on your back, tear at your pockets, etc.  We managed to go up and down the mountain with no injuries and no lost food, but we had some close calls, and we ran into other people who weren’t so lucky:

Notice the monkey jumping from one rail to the next, going alongside the tourists.  This part of the trail was watched by a small battalion of rangers who escorted the tourists and made sure the monkeys didn’t get out of hand.  One monkey jumped on my backpack, but was chased away.  Another monkey pulled a Nalgene bottle out of Pnina’s backpack, but immediately dropped it (he didn’t expect it to be so heavy, I guess), so we managed to get it back.  I have to say – I’m not a fan.

But the Chinese visitors are big fans, and they buy up these silly stuffed monkey dolls like they’re going out of fashion:

OK, back to the hike:

And here we are at the last big temple before the summit.  This is the end of the road for people who take the bus all the way up.  Behind the temple you can see the cable car.  On the day we visited the weather was kind of foggy/rainy, and it appeared that the cable car was not operating.  People had no choice but to huff and puff their way up the hill:

Actually, that’s not true, there was one other choice.  For a fee, a couple of these porters will haul you all the way up to the top.

Finally made it to the golden summit!  This is one of many statues of a six-tusked elephant that, story goes, carried Bodhisattva Puxian to Emei Shan when he visited in the sixth century:

Up above – the golden elephants statue at the summit:

A local pilgrim being photographed:

There are three summits in Emei Shan.  The one with all the temples is actually not the highest point.  That distinction goes to Wanfoding, the peak you see here.  But it’s only about 20 meters higher, and as you can see when we were at the top the visibility was less than perfect, so we didn’t bother going there:

Bonus Pictures

When we slept at the first monastery we had a TV in our room.  There were no English channels, but we found a show that was really interesting to watch even without understanding the commentary.  It was some kind of school-kid competition, similar to a 3-legged race but on steroids.  I didn’t count but it must have been more like a 41-legged race.  Each race lasted less than a minute, but it was preceded by dramatic documentary footage of all the kids training, and followed by footage of the winning team celebrating while the losing team literally broke down and cried in the stadium, every last one of them.  These kids should lighten up!  We’re not sure but we think this was a Japanese competition (it seems like a pretty Japanese’ish thing to do).

Leshan

May 28-29, 2009

After our detour to the Shunan Bamboo Sea, we headed back west to rejoin the typical tourist route, stopping at Leshan to see the largest Buddha statue in the world.

Dragon Festival

Most people stop in Leshan just long enough to see the Buddha (two hours?) and immediately continue along their way; few tourists actually stay there for the night.  But Pnina and I had no choice; our bus arrived in the late afternoon, too late to see the Buddha that day.  So, we checked into a basic hotel and started walking around town to see what else there is to Leshan besides the Buddha.  It turned out to be a really good experience.  That day (May 28) was a holiday – the Dragon Boat Festival.  If we arrived earlier we might have caught the namesake dragon boat races on the river, which are the real highlight of the festival.  Still, at night there was a fun atmosphere in the main town square.  Families walked around and many of them launched these lantern-balloons into the sky, made of paper and powered by a tiny candle.

Families setting off balloons to celebrate dragon day; before launching the balloon, each person uses a marker to write a wish on the balloon:

We approached to get a better look, and we drew at least as much attention as the balloons themselves.  One of the local families approached us to chat.  There was a college-age girl, Lisa, who works as a private English tutor for the young girl in the family; Lisa acted as our translator.  The mother, who was both friendly and stubborn, invited Pnina and I to join them for dinner.  Pnina and I didn’t want to trouble them, but this lady was really strong-headed and refused to take “no” for an answer   In the end we compromised – Pnina and I agreed to be invited for drinks only.  But this was just a ploy.  When we reached the bar, this family ordered a bunch of food after all.  And then we learned that they already had their dinner before, so all this food on the table was just for Pnina and I, and they were there to watch us eat.  Holy cow, it was a lot of food!  This seems to be a common thing in China; the host orders entirely too much food for the party.  When Chinese people leave a restaurant, the dishes are always half full.  There’s something cultural to this habit and Pnina and I don’t fully understand it; maybe the host looks bad if the plates are empty, like he’s neglecting to feed his guests.  Anyhow, for us it’s totally backwords.  We grew up hearing about starving kids in Ethiopia and how we should always finish the food on our plates.  Well, cultural norms aside, it was incredibly generous of this family to invite us out.  By this point Pnina and I were convinced that the Chinese are the friendliest people we met on our trip so far.

Me standing with Lisa (right) and mother/daughter (left).  They were very excited for Pnina and I to speak English with the little girl, but she was pretty shy:

Dafo

The next morning we went to see the big Buddha.  Our hosts from dinner the night before decided that it wouldn’t be appropriate for us to take a bus or taxi, so they picked us up with their car early in the morning and dropped us off right at the entrance to Dafo Si – the temple complex that includes the big Buddha.  Again – really nice of them.

Now, if Pnina and I were on our own, we probably would have skipped entering the actual big Buddha complex.  We heard from other travelers that you can get a pretty good view of the statue from an island that sits about a hundred meters from the statue, in the middle of the river.  To reach this island you just pay a small fee fee for the fairy; there’s no entrance ticket or anything like that.  But our hosts dropped us off at the entrance to the Buddha park, so we paid the 70 yuan fee and entered.  Was it worth it?  I say “yes”, Pnina’s not so sure.  What I liked was that we were able to get really close to the statue, especially to its head and feet, and up-close you really notice just how huge he is (by the way, he’s 71 meters tall).  It was also fun to scramble up and down the steps on the edge of the cliff, and to visit the temple grounds.  But I’m sure it would have been similarly impressive, and definitely cheaper, to see the Buddha from the island.

The big Buddha statue carved into the side of the cliff, looking out to the river:

Me standing by his left foot – yeah, he’s that big:

This is the view the Buddha has.  This island in the middle of the river is where Pnina and I were thinking of going to see the Buddha on the cheap.  There were a few tourists there:

From the top platform you can play all these dumb picture games – grabbing his ear, picking his nose, and so on:

There were various temples behind the Buddha, lots of places to sit and drink tea, lots of gardens to stroll through:

There was also an option to enter a separate complex with more statues and caves.  The charge was a further 50 yuan (or so).  We decided to pass.

Toilets

All around China (and Nepal, and India, and other places) the locals tend to use squat-style toilets (basically a fancy hole in the ground).  People say they’re more sanitary, I guess because with western toilets you sit on a surface that was sat upon by many other people.  Well, bullocks.  These squat toilets just don’t work for me.  I neglected to develop my squatting muscles early in life, so now it’s plain torture.  Squatting at these toilets for me is like an exhausting game of twister.  When I stand up, my knees always crack.

So when Pnina and I checked into hotels in China, we always made sure to ask for western toilets where possible.  More often than not, we found them.  But outside the hotel it was often harder.  In the big cities we kept our eyes peeled for KFC, or Starbucks, or other western-friendly chains.  In smaller towns, chances were slim.

But here in Dafo Si I learned something – public restrooms in China usually have one western-style toilet “hidden” in the handicapped stall.  Not only that, in some cases these handicapped toilets are some of the most modern I’ve ever seen.  This one in Dafo Si had a remote mounted on the wall!

Sign on the door to the disabled stall in the Dafo Si restroom:

The very fancy western toilet behind that door.  Notice the remote control on the wall:

From this point on I always looked for the handicapped stalls.  Yeah, I have no shame.  From my perspective, I’m freakin’ handicapped!