T&A

After arriving in Lijiang early in the afternoon and quickly finding our hotel, we began to explore the old town and surroundings. While Dali was the old capital of the Yunnan province and has more history, Lijiang has had more success in attracting tourists. This is due mainly to the cobblestone streets and small waterways that wind their way through town. Most of the walkways, too narrow for vehicles, are lined with storefronts in traditional architecture. The streams that used to provide the townspeople with fresh water are still used today for cleaning the storefronts and washing clothes.

We quickly found out that we had arrived in Dali in time for the first day of a week long festival dedicated to the third lunar month. Dali’s streets are lined with shops sporting traditional chinese architecture, and city is walled with four main gates on either side. There were probably even more tourists than usual because of the festival, and at times it was hard to avoid getting hit in the head by the many sun umbrellas. Despite the large number of chinese tourists who constantly snapped photos of us, there were still a relatively small number of western tourists here. In the middle of the town we found “foreigner” street which is lined with cafes serving pizza, banana pancakes, and other western food.

We made our way towards the west gate because we were told that this is where the main festivities were located. After fighting our way through the crowds, we walked through the gate which opened up to a larger area filled with carnival rides and games. A massive, temporary market lined a large street sloping up toward the surrounding Zhonghe mountain. We decided to walk shoulder to shoulder with the crowd through this market, while being smacked in the head with even more umbrellas. There were tons of food stalls selling hot dogs on a stick, chinese food, and ice cream. Many shops also sold clothing for really low prices: 10 Yuan belts, 35 Yuan shoes, 15 Yuan shirts, etc… Most of these shops had speakers blasting a recording of what we guessed to be their special deals, or a man on a ladder waving people into his store.

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As mentioned in the previous post, we’re not going to mention the name of this town because we don’t want to ruin it. Every time we travel to a place recommended by Lonely Planet, we experience an inlated economic zone. Whether it is a restaurant, guesthouse, or internet cafe, if it’s in the Lonely Planet, everyone goes there and this results in price hikes and not much of a cultural experience.

This time we were following our little yellow guidebook which has hand drawn maps and mostly describes how to get to and from different places. The author also puts a star or small drawings next to points of interest. This guidebook has a better strategy in that you can follow it to travel to different places, but you are on your own in terms of finding a place to sleep, eat, etc… If all guidebooks were this way, we doubt many places would be spoiled, and there might not be a western tourist circuit. Anyway, this small town had a star next to it, and if the yellow book has a star, it is probably worth looking at.

The bus to this town was along another rough, dirt road. The bus was filled with locals and most foot space was filled with bags of rice, grain, and even a live chicken. One man was curious and tried to talk to us, but of course we couldn’t understand him. Adam took out the language section of the guidebook to show him, but the man ended up flipping through the coloured pictures of China instead. After five hours, we finally arrived to the small town. We were the only western tourists, and had to jump in a taxi to go to the old portion of the city.

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