Monday 16th March 2009
We arrived at Lijiang around mid afternoon. We walked out to the front of the bus station and, because we didn’t really have any details on this town, decided to take a taxi, that and the fact that the bus we had just got off was so uncomfortable that we couldn’t bear the hassle of another local bus, not with all we carry around with us.
Paul had picked up a business card for Mama’s Naxi (pronounced Nashi) which the owner of Teddy bears had told us was not as good as his and to check the room before deciding to stay there and a guy that Paul had been talking to on the train had written down the name of a hotel which he rated quiet highly and so now we had two choices of accommodation. Paul asked the first taxi if he recognized the name of the recommended hotel, which she didn’t, then Mama’s Naxi, which she didn’t recognize either. Same with the second driver. The third taxi agreed to take us to the old town but then just dumped us, mainly because the streets are pedestrian only, so we wondered briefly and then asked a police woman, well I say asked – I said ‘Knee how’ then passed her Mama’s card. She very kindly rang the number on the card, said something very rapidly into the phone then said ‘wait here’. About 5 mins later a Chinese lady came round the corner and showed us the way. Mama’s Naxi is built in the Naxi tradition with two storey buildings around a central courtyard and constructed mainly of wood. Our room had a double bed, ensuite shower room and a huge telly with little room for anything else. Being on the ground floor, the two ‘outside’ windows had bamboo blinds which were down and the third window, overlooking the courtyard, had a wood lattice work covering the opening, net curtains and over curtains, but no glass. Consequently it was dark and much colder inside than outside. Fortunately, Lijiang is the warmest place we have visited so far since Hong Kong and the bed had the luxury of an electric blanket.
Actually, since we arrived in Yangshou the weather and the beds have been very cold. The air conditioning unit can also be used as a heater but is not as efficient at warming as it is at cooling. When we get ‘home’ we have been climbing into bed, fully clothed, to take that really cold feeling away, then dashing up to complete the night ablutions’ then almost tearing off our clothes before retiring for the night. So the electric blanket was indeed a very welcome luxury, taking only 10 – 15 mins to warm the bed. The second really good thing about Mama’s is; round at one of her other houses (she has three) are the dorms, common/internet/eating room. If there are five or more people they will cook a ‘common meal’. By this I mean, traditional Naxi cooking, generally with three meat and three+ veg dishes and all the rice you can eat – for 15 Yuan a head – that’s about £1.50 and the food is really good and varied each night. The other advantage to this is that you are more likely to talk, at length, to other travellers and pick up, and pass on, some very useful tips. There were some days when it seemed like little ‘Israel’ but we stayed there first for three nights then for two and came across Irish, English, Aussie German and Scottish travellers.
On our first night we joined two retired Israeli couples at the dinner table and ended up agreeing to join them on their excursion the next day to Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. To get onto the mountain we all had to pay an 80 Yuan charge for the upkeep of the old town (for it is believed that if you can afford to go up the mountain, you can afford to pay this charge, and if you don’t pay you can’t go up the mountain) which we paid to Mama that evening and she arranged for an eight seater vehicle to pick us up the next morning that would hang around all day until we wanted to be bought home again for 150 Yuan or £2.50 per head. The ride to the mountain took over an hour but on the way we stopped and were persuaded to purchase a small tin of oxygen as we would be going above 4000 meters. We could also ‘rent’ a warm coat for 30 Yuan but we were all happy with what we had. We realized afterwards that the driver earned a small commission for anything she managed to persuade us to payout for. Then we got to the entrance, which cost another 80 Yuan each and finally reached the carpark for the cable car. On buying the tickets for the cable car we learned that we had to pay 20 Yuan for the bus to the cable car then 150 Yuan for the cable car – all in all an expensive little excursion but the main complaint was that we then had to wait for two hours before we could even get on the bus. We then had to queue to get on the cable car which wasted two and a half hours of the day.
The cable car holds six people and when our turn finally came, we ascended the four kilometres of cable whilst looking out over spectacular view of the surrounding countryside. I must confess I was a little ‘wossy’ to start with, especially as the car went past each post, but then my desire to take photos overtook my fears and I opened my eyes and started clicking away. At the top there is the obvious terminal and café but there is a wooden walkway, cleared of snow, for us to ascend even further. The top was quite crowded, as you may well imagine, and the top part of the walkway was closed as it was unsafe and due to be repaired. We did, however, get to walk on the mountain. It was a beautiful day with the sun shining and I was comfortably warm wearing four layers on my top half, two layers on my legs, fleece hat and double thickness gloves which I even took off, but look around and see the newly married couples who have come up for wedding photo’s. Generally the groom would be wearing a white suit and the bride, her wedding dress, often an elegant strapless number and still managed to smile and pose without looking cold.
There was also the chance to have a go tobogganing, solo or with two or more people but, much to our regret, we didn’t have a go.
The second day we hired bikes from Mama’s and went to have a look round one of villages close by and presumably still looking like Lijiang used to look. There is also a world famous Dr Ho, visited by Michael Palin when he did his program on the Himalayas. Dr Ho learned from his father and is said to be able to cure leukaemia and other cancers.
Of course we got lost and went to another village first which is well on its way to attracting tourists but we did finally find the village we were after and then found ourselves outside of Dr Ho. The outside has glass cabinets with lots of printed stuff about him. He saw us looking and immediately came out and invited us in. He is in his early eighties and his wife, not a lot younger, gave us tea while her husband finished his consultation with two Chinese lads. The conversation, when we did get to talk to him, generally consisted of how famous and how amazing he is. How he was persecuted in the ‘cultural revolution’ and had to hide in the mountains. He showed us even more publications and even referred to Joseph Rock a famous (?) botanist who Paul had heard of. He finally invited us into the next room and measured out some powder, from which the tea we had been drinking had been made, which I believe is for general good health. He didn’t charge for this but we were expected to make a donation. Paul gave him 20 Yuan after which he dismissed us. To be honest, he wasn’t interested in us at all, or so it felt.
The next day Mama had organized a lift to the bus station where we caught the bus to Qiaotou (Chow tow) ready to start our two day hike to Tiger Leaping Gorge, so called because there, allegedly, a tiger jumped the gorge and escaped being hunted, although I can’t imagine that there have been many tigers in area for a very long time. Again we had to pay to get onto the mountain, which is fair enough particularly if this helps to keep it as a national park as there are rumours afoot that the ‘power’ company want to ‘dam’ the gorge.
Anyway, we bought our tickets and were looking for the way to go when this Aussie called Margot popped her head out of a door to check that we had all we needed for the hike including credit on the phone. Everyone had told us that the way was well signposted but she insisted that some Canadian would have died up there because he got lost but because he has his mobile phone he was able to get someone to go up and find him. What a load of bol***ks. Not only is it well signposted with red paint on rocks and arrows saying things like 90 mins to Naxi Family House and an arrow pointing the way. As we started on our way a local man with a horse offered the service of the horse. Obviously, we hadn’t even started the trek, so declined but he saw an opportunity and decided to follow us up, just in case I changed my mind. He pointed to the map, one very similar to the one we had, and tried to impress on us how steep the climb was going to be.
By this time it was past 12 noon and the sun was shining and in the gorge we had the highest temperature since arriving in Asia, well you know what they say about mad dogs and Englishmen. After he had overtaken us, with no-one in sight, we changed into shorts and tee shirts and continued on our way. He wasn’t wrong when he told us about the steepness and I found myself stopping every ten mins (maybe even less) or so just to get my breath back and my heart rate down to a more reasonable rhythm and have a sip of water because it really was very warm. The local mans presence was quite amusing to start with, he kept just far enough behind us so that should I need his service he would be right there he also acted as an unpaid guide pointing out which way to go if we looked even slightly puzzled. After a while, after really struggling, I made the mistake of asking him how much he would charge even though I had every intention of getting there on my own two feet. He told me 150 Yuan, which I declined coming back with a price of 50 which the two Israeli couples had told us was the most we should pay which he too declined going on to once again tell me how steep it was going to get. We got halfway up and stopped for lunch at the Naxi Family house and so did he and when we moved on, so did he.
As we were going up other local men were descending with their horses offering a lift usually saying something like ‘horse’ to which we would reply ‘yes you are right, and it’s a very nice horse too’ and then walk on. Paul finally really got the hump with our un-appointed guide because we wanted to be alone, not something that happens too often in China, and the bell around the horses neck plus the guys sneezing was really winding Paul up so he stopped and intimated that the guy should either carry on up the hill or bugger off back down it, we didn’t need his horse. Again the guy pulled out his map. ‘Yes’ said Paul, ‘I’ve got one of those too’ and he finally got the message and left us. I did feel very sorry for the horse and a bit sorry for him, after all he was only trying to make a living, he just picked the wrong couple.
Eventually, after a great deal of effort, we reached the highest part of the pathway, 2670Mts and another hour and a half later reached the Tea Horse Guest House, all wooden with views of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain from our balcony, a hot shower, meal and bed for the night. It gets very chilly up there at night and again we were grateful for an electric blanket.
The next morning we had breakfast and continued our trek. After walking for about half an hour we stopped by the side of the path for a short break and low and behold, in dribs and drabs, a coach load of 55 Chinese strolled past having started at the guest house further along the path and going in the opposite direction. At first they we quite restrained and no-one asked for our photo, then slowly they got braver and started snapping away and finally they wanted to be in the photo with us. Then we didn’t see another tourist all day. We passed through several villages and saw people at work. Going through one village there were a team of men and horses. We encountered them as they were coming back down, first one horse with baskets on each side came round the bend, followed by over ten more and they clearly knew the way, they ignored us and carried on down to where they would pick up their next load.
In another village we saw lots of building work – extending the hostel for the ‘nutters’ wanting to walk the gorge and in another village we saw three guys using traditional tools to fashion the wood to make traditional building and they very kindly let me take their photo’s. I don’t usually ask, I normally take the picture surreptitiously, but as they were watching us go by, I did the polite thing.
Carrying on, we came to the end of the trek and a steep decent. There are several guest houses at the end but someone had told us about the Bridge Inn where the accommodation is basic, all you have is what amounts to a mattress on the floor facing the window, but the window is the whole wall and has an awesome view of the gorge. And so we sacrificed our en-suite shower room, having to go across the road for a shower and down a steep set of steps to the lav, fortunately though, we were the only guests and therefore had our ‘hosts’ undivided attention. Having eaten a lunch in their Bridge Café and having dumped our bags we went for the final decent down to the river. One of the local families has leased the land from the government and have fashioned some steps and some ladders, none of which feels particularly safe but decent would be impossible without them, they charge 10 Yuan each and I am sure they were giggling at us as we went down. From where we started the river looked much like a trickle or stream but an hour or so later and with legs shaking we reached the raging torrent that the river actually is. On the way down there are various ‘stalls’ although the sales persons and goods where nowhere to be seen at that time of day, but I am sure they are all manned during high season. We climbed over huge rocks and Paul managed to wash his hands in the river without getting his feet wet. And then we had to walk back up! We certainly earned our beer that night.
Next day we got the bus back to Qiaotou. Driving through the gorge was really very beautiful even though the road is disintegrating and very bumpy. When we got to Qiaotou we were enquiring about the bus to take us to Zhongdian or as it is now called ‘Shangri-La’ in an attempt to attract the tourists. Shangri-La is on the edge of Tibet and you can see the facial features of the locals have really changed considerably as we move around the region. The town itself has the feel of a ‘border town’. It has it’s ‘tourist old town’ which is the same as the ‘tourist old town’ of Lijiang. By that I mean it is filled with wooden buildings that don’t appear to be old, the ground floor or each being a shop selling ‘tourist tat’, actually that may be a little unfair, there are women in traditional dress weaving scarves and wraps and there are crafts men and women either making jewellery or carving wood and making beautiful things, but as backpackers we can’t really buy too much as we have to carry it around on public transport and our plane limit is 20kgs. The two ‘old towns’ experienced so far also have narrow, cobbled streets closed cars but open to bikes, scooters and these three wheeled motor vehicles together with the ‘electric carts’ for delivering goods to the shops.
There isn’t really very much to do in ‘Shangri-La’. We spent the first afternoon wandering around the old town. They have a ‘massive’ Prayer Wheel which takes four people to get it moving with a temple attached, we didn’t actually go up close to this, we just viewed it from our hostel and from the place we ended up walking to.
Essentially, there is a vast ‘plain’ surrounded by mountains with a very large hill in the middle with a temple on top, and this is where we walked to. Not really too much of a climb, compared to what we have climbed, but the air is thinner and it took effort, but soooo worth it. The temple is very old and shabby and really very small with only one teenage monk and some workman, presumably, repairing or renovating. But the top of the hill and the temple are totally strewn with ‘prayer flags’, hundreds and thousands of them. Some very old and tatty, some seemed to be quiet new. The new ones are clean and bright whilst the older ones range from starting to fade to looking like a piece of rubbish. The other thing we noticed was the ‘bling’ on the roof of the temple which we had not seen in other areas. Yes that’s right, the old building is tired and tatty but there is still bright and shiny bling on the roof.
But that is not the impressive part, again for us, the impressive part was the natural beauty of the place. As we walked around the outside of the temple on top of the hill we had splendid views of the plains. On one side is the sprawling mass of the town roofs, giant prayer wheel, new build, airport (domestic only, I assume) and even what looked like a stadium and on the other, the agriculture and in the distance a couple of ‘Tibetan’ villages.
Moving out of the ‘old town’ and into the real world where the locals live and work you see women and men carrying the most incredible loads on their backs or on three wheeled cycles with a large carrying area (at least 1.5m x 2m with sides of 1/2m) piled high with ‘stuff’. They also have some amazing three wheeled vehicles which are a variation on the vehicles we have seen in other rural parts of China and which are not, our host Kevin told us, ‘allowed’ in the big cities. He told us that ‘image’ is very important in China and even small cars are not welcome in the big city. People would rather drive a ‘large’ car with a small engine rather than be seen in a small car. Petrol seems to be very cheep although we don’t know how much fuel is purchased with the ‘advertised’ rate and we have absolutely no idea what the cost of owning a car might be, I would guess, however, that most county folk would not have the finances for the luxury of even a beat up, small old car.
Kevin and Beckie, names they adopted when at language school and used for westerners, also have a similar arrangement for evening meals as Mama’s Naxi although their meals were 20 Yuan each and actually shared with the hosts. Both of their command of English was outstanding and on our first evening there we had them to ourselves. They seemed to be very open with their views and they even spent some time with us after the meal just chatting around a wood burning stove – this being the foothills of the Himalayas, it is a tad on the chilly side. Kevin certainly seemed to agree that the only way to halt the growing population was to only allow one child and really wasn’t happy that you could ‘pay’, even ludicrously high amounts, to have a second child if the first was a boy. I remembered a conversation we had had with a mother in Yangshou, ‘heavily’ pregnant with her first child, that she actually hoped the first one is a girl because then she would be allowed to have a second child without any problems as there was no-way she and her husband could afford to ‘buy’ a second child. Kevin even went so far as to comment that ‘India needs to do something similar very soon’ and I suppose that, while that is a very rational solution, emotion, or gene driven programming to reproduce is seldom rational. As far as I can see, financial stimulus is generally more effective than appealing to man’s rational nature.
While we were talking to Kevin about birth rates we commented how the west now views ‘unmarried mothers’ and his reaction was rather shocked. His ‘moral sense’ was similar to that of our great grandparents and even our grandparents and although these are the opinions of one couple, it would be interesting to find out how general this opinion is!
The next day we hired a couple of bikes from the guest house. First we went into the ‘real’ town to the market to buy the fresh fruit that has become usual lunch and then cycled out, across the plain, towards the Tibetan villages. Although there are ‘traffic rules’ these seem to be largely ignored by cycles, both manual and motorized, who ride in which ever direction they want, pavement or road and with two/three lanes of traffic going in both directions, the ride to the market and then out of town was somewhat harrowing. Some of these vehicles chuck out great big black clouds of noxious exhaust fumes and we even saw two vehicles just after a ‘side on collision’. These drivers just seem to make the decision to go, then pumping the horn just - go, the horn is to let others know they are coming through!
Once out of town though it was much calmer with the road almost to ourselves except for the odd car, three wheeled motor and the lorries carrying large and small stones that are being quarried out of the mountains. We rode out past large rural areas where there seemed to be all the adult villagers preparing the land for the new planting using Yaks to pull their manual ploughs and women hoeing and breaking up the soil or sitting in groups, presumably sharing their mid day meal. Many would wave from afar or greet us on passing. We sat down on a log to have a little rest and a banana when two young lads (maybe 8 or 9 years of age) came out and started talking to us. We were totally unable to understand anything they said, in between their giggles, but tried to teach them some English words like eye, nose and mouth which they thought was highly amusing.
We then started the ride ‘home’ but decided to continue on to the other temple – Gods knows why, we were so ‘templed out’ by this time, but it was something to do and someone had told us that this was the most ‘important temple in South Asia’ although neither of us thought to ask her why. We had to go back through the town, another toxic and harrowing experience, but got to the temple alive, if exhausted. Getting up there involved another entrance fee (only £3 each) and a large amount of stone steps. The front of the place was crowded with tourist tat stalls, we could even have bought prayer flags, but the big thing is locals, and their children, dressed up in traditional costumes, charging to have them stand with you in your photo or even just to take their photo. Not something either of us is interested in taking but it was quite weird to have a child as young as 3 or 4 say ‘photo, 2 Yuan’ and then barters down to one when we said ‘no thanks’. With hindsight I feel a couple of photos wouldn’t have hurt for under a £1 and would have helped them – too late now though.
That evening we decided not to dine with our hosts as there are a number of things the guide book tells us is worth trying and we decided we wanted to try two of them before we left the area. The first is yak meat which is, surprisingly, more like lamb than beef and quite ‘fatty’. Up here the diet is a little more on the fatty side, needed to keep the poor buggers warm. One of the other things to try is ‘yak butter tea’. We had seen the ‘pot’ that the beverage is brewed in and the cost was 40 yuan (£4), so we ordered and waited with baited breath. After about 15 mins, which seemed a long time, the waitress appeared with a huge pot and two small bowls and proceeded to pour out a hot liquid which was light beige in colour. I knew, after one sip, that this was not going to be our best discovery of the trip. The best description I can come up with is a ‘buttery hot milk with a little bit of sugar’. I didn’t even manage to finish my first serving however Paul valiantly attempted a second bowl but in the end couldn’t actually finish it.
The next day was another 4 hour bus ride back to Lijiang and Mama’s Naxi where I was strangely glad to have our old room back for two nights. We needed, desperately now, to extend our China visa’s as they ran out the next day. This turned out to be an incredible easy and pain free task. We had to pay a visit to the PSB (Public Service Bureau) with passport and a photo and 160 Yuan each and the process took under 30 mins. The process only becomes a problem if there is something wrong with the papers you carry, for example, whenever we book into a guest house or hotel we have to give our passports to register, however a German couple, also staying at Mama’s had had one of their passports registered twice and one not registered at all, so they were sent away to get it sorted before they would provide an extension. I think it was only then that I realized that each time we have booked into any guesthouse the registration is recorded on some central computer.
Having now run out of the ‘passport’ photo’s required for visa’s to other countries we needed to get some more but had not seen any of the ‘photo booths’ so common at home and we were advised to go to a professional photographer. We went into reception and although they didn’t speak English we managed to arrange and pay for the service we required. Then we were taken up a couple of flights of steps and into a ‘dressing room’ where the assistant handed me a comb, presumably she thought I could do with tidying up although, as I am never really that tidy when it comes to going through passport control, I didn’t really think it mattered. After another flight of stairs we arrived in the studio where a young and very attractive female was posing, fully clothed, with the photographer snapping away. Our ‘assistant’ interrupted the session, the set was rearranged and a stool appeared – so I went first. He took several shots and even rearranged the way I was sitting and so I was expecting some ‘pretty cool pics’ and then Paul was next, he only got the one shot, and then we were told to come back in two hours to pick up the results.
It was a warm and sunny day and there is a park called Black Dragon Pool Park, a picture of which is on the front of the Rough Guide, which was well within walking distance. There is an entrance charge of 80 yuan per head but because we had already paid the 80 yuan ‘old town upkeep charge’ we were let in without paying more. The park is very beautiful with lots of water, grass, colourful flowering plants and is also fairly peaceful. We spent an hour or so with Paul reading and researching while I spent some time catching up with the diary, then, hearing music, we moved round to the front of the pavilion and watched and listened to a traditional Naxi orchestra which was a very pleasant half hour. Two young Israeli guys we had been talking to in the guest house also turned up and we noticed them buying themselves ice cream. Once their purchase was complete they came over and said ‘hello’. One of them has gone for the normal chocolate covered confection but the other had seen one that he just felt he had to try. The picture on the packet was of peas, yes that’s right, the green peas we associate with our evening meal. Having taken one bite he didn’t really want to take any more, Paul also took a bite and said it tasted like cold creamed peas – what else would it taste like? There is also a sweet corn version and possibly a red bean version.
After three hours, we went back to the photo shop and on viewing the photos, I have to say, they were appalling! The Chinese prefer to make themselves ‘paler’ and that’s what they had done to our photo’s. Still, never mind, now my passport has me with almost black hair and the visa photos have me so pale I almost don’t have any hair!
Time to move on again the next day. Mama’s Naxi arranged to have us picked up, with a German couple, by the ‘local bus’ and on to Dali.
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