Day 205: Yangshou Workout

Yangshou is a fun place. The city itself is extremely touristy, with a far higher ratio of foreigners than we'd encountered anywhere else and much wider range and concentration of international restaurants and bars then anywhere else. The landscape in and around the city is one of the most famous of China, and something I've been looking forward to for my entire trip.

We had an active day outside of the city to try to see the most of the surrounding geography, beginning with a bike ride out of town and into the countryside.

We biked to a place by the river full of bamboo rafts, and spent the next couple hours getting poled down the river and over a series of small dams.

After disembarking we biked a bit more until we got to a formation called Moon Rock. Our group split up with some staying down below to relax and some of us doing a hike up to the rock. We all met up for some lunch back at the bottom.

After lunch we split up again as most of the group decided to bike back to town, but 4 of us got our guide to take us on an extended bike ride, leaving the main roads for a long detour down much less travelled back roads.

When we finally got back to town we had a few hours to ourselves, but gathered once again in the evening to go out for a night show. The show was billed as a light show, and was designed by the same person that designed the opening ceremony for the Beijing Olympics. It's a bit hard to describe, but it was series of artistic performances with dozens of performers using lights, fire, music, and careful choreography.

After the show we joined up with some of those who didn't go for some dinner before heading back to the hotel for some sleep after a long and active day.

Days 203-204: Kunming, briefly

Kunming was a bit of an anomaly in our itinerary. Originally the tour spent a day in Kunming to visit a rocky region known as the Stone Forest, but due to some schedule changes and rearranging the Stone Forest got dropped and a very long train ride from Kunming to Guilin got switched to a much more comfortable airplane flight. We got to Kunming by taking a fairly lengthy public bus ride from Dali.

After a few hours on our own to explore we met up to go out for "Crossing Bridge" noodles. These come as a hot broth and a plate of noodles, thinly cut raw beef and vegetabes and an egg. All these ingredients are dumped into the broth as you go and the temperature of the broth cooks everything. Afterwards a few of us went out for another snack/meal of delicious spicy crab with our guide.

The next day we took the city bus to visit the big park in Kunming. It was an interesting park, and there was lot to see there, but certainly nothing that warranted all the time we spent in the city.

After taking the bus 90 minutes out of town to the airport we had a bit of excitement as Frank realized that he'd forgotten all our passports back at the hotel. He frantically hopped in a cab while we waited in the airport and managed to get all the passports and get back in time for all of us to check in. Once in Guilin we piled onto a bus for a final bit of travel to Yangshou, where we would be spending the next 3 nights.

Days 201-202: Around Dali

We took a private bus to Dali, and checked into what was a rather extravagent hotel by our usual standards. We did a quick orientation walk of the old city in the rain, then split off to get some food and explore on our own. I was feeling a bit worn out and after exploring in the rain for awhile I stopped by a bakery and picked up a few things that served as both lunch and dinner before walking back to the hotel and calling it an early night.

The next day was far more active. We had a busy day out in the countryside with a local guide named River. We started off visiting a rural market and getting some local baba, which a type of baked bread that most of us had become quite addicted to by this point. While waiting for the baba I was approached by a vaguely familiar Scottsman who, after a few minutes of comparing notes I discovered was somebody I had briefly stayed with in Hong Kong a month prior. There have been a few occasions where I've re-met people in different cities, or even different countries, but in the middle of this dirt-poor middle-of-nowhere marketplace outside of Dali was the most random so far.

Next was a series of traditional craftspeople and shows of the local minority people. We had a chance to try our hand at local cheesemaking, learned about the local tie-dying, had a tea ceremony, and attended a demonstration of clothing and dancing for marriages. Apparently it is custom for everybody to run around pinching the bride after the wedding - I feel rather sorry for the girl that has that role in their demonstration.

Afterwards we headed off to the lake to watch some commerant fishing. Commerants are a type of bird famous for their fishing prowess. They dive to catch fish, but through a combination of training and equipment are prevented from swallowing the fish before the fisherman can capture it. I could pretend that the experience was a National Geographic-like showing, but in fact it was a hilariously touristy event that was at least incredibly entertaining, if slightly less than traditional. The fishers and their boat rowed ahead while about 6 or 7 boats with watchers rowed out behind it. The birds were all prominently displayed, and their impressive training and control was obvious. Once the fishing began things took a turn for the hilarious when the first fish was caught - displayed proudly in the bird's mouth. All the Chinese tourists were cheering wildly, but to us, the fish looked rather...dead. We discussed this phenomenon amongst ourselves - perhaps the bird speared the fish and it went limp very quickly? The next strikes though, we were all watching carefully and it became apparent that they had to be planting dead fish for the birds to "catch" (although we never did catch the actual act of them planting the fish, so either they were very good at it, or we didn't figure out the trick). I guess it makes sense, since shows demonstrating the fishing wouldn't be very exciting if we just rowed around with nothing happening, but their efforts to make it seem genuine amused us all. Afterwards, the other tourist boats rowed off but ours got to stay behind to play with the birds - I guess it's one of the perks of being a foreigner.

Finally it was time for our return to Dali. Instead of taking the bus back, we did a very fun 25km bike ride along the lake and through the countryside back to the city. This, to me, was kind of stereotypical China with armies of farmers working in the fields, doing everything by hand.

For dinner we went out to a barbecue place where you'd pick skewers of raw meat/vegetables and they'd grill them for you. I'd already developed something of a reputation in our group for some of my eating accomplishments, but it grew to a new level this night as I went through around 40 skewers, and had them up the spices three times. River brought a few bottles of his family home-brew rice wine, which turned out to be over 60% alchohol and only a few of us were happy to drink it. By the end of the meal a few of us were pretty tipsy, but it was a good evening out.

Days 199-200: Tiger Leaping Gorge

The two day hike through Tiger Leaping Gorge was one of the things I was most looking forward to on the trip. The hike followed the high trail of the gorge above the Golden Sands / Jinsha River (part of the Yangtze), leading through remote mountain villages, waterfalls, and dramatic mountain vistas. The first day was the most physically challenging as we worked our way upwards along the cliffs. Some locals on horses followed our group's stragglers some, hoping for people to give up and need a ride to safety, but we all managed the hike in the end. The most challenging section was a stretch known as the "28 bends" from all the switchbacks, and even the fittest among us were feeling a bit drained by the time we reached the top.

It was persistently overcast, but the only rain we had was conveniently almost completely during our lunch under shelter. It left things a little muddy, but was much better than having to hike in the rain. Our accomodations for the night was a guest house in a village perched on the mountain, run by a group of local people. The second day of the hike was on my birthday, and celebrating waking up in some quiet mountain village to spend a day hiking is a perfect way to celebrate it. It also marked the 200th day of my trip, which is the exact halfway point (of my plan, at least). The fact that day 200/400 fell on my birthday is pure coincidence, but milestones all around! The day was much less physically demanding, but the landscape and views were nicer.

We had a rooftop lunch at another village down by the road that marked the end of our hike. The location also offered some nice shots of the surrounding mountains and of the river back the way we'd come.

We had an entertaining bus ride back to Lijiang as we followed a narrow, cliff hugging road that sometimes had our wheels less than a foot from the unguarded cliff edge, and at other times dodging around boulders from the regular avalanches. Once we got out of the gorge it was still slow going as we got stuck behind long convoys of trucks crossing torn up roads where construction was going on.

Back in Lijiang I was treated out to dinner and Frank picked up a birthday cake for me, and we hung out in the courtyard eating cake and drinking. Certainly a lot more of a celebration than I was expecting!

Days 197-198: Old Lijiang

After a morning plane ride we got to Lijiang, continuing our progress south. Much of Lijiang is just more city, but it is famous for it's historical old city of winding, cobblestone roads, small shops and culture of the local Nakhi people, one of China's many minority peoples. The hotel was in the old city, which doesn't allow cars, so we had our bags ported in with bicycle carts. The two days we had in Lijiang were both free, so we mostly just explored the city on our own. There is a pagoda on a hill at the edge of the old town that gave a good view of the surroundings, and on the north side of the city was the Black Dragon Pond, a series of pools and buildings.

To me, even better than the old architecture were the people themselves. The Nakhi have a proud history and rich culture, and many still dress in traditional outfits (some of which is just for tourists, I'm sure, but it seemed like most of the older generation wore them genuinely). In the larger squares, old women would gather and spontaneously starts dancing in the morning, and afternoon, and evening...basically just whenever they felt like dancing. They wouldn't ask for money, or show any awareness of the people around them at all really, and then others would just start to join in until sometimes huge crowds of dancers would form. I think dancing in the streets is one of my favourite things about Chinese people.

One of the more amusing anecdotes from the trip occured when three of us in the young group decided to go hunting for booze we could drink while lounging in the hotel's courtyard. We found a shop that had what looked like flasks of whiskey. We asked the cost, but since the shopkeeper (like most people in China) didn't speak english, he responded with fingers, which we thought were indicating 50 yuan. Feeling bold with our recently refined haggling skills we decided to offer him 30 yuan and see what he'd do. His response was to stare at us for about ten seconds then reach up and grab a second bottle and add it to the first - apparently they were 15 yuan and not 50, and we are the worst hagglers in the world. When we finally did crack the bottles open later in the evening, we quickly realized that whatever they were, they definitely weren't whiskey. Our of curiousity I managed to track the label down online to discover that what we had purchased was in fact two bottles of medicinal wine, which we all found quite amusing. We also had part of a bottle of rice wine, which is nothing like Japanese rice wine. The stuff in China is 50-65% alchohol, and is the hard drink of choice for most people. Frank (our guide) told us that when he was a boy his father would give him shots of rice wine to keep him warm when they couldn't afford to heat the house in the winter. Potent stuff.