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.