Photos added to old posts

To complement the lovely but limited iPhone photos, I've added some photos from our real cameras to the old posts. Shangri-la was particularly photogenic.
Krissy

Xiaohei, the puppy at our hutong hotel

Will we ever get home?

Or should we join the ranks of the airport disclaimed?

A cloudy eclipse

Dont worry, it was still pretty cool. It was overcast the whole time,
but the clouds got thin enough some of the time for us to get a good
view of the shrinking crescent sun through our special glasses. As it
aproached totality, it got dark faster and faster, and we caught a
glimpse or two of a very thin crescent. We were near a couple
enthusiastic tour groups, and someone shouted "5 minutes to totality,"
then "one minute," then "30 seconds" and then it got as dark as the
middle of the night. Street lights even came on. Because of the
clouds, we didn't see the "diamond ring" effect or the corona, but
someone yelled "diamond ring" at about the time we would have seen it
(no one laughed). After almost 6 minutes of total darkness, it
gradually became daytime again, and started pouring rain about 15
minutes later. It was kind of exciting, but wouldn't have been worth
the big trip had we not stretched it into a three week awesome
vacation. Now we're even more curious to see a REAL eclipse,
unobscured by clouds... Someday!

Jansen & our lovely guide Amy

Krissy provided the smile cue by counting to 3 incorrectly in
Chinese... she CLAIMS she messed up on purpose :)

Catching up

Back in the city after our wall trek, we walked through Temple of
Heaven Park and saw lots of locals gathered to sing, play instruments,
play card games or mahjong, or just socialize in the shade. That
evening we went to an acrobatics show. Really talented kids! (their
ages seemed to range from about 8 to 15)

The next morning we went to the Forbidden City.
J: "I guess there's not that much to say about the Forbidden City." K:
"Aside from how much we hated it?" J: "Yeah we were pretty
miserable." It was a humid 95 degree morning with thousands and
thousands and thousands of people crammed inside the symbolic center
of the Chinese universe. We found there was not all THAT much to see,
and most sightseeing consisted of squeezing into a courtyard, finding
the extremely smudged pane of plastic through which you could sort of
peer into some room or other, whilst being jostled and jabbed in the
ribs by chinese tourists who often insist on keeping their umbrellas up even
in dense crowds (to shield the sun, not the rain, mind you.) Were
krissy not wearing a brimmed hat and glasses, she would likely have
been blinded by an umbrella spoke - J was safe because of his height.

Dinner was lovely Peking Duck at Da Dong, a restaurant famous for this
dish (which they just call kao ya, roast duck). They carve the ducks
on a tray near your table, and alert you when your particular bird is
being sliced into bite size morsels. The duck is eaten burrito-style
in a pancake with condiments like plum sauce, cucumber, radish, garlic
paste, shallots, and some mystery things.

Yesterday morning we went to the White Cloud Temple, a Taoist complex
of shrines and temples. It was quite peaceful with just a few
visitors. Taoist monks were going about their business in their simple
monk outfits and cool topknot hairdos.

Next we went to the Summer Palace, built on a lake to the northwest of
the city center where it's cooler. This seemed like an excellent idea
on such a hot day. Unfortunately, the temperature was not noticably
different and there were throngs of tourists buying their chubby
children annoying bird whistles. Combined with the cicadas, the noise
was verging on maddening at times... but fortunately there were 1-yuan
popsicles to be bought, providing a nice distraction from the noise
and the heat. Everyone seemed to have the green kind, so we bought one
even though we were suspicious of the beans pictured on the wrapper.

Just to be safe, we also got one in a blue wrapper which turned out to
be coconut. The green actually was quite tasty once we got used to it
(definitely bean based). Many more popsicles were consumed in the
attempt to make the visit more bearable. Luckily we made it to the top
of the temple on the hill without passing out. The view really was
nice, the buildings were pretty, and there was even a bit of a breeze.
J sketched some wall decoration patterns.

For dinner we had Taiwanese food - couldn't really tell you any
characteristics to distinguish it from Chinese food, at least from
this one experience, but the drinks were worth mentioning: mango purée
and coconut milk with gooey tapioca balls, and an iced green tea latte.

A final goodbye this morning to the extraordinarily nice hotel ladies
(never caught their names), the talking bird, and the puppy (named
Xiao-hei), a quick breakfast at a place down the hutong, and we were
off to the airport.

That brings us to the present - here we are in Shanghai! Eclipse
tomorrow morning!

The Wall

After dinner at the guesthouse in Jinshanling, one of the enthusiastic
young girls working in the summer-camp-like dining hall helped us get
some food for the next morning, since we were getting up so early. She
gave us some cute little "sun cakes" (pancakes) and some kind of fried
bread.

According to an iPhone app, the sunrise here should be at around 5:00,
but when we ran this by someone at the front desk (aided by a nice
sketch of a sunrise by K) she said no, 4:30! It ended up being hard to
tell who was right because of the mountainous terrain, but boy are we
glad we went as early as we did. We set our alarm for 3:30, and hit
the road to the wall by 4:30 with the sky a gradually lightening navy
blue, and the moon and a couple planets still bright.

When we got up to the wall, here's what we saw...

The 5 hour hike was gorgeous and unforgettable. I'm glad we started at 4:30 because it sure was hot by 10.

In and out of Beijing

Our first full day in Beijing, we walked to the drum and bell towers,
which originally date back to the days when Ghengis Khan took over,
although they've burnt down and been rebuilt several times since then.
We were told the drum tower was closed, but couldn't figure out why
other people were being let in. A security guard said something about
"studying." We were allowed up the bell tower though, and got a decent
view of the nearby one-story hutongs and taller buildings further
away. We also got an up close view of the giant bell - probably the
biggest we've ever seen. There were some explanatory signs, and one
said there's a legend that the bell makers, on a deadline, kept
failing to successfully cast the giant bell until the head bell-
maker's daughter threw herself in the molten metal. Whether the
subsequent successful casting was due to some weird chemical reaction,
or due to the gods being pleased by the sacrifice, you can decide.

Then we went to the Lama temple, which the guidebooks describe as
where "happy (Tibetan) monks" are shown off to the public as a type of
propaganda. But we only saw tourists and some praying Chinese
buddhists visitors. It was originally a palace which was converted to
a temple in 1744 to symbolize national unity with regions that
practiced that kind of Buddhism (Tibet and Mongolia). The signs seemed
to imply that this was a magnanimous and respectful gesture, but I
would bet that at the time it was more out of a sentiment of imperial
domination.

We then went to the Confucius Temple and Imperial College. It was
amazing to realize the influence Confiucian philosophy has had for
2,500 years. The picture below is a central building at the college
from which scholars and emperors would make speeches. since they
didn't have amplification, there were people appointed to relay the
speech to the audience by word of mouth, like an ancient game of
"telephone."

Arrival in Beijing

When we stepped off the plane in Beijing, we immediately felt the
stifling heat. We took a train that seemed very new from the airport
to the city, and then a cab to what we thought was the area near our
hotel. It's in a hutong, which is a little street with old fashioned
one-story buildings. We wandered down the street we thought the hotel
was on, but the numbers seemed to skip the address we were looking
for. Eventually, we went in a little cafe and pointed to the address
in our guidebook, and a very nice young man led us through a tiny
winding alley until we found the hotel. Hutongs twist and
turn in all directions.

Our hotel seems not to have changed much from the single story house
it was originally. It has small rooms and a courtyard with couches, a
little koi pond/fountain, and a tree growing through the greenhouse-
like ceiling. Oh yeah, and a puppy and a talking bird.

We asked the nice lady at the front desk for a dinner recommendation,
and she wrote the name of a couple "barbecue" places down the road.
The first one we came to whose characters we could identify on the
sign was very small and appeared to only have Chinese customers. The
menu had Chinese and English as well as pictures, so we had an easy
time avoiding what looked like a whole live frog. We ordered shrimp
and pickled-pepper-flavored catfish.

Before long, a guy came to our table with a huge live catfish in a
net. As he and a waitress tried to ask us something in a combination
of Chinese and very limited English, the fish flopped out of the net
and onto the floor! As the waitress tried to kick the fish back into
the net, we gathered they were just seeking our approval. The kicking
and the dirty floor notwithstanding, we gave our approval, and
canceled the shrimp because the fish was so big.

It was brought back out still whole (but motionless this time) in what
seemed like just a few minutes, in a large pan of dark boiling broth
with ginger, garlic, pickled peppers and other veggies. We awkwardly
picked pieces of meat off with our chopsticks, and once we finally dug
in, it was really tasty!

Shaping Market

Dali (pronounced "Dolly"... Hi mom!)

After another bus ride (during which our bus broke down and another
had to come replace it), we arrived in Dali. More tourism shopping
here, though definitely more variety than Lijiang or Shangrila. Dali
is an old walled city near a big "ear shaped" lake and is described by
guidebooks as a "backpacker hangout."

The night we got there (delayed due to the bus break-down), we ate at
a Bai restaurant. The Bai are one of the many ethnic minorities in
Yunnan province, and the ones that are most prevalent in Dali. As with
the other places we've been, the people out and about who are most
clearly the local ethnic minority are cute old ladies wearing the
traditional clothes. We saw the locals in their element when we visited
two local markets in nearby towns the next morning. There were some
souvenir vendors, but mostly people were buying and selling fruits and
vegetables, which were fun to see and very photogenic.

We visited a traditional Bai house, which is based around a central
courtyard. Three sides open to rooms and living quarters, and there
are smaller courtyards at the corners. The 4th side of the main
courtyard is a white wall that faces west and reflects the afternoon
light into the other 3 sides. Traditionally many generations shared
the house, or in some cases multiples wives with their children. Our
guide pointed out that all of carved doors and decorative woodwork had
been sanded down or chiseled off during the cultural revolution. He
thought this desecration was sad, but pointed out that at the time
poor people moved in and forced the rich owners to flee the country,
and to this day the government allows poor people to live there for
free.

Everywhere in Yunnan we had been seeing indigo tie-dyed fabrics for
sale. Outside Dali, we visited a workshop where that kind of
traditional cloth is made. (These were of higher quality that the
souvenir shops' wares.) We saw the grids of pattern laid out and
marked on the cloth, which indicates where the stitches are made. The
cloth is stitched by hand (yes, by little old ladies), dyed in vats of
indigo, and hung to dry. Then the stitches are ripped out to reveal
the white cloth.

That afternoon we had our feet massaged by deaf practitioners, who had
us examine the reflexology charts to see where all the painful parts
corresponded in our body. Walking on air, we climbed to the top of the
city wall for some good views of Dali old town, Erhai lake, and the
surrounding mountains. For dinner we ate the most famous Yunnanese
dish: Across the Bridge Noodles. Yum.

The next day we had a long bus ride back to Kunming and a farewell
dinner with our group. After dinner, our wonderful leader, Amy,
initiated us into one China's most beloved modern traditions: karaoke
at KTV. Fortunately karaoke in China is performed in private rooms
with your friends, rather than as the public humiliation we know and
love (?) in the US.

Zhongdian (Shangri-la), day 2

The next morning we visited Ganden Sumtseling Gompa, one of the
largest and most important Tibetan monasteries outside Lhasa. We had
seen the shining golden roofs in the distance when we had climbed the
hill to investigate the spinning prayer wheel. We saw maybe only a
couple dozen of the 600 monks who live there. The complex was made up
of many large and impressive temples, which we walked inside of
clockwise. They usually featured a very large Buddha at the altar,
smaller side shrines, lots of incense, and beautiful murals. We
encountered a group of monks in one temple who were throat-singing,
and others who were chanting their prayers more melodically. Around
and below the complex of temples was a dense village of sorts built
into the hillside. It appeared that it wasn't only monks who inhabited
these buildings.

That afternoon Amy had arranged for us to visit a Tibetan family's
home. The drive out of town took us to increasingly idyllic
surroundings, through fields of barley, flowering mustard (someone
else said rapeseed, maybe it's the same thing), and other crops
and flowers. As we came to a collection of the rectangular Tibetan
houses, our driver started to slow down and shout greetings to
pedestrians in a language that sounded nothing like the Chinese we
were used to hearing. It turned out she was actually related to the
family we were going to visit, and she was speaking Tibetan. This
caught us off guard because she was wearing modern clothes, not the
traditional outfit many locals wore.

We got out of the car and saw a couple yaks and a pig family on the
dirt road, and then were shown into the house. The ground floor of the
house is for animals, the people live on the 2nd floor, and there's a
large attic for storage. There were only a few rooms but the main
living space was huge, with two enormous polished tree trunks
extending through the floor and ceiling. They said these represent the
strength of the mother and father roles holding the family together.

We gathered around the stove on short chairs and benches and were
served sour yak cheese with sugar, yak yogurt, and yak butter tea
(just what it sounds like - tea mixed with yak butter). Also a nice
fluffy flatbread which we dipped into the tea and then into barley
powder. They taught us a few words of Tibetan, which were really hard
to pronounce and would be even harder to spell. The word for yak, for
example, starts with a T sound, ends with a gutteral throat grating
noise, and sounds like an expression of disgust (to an English
speaker, anyway). All in all, we were made to feel like honored
guests. This little Tibetan farming village felt much more worthy of
being called Shangri-la than the bustling city.

Zhongdian (Shangri-la), day 1

We had a relatively short bus ride to our next destination, Shangri-la, formerly known as Zhongdian. As we approached, we began to notice signs that we were entering Tibetan territory. As we gained altitude, the valleys between the mountains seemed to flatten and spread. The architecture lost the curved roof-edges and became simple rectangular two or three story buildings with slightly sloped sides and intricate, colorful window frames. We started to see colorful Tibetan prayer flags strung up from poles and buildings. And the cows changed too: their shoulders hunched more, their horns grew, they grew beards, and their hair got shaggy... yaks!



When we arrived, we felt the altitude (12,000 feet!) as soon as we made the short uphill walk to our hotel, which had us totally winded. We wandered around town and found the shops tourist-oriented like in Lijiang, but somehow this town didn't feel quite as "discovered." We saw a constantly spinning giant golden prayer wheel overlooking the town from the top of a hill, and wondered if it was machine-powered. When we got up there, huffing and puffing again, we saw it was powered by people walking in circles holding a handrail. Krissy joined in while I took a picture.

On Amy's brief walk-around tour of the town, she had pointed out a massage place she recommended, so we thought we'd give it a try. They really know how to loosen you up. Some parts bordered on being painful, but overall it felt great - they found lots of hidden pressure points and pushed hard, kind of like a button. Afterwards I tried to say "I am a noodle" in Chinese and flopped my arms around but I'm not sure if he understood.

That afternoon we also had time to go to two museums on opposite sides of a large open square. One told the story of the communists' Long March, and the other was about Tibetan culture. Each displayed a lot of interesting historical information while omitting or sugar-coating certain uncomfortable bits. The Tibetans were portrayed as having welcomed the communists with open arms. It left me feeling the need to read about the complete history, but that might have to wait till we're home - I expect it'd be difficult to find unbiased sources here.

As we wandered toward the central square on our way to dinner, we heard loud music and saw crowds gathering. It was the locals dancing in big circles to what sounded like traditional music superimposed over techno beats. We'd heard they do this every day at 7:30pm. We don't know the exact origin of this "tradition," but I'd guess it's a combination of genuine traditions and pandering to tourists. One sure thing is that the people were genuine. Men, women, children, young and old, all danced with graceful coordinated movements in huge concentric circles, many of the women wearing the local variant of traditional Tibetan clothing.

For dinner our group ate family style at a Tibetan restaurant: dried yak, spicy Tibetan veggie dumplings, super-tasty lamb and potato we wrapped in little pieces of flatbread, and other unique dishes. When we finished eating, we were the last customers in the restaurant, and the waitresses invited us to join them in the courtyard for some dancing. So we followed them out and joined their circle - a smaller version of what we had seen in the town square earlier. We danced around a fire pit, bumping into each other and trying our best to copy the moves. The dance was made up of simple movements, but the timing was difficult because the music had bars with extra beats every now and then. But I suppose messing up was half the fun.

Dragon's three dreams

I wanted to write another post about Dragon, our guide through Tiger
Leaping Gorge, since he made such an impression on us.

During the grueling two-day hike, he cracked us up by assuring us it
was "very easy." He also tended to underestimate how long parts of the
hike would take us. We gathered that both of these things were because
he must have hiked through those mountains practically every day of
his life. On the first day as we huffed and puffed up the hill, we
passed a very old lady going the other direction with a big basket of
kindling on her back. She cheerfully exchanged a few words with the
few in our group who speak Chinese, and continued on her way, seeming
to be barely winded. I could easily see an old Dragon in the distant
future putting young hikers like us to shame the way this old lady did.

The first evening in the gorge, Dragon came to us as we were finishing
dinner to let us know that we could sleep in the next morning since we
had had such a strenuous day. He then proceeded to tell us about
Zhongdian ("Shangri-la"), the next place we were going, and about the
Tibetans who live there. He then mentioned his own heritage (father
Naxi, mother Tibetan) and told us there are something like 25 ethnic
minorities in Yunnan province.

Someone in our group asked him to tell us about his two dreams he had told her about earlier in the day. He told us his first dream is to own a very big car. we found this very funny and somewhat worrying in
light of our experiences on the bumpy, narrow, cliffside roads in and
around the gorge. He also mentioned that every year a car plunges off
the road into the Yangtze due to the driver having "too much beers."
All this made it seem like a very bad idea to have a very big car, but
we forgave him his apparent bad judgment when he told us the story
behind this dream:

When he was in middle school, he was playing basketball with friends one day. The ball bounced astray just as a man in a big car drove near
them. The ball hit the car, prompting the man to get out and yell at
the kids something like "you kids should be more careful and have more
respect, you're so poor you'll never have a big car like mine!" So
Dragon vowed to prove that man wrong someday.

Dragon's second dream is to become an Intrepid tour guide. (This one I
must say I support slightly more than his first dream.) He said he has
given tours to many Chinese groups and doesn't like them because they
tend to rush from one destination to the next. He said Intrepid tour
groups, made up of foreign travelers, seem to have more patience to
appreciate their surroundings and the culture of the local people. He
emphasized that he really liked our group in particular, in part
because of how we all eat together like family. He repeated this with
the utmost sincerity as if to make clear he really meant it.

He began telling us about "very beautiful" places in Yunnan we had
never heard of, that aren't in the guidebooks, and that tour groups
tend to skip in favor of the more touristy well known places. I'm
convinced he would give fabulous tours off the beaten track in places
with charms only locals are privy to.

The people at Intrepid told him his English needs to improve before he
can become a bonafide tour guide, so we were happy to provide him with
some much-needed practice.

Around that time, the power went out, and Dragon quickly fetched two
candles before we had time to panic. So we continued by candlelight.
When the conversation came to a lull, I asked him if he has a third
dream. After a pause, he said "my third dream is secret." This
prompted some oohs and whistles from some of us who guessed his smile
implied he was hiding something romantic. After some urging and
pleading, he told us his third dream: to marry his girlfriend later
this year. He surprised us by describing her as "not beautiful" -
perhaps he was just being modest. He did follow that with "but she is
very friendly." Her family is Hani, another local ethnic minority
known (according to Dragon at least) for their tasty tofu dishes, the
mention of which made him swoon even more than talking about his
girlfriend. He said we were all welcome to come to his wedding, which
he estimated would be attended by 2,000 locals.

One final story from Dragon: he said if we ever go to the other side
of the gorge we should beware of the monkeys (supposedly they only
live on the other side) because once he and his friends were hunting
wild pigs and monkeys pushed rocks down onto them from above.

Even with all the landmarks, attractions, and beautiful landscapes
we'll see here, I think it's people like Dragon and the old woman from
Baisha, proud yet humble, and very friendly, who will make this trip
really memorable.
J

Lijiang and Tiger Leaping Gorge

After our second (and better) night's sleep in Kunming, we had a 9
hour bus ride through beautiful countryside to Lijiang, where we
stayed at a little inn in the nicely preserved old part of town. For
dinner we had traditional Naxi food including tree fungus
(interesting...) and ba ba.

Finding the old center of town to be quite crowded with tourists
(mostly Chinese) we were happy to get out of town the next day on
rented bikes. We ran into two others from our group at the bike rental
place, and rode together to a small village (Baisha) with some 1000
year old Buddhist frescoes. But before we found the frescoes we were
approached by a tiny cheerful old lady speaking Chinese who showed us
a little journal in which someone had written for her in English
"welcome to my village. I don't speak English but would like to invite
you to my home to see how we live here. I have tea and fruit." So we
followed her and saw her lovely garden, cute mangy dog, and the little
rooms where she and a few family members live. She served us tea and
nuts and showed us her faucet. Even with our very limited language
overlap, she was able to make us feel like old friends.

The next morning we left for Tiger Leaping Gorge where we met our
local guide named Long, which means dragon. He's 25, and his father is
Naxi and his mother Tibetan. He charmed us all with his obvious pride
in the natural beauty of his home and the rich cultural heritage of
the local ethnic minorities. The two day trek through the gorge was
both exhausting and gorgeous.

We spent the first night in a guest house run by a Naxi family, and
the second (last night) at a Tibetan guest house. Among the dishes at
last night's dinner were warm buttery yak cheese and dried yak meat
with greens!

I'm writing this on the iPhone on the bus to Zhongdian, a tibetan town
high in the mountains which was recently renamed Shangri-la...

J

Lijiang

First day in Yunnan province

We took a little day trip outside of Kunming today to Xi Shan which
translates as "western hills." There's a steep mountainside with
taoist, confucian and buddhist shrines built into the cliffs amidst
what feels like a jungle.

After a much needed nap, we met our group for our tour of Yunnan. They
include 4 Australians, one Dane, a fellow Californian, a New Zealander
and his significant other from Chile (both of whom have been teaching
in Greensboro, NC), two Brits, and our leader (Chinese).

Long ride to Lijiang tomorrow.

Sunday hotel breakfast, Kunming

He's on the cover of every paper

Two bags, two backpacks, three weeks