Dallying in Dali

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  Dali, Yunnan, China
Thursday, March 16, 2006

As with several other places I've visited so far, it was really hard to tear myself away from Lijiang. Fortunately, it was an easy three-hour trip to Dali in the south. What Lijiang is to Chinese tourists, Dali is to western backpackers. After an easy ride as the lone foreigner again(a real express bus this time with no smoking), I arrived in New Dali (Xiaguan), separate from Old aka Ancient Dali and not to be confused with New Old Dali. Why there weren't any westerners on my bus when there are so many here is a mystery to me.
Dali is at the southern end of the Erhai Hu(Ear-Shaped Lake)next to the Jade Green Mountains and it's most famous site is the Three Pagodas, built in the 9th century, which are some of the tallest structures in southwest China. From the distance they sort of look like radio towers and are now surrounded by a tacky parking lot with souvenir shops. Dali is also home to the Bai ethnic group, and even though just three hours away from Lijiang, it feels a lot more south-east Asian here

01-Downtown Dali

. The Bai at one time controlled all of upper Burma and parts of Thailand and Vietnam through their Nanzhao kingdom, but were eventually defeated by the Mongols and absorbed into the Chinese empire. The area is famous for blue and white batik, Bai embroidery, marble, and fishing with cormorants. I tried to see the cormorants at work but apparently the government limits fishing in the lake now and there are only certain times of the year when the fishermen can go out with their birds, sometimes they sneak out at night.
I don't know when and how Dali got on the backpacker route, but it certainly did and for the first time in Yunnan, I've had people asking me if I want a horse/boat ride/whatever or if I want to buy embroidery or other stuff. There's also a stretch of hotels, shops and restaurants catering to westerners that's a mini-version of Bangkok's Khao San Road. The more recent arrival of Chinese tourists has contributed to the frenzy but the focus still seems to be western. Dali, or old Dali anyway, looks to be a little more down on its luck than Lijiang and the old town is not as well preserved or as large. But the people are friendly enough and laid back, and the hassling to buy stuff is not too aggressive. Like many small towns in SE Asia, Dali became one of those secret must-see places maybe 10 to 15 years ago, and then once it was discovered and the tourists really started to arrive, the locals realized they could make some decent money and thus began catering to westerners, irrevocably altering the town

02-Mainstreet of Dali

. As the Chinese middle class started to grow, there has been a new crop of services and hotels catering to them. So the very things that made Dali attractive in the first place have contributed to tarnishing its charm. There are villages around the lake that have escaped the tourist madness, although many of the weekly local Bai and Miao markets have been re-scheduled to suit tourist demand and are now just sourvenir circuses. Despite its popularity with tourists (like in Siem Reap), there are still more people in Dali trying to earn some money than enough tourists to go around to give everyone a comfortable living. The most disturbing, if somewhat amusing, example of this are the sweet elderly Bai women who try to sell you their embroidery and when that doesn't work, try to get you to buy the local variety of marijuana. "You want see my embroidery?" No, thank you. "You smoka the ganja?!" whispered sinisterly. They were the most aggressive of anyone and I even had one throw a bag of who knows what on my lap, to try to get me to buy it. I threw it right back in her basket.
Still, despite the tourist trappings, there is something authentic about Dali (it's 70% Bai), perhaps more so than Lijiang, and the people seem proud of their city and culture. New Dali is a concrete and glass mini-metropolis and New Old Dali consists of fake old buildings being thrown up around the real old Dali to satisfy Chinese tourist demands for a cleaned up, new version of the old town

03-Dali's Three Pagodas

. Laid out in a grid and easily walked within an hour, Dali does not invite you to wander around and get lost like in Lijiang. If I had had more time here, and could have figured out the transportation, I would have tried to get out to the areas around Dali on the lake. Instead I walked the old town, took a horse cart out to the lake about 2.5 miles away, and went on a boat trip across the lake to a Bai island with an uninteresting village and lots of dried fish and souvenir hawkers, and a temple on the other side of the lake. The journey to and from the island, as yet again the lone westerner among Chinese, was the best part and a the most interesting cultural experience.
I was temporarily adopted by "Betty" and her 87-year-old father "Paul" (Tang) who were from outside Beijing. Betty's daughter and son (in their 20s), were also along but didn't look like they were enjoying themselves or wanted to be there. Betty refused to even step off the boat at the temple because she is Christian, although Paul is not. Paul's English was amazing and he told me that I was the first person he'd spoken English to in many years. He learned the language over 60 years ago from an American named Mr. Price but when I asked him how/why he learned, he changed the subject. According to my math, it would have been around the end of the Second World War, so maybe he was involved in government/espionage work. At any rate, for an 87-yr-old who hadn't spoken English in a long time, he was remarkable and of the few people I've met in China who do speak English, his was one of the best

04-On the obligatory horsecart ride to the lake

. Of course, as part of the "temporary adoption", I had to pose for many photographs with Betty and/or Paul, and for a few solo photos for them. Paul, who uses email, promised to send me some of the pictures. He also haggled with a Bai woman on the island and purchased a couple of fake silver bracelets, one of which he very sweetly gave to me. Betty's English was not as good but she was taking lessons and made a valiant effort to have a conversation with me, which I greatly appreciated. Neither of her kids seemed to know any English at all, which surprised me since younger people in China really seem to make an effort to learn it.
To escape the western tourist scene in old Dali, I had planned to move to guesthouse by the lake, which is still Old Dali but is a couple of miles away and worlds apart from the rest of the town. A Bai woman named Sammi had come up to me in the street and asked if I wanted a horse cart ride, from her brother, my first day there. My initial reaction was not to be bothered with any of this stuff, but she was friendly without being aggressive, and since I didn't want to leave Dali without at least seeing the lake, I said 'yes.' We walked up the hill from the main drag to a broken down parking lot where all the horse cart drivers hung out while she looked for her brother. He wasn't around so we got one of his friends and then to my surprise, Sammi got in the cart and rode out to the lake with me. It was basically a pitch to try to get me to stay at her guesthouse, but I agreed to look at the room anyway, which was great value for the yuan, and she invited me to stay for lunch, which her husband cooked (ome Bai dishes with lots of vegetables, smokey tasting tofu, spicy fish soup)

05-Puer tea for sale

. A friend came over as well and I felt so removed from the tourist stuff that I agreed to stay there the following night.
The next morning, thanks to a combination of power outages, lack of sleep due to the manic construction work going on next door to the No. 5 Guesthouse where I was staying (this involved hammering that started at 5am and firecrackers being set off everytime some phase of the work was completed) and lack of information about the bus schedule to Tengchong, I had to call Sammi and decline her offer because it would have involved too much running back and forth in a short period of time. She didn't seem to mind in the least or try to talk me into some sort of other tourist thing. But I felt bad for saying yes then no, and asked her if she could organize a boat trip for me. So since she was in town anyway, we took the bus together down to the lake and the dock, which was near her guesthouse, and she negotiated a steeply discounted price for my ticket, but admonished me not to tell any of the Chinese (same boat where I met Betty and Paul). This was the first time in China that I'd seen a published price negotiated like that, but maybe the Bai are just trying to get their revenge on the Chinese for conquering their empire hundreds of years ago. After the less than thrilling boat ride, I was very happy that Sammi was able to use her connections on my behalf and I didn't have to pay full price. And in the end, I left Dali feeling that despite some of the fakery and forced tourism, that I had also seen the real side of the town and the Bai people through the graciousness and warmth of Sammi.

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06-Chinese tourists posing with sheep	07-One of Dali's four main gates	08-The horsecart "parking lot"	09-Fishing cormorants
10-On the (boring) Erhai Lake boat ride	11-Betty and her father Paul Tong	12-Bai women going into a temple	13-Erhai Hu
14-Buddhist temple on Erhai lake	15-Bai women on the streets of Dali	16-Examples of Bai embroidery	17-Dali Youth Hostel

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