Lijiang
Trip Start
Oct 19, 2007
1
8
70
Trip End
Ongoing
Lijiang,
Yunnan,
China
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Lijiang is very very famous for its cool old (and I suspect recently restored) buildings, beautiful mountains, the first bend in the Yangzi river and traditional Naxi (another of China's minority groups) culture. As such, it is also quite commercial and completely swamped with tourists. Don't get me wrong, Lijiang is picturesque and I liked it (although more so when I was wandering through alley ways away from the main tourist drags where it was easier to let my imagination make the leap back in time) but I am glad I went as a day trip from Dali instead of staying there for 2 reasons. One, I would go very noisily mad surrounded by so many other tourists (of the noisy variety that walk at a snail's pace) for more than 5 hours. Two, the bus trip from Dali to Lijiang was spectacular and I got to make it twice in one day.
On the way there, I talked to a guy from Sichuan (who now lives in Beijing but also did a stint in Wuhan) about various things, while pressing my face against the window, mouth agape and eyes wide open like big saucers, trying to absorb the scenery going by the window. Come to think of it that guy must have been pretty patient to persist with a conversation in which every seventh syllable was "wow". You know, like "I don't mind Wuhan actualWOWly but sometimes I get fed WOW up with the pollution. The WOW food is excellent though!" I was stunned at the size of the mountains we were driving, around, up, through and over. But the Sichuanese guy snorted and said "This? Pah, these mountains aren't very big at all. We are only at about 3000 metres at the moment." Uh huh. Tiny. Miniscule even. The tallest mountain I've hiked is only 3600ish metres. I know that Tibet is only a hop skip and a jump from Yunnan and that the mountains there are of monstrous proportions. But even still, 3000 metres is pretty big for someone like me whose earliest memories are of WA's wheatbelt! That guy from Sichuan made me feel like a bit of a bumpkin. But I was a very happy bumpkin because those mountains, the small farms, the crumbling old buildings with little vegetable patches and the forests we passed were beautiful and made me shed a couple of blissful tears. This is what I wanted to see when I came to China. This is why I travel. These are the sights that make life outstanding.
Coming to Yunnan not only killed my Wuhan winter blues, that bus trip was the nail in the coffin of the culture shock, or whatever negativity it was that seemed to have been dogging my steps and weighing down my shoulders for the past month. China is at sometimes frustrating, even infuriating. Living here has been at times rewarding but has often felt like an uphill battle with the cold, the weather, the ripoff artists, the company I work for, the housing, the air, the spitting and, worst of all, myself. An hour on that bus washed all my resentment, frustration and blahs away.
I very nearly flew to Lijiang instead of Dali because there is an excellent hike nearby called Tiger leaping Gorge. I didn't because I was worried about the trail having ice/snow on it. I know myself. Less than ideal conditions would not have stopped me from heading out, but being alone, it might not have been a great idea. So to prevent myself from doing something potentially silly, I bought a ticket to Dali instead. You see? I can be sensible sometimes. Not very often, but every now and then I surprise myself. It was the right choice for me at the time. But for anyone with a limited amount of time in China, I'd recommend Lijiang. You can get there easily from Kunming and it has the traditional (but clean and visa friendly... people even spit less there, I swear it) China a lot of people hope to find when they come here.
