Hiked Zhongesan and Torch Light Festival

  Dali, China
Monday, August 6, 2007

Dali

So far Dali has been my favorite place I have seen in China.  The old town has cobbled streets with streams running through the middle.  The old town is surrounded by old, restored city walls with awesome Ming style gates on each of the four sides.  The town lies in the middle of a lush valley full of rice fields with mountains soaring to 4200 meters to the west and decently large ones on the east.  A gigantic lake, Erhai Hu, lies on the east side of the valley, completing the picture perfect setting.  Top this off with every convenience modern civilization could need and, unlike Yangshuo, pretty laid back shopkeepers who don't yell, "hello, T-shirt" at you constantly.

Zhongeshan (1)

Day 1
I hiked up Zhongeshan yesterday.  The hike turned out to be a bit longer than I expected.  The Lonely Planet labeled it "a hot and sweaty 1 hour."  I figured that a liter and a half of water would suffice.  On all the other hikes I've done in China there were vendors everywhere so I figured I could by food and water along the way.  Even the longest of hikes, like up Huangshan, really only took me 3 hours of hiking.  Most my clothes were in the laundry, so I wore jeans and a long sleeve polypropelene shirt.  I slipped my wallet, cell phone, camera and toilet paper into my pockets and headed up. 
 
I started to notice the altitude when I struggled screwing the cap back onto the water.  I never felt sick, just extremely clumsy.  It didn't help that a week of rain had left the trails muddy and slippery.  I must have fallen half a dozen times, once right into a creek.  At one point I dropped my camera into some brambles ten feet below me down a drop.  I lowered myself in, cursing the whole time, figuring I'd broken my second camera for a second time.  Luckily it emerged unharmed.  Back on the trail I took 3 steps, slipped, and dropped my water bottle down the same drop.  Damn it!
 

Zhongeshan (6)

First off, I way miscalculated the distance and height.  By the time I returned to the guest house, I had been gone for nearly 10 hours.  Upon further inspection of maps and talking to other guests, I hiked from 1900 meters to 4000 or so meters.  That was about a 7000 foot climb!  No wonder my knees still hurt.  The upper mountain was shrouded in clouds, so my jeans were absolutely dripping by the time I returned.  Definitely not the hike to wear jeans, to take no food, and to take only a liter and a half of water.  I know better than this.  I also had developed a nice system of putting my items in zip locks in my day bag which probably would've saved my cell phone.  Close to the bottom, with only an hour or two to go, my cell phone made a funny noise.  I pulled it out of my pocket, opened it, pushed a few buttons only to hear it make the last of a few dying noises.  It lies in a deep coma now.  Hopefully it will resuscitate once it dries...
 
Despite all this the views blew me away.  It was an absolutely stunning hike.  The most beautiful, the longest, and the loneliest that I have had in all my travels here in China.  I would do it again in a heart beat. 

Me, unaware of eminent explosions

Day 2
Take a load of foreign tourists and two loads of Chinese tourists and about 20 loads of local Chinese folks, pile them into a village square, hand out torches and bags of sap shavings for 4 yuan each, through in some fireworks and firecrackers every few seconds, and you have the Torch Festival.  Good craic.

With a new torch you gather with five or six others and get your torches burning nicely.  While you're huddled up someone sneaks a reach into their grocery sack of sap shavings and hucks a fistful into the middle of the fire, sending a fireball in the opposite direction. Good craic.  One local certainly stole the show by running up behind unknowing foreigners and getting two or three others to each simultaneoulsy huck a fistful of exploding sap in the foreigners direction through his torch. The formerly hairy now bald backsides of my legs attest to his ability.

Torch preparation at edge of village

All the while twentysomething local guys stand around the outside lobbing firecrackers or sneaky them behind you, blasting your eardrums to pieces when you least expect it.  Good craic.

Then, once the sun set, each village lights their main torch, a telephone pole dwarfing collection of bamboo, firecrackers, wood, and branches.  Finish it off with good old fashion fun performances from six year olds singing and dancing up on a stage and you have yourself one hell of a fun festival.  Until it started raining.