Lijiang - what a difference a guide makes
Trip Start
Sep 01, 2007
1
35
58
Trip End
Oct 22, 2007
Lijiang,
China
Sunday, October 7, 2007
On the way to breakfast he took us walking through the Old Town of Lijiang. Quite a lot of this area had to be rebuilt or restored after the great earthquake of 1996 which measured 7 on the Richter Scale, killed 309 people and injured thousands and damaged over 1 million properties! They have done a really good job of the restoration.
We then had breakfast in a French café where we had cheese and mushroom crepe, baguette, eggs, fresh peeled cucumber(?) and proper coffee. YUM! To our complete surprise Jack proceeded to treat us to breakfast!
Lijiang Old City French Breakfast
We wandered through the cobbled alleyways of the Old Town via the main square where some traditional Naxi dancing / morning exercise was going on and ending up with a visit to the House of the Mu family. Before the Cultural Revolution, for something like 14 generations, the Mu family controlled a vast area covering most of Yunnan, part of Sichuan and part of Burma. All of that came to an end and much of what they had owned was destroyed by Mao during the Cultural Revolution as he "freed" the people of China. We again asked the question of how the word "Cultural" could be used for such a destructive period.
Then we were taken to our new home. What a difference. We are now happily ensconced in the most quaint courtyard hotel / guest house with friendly smiling people who work here and sitting at a table typing our blog and being plied with Green Tea. Annie is sitting at one of the two computers that are provided as a free service to guests so that email can be checked. Soon we are going to go wandering the alleys of the Old Town and, who knows, we may even do some shopping :-)
Back from our walk around the streets, alleyways, canal-sides and markets and all we bought were 2 mandarin type of fruits. I did try on t-shirts but by the time I got to XXXX-Large, yes that's 4X, and it was still too small we decided to give up on my getting a t-shirt. It seems the Chinese really are that small.
We wandered around, getting ourselves a bit lost to see the back and side alleys and ended up in a local fruit and veg market. We smelled some sacks of chillies which we could tell were the blow-the-top-of-your-head-off strength
Lijiang Naxi Dance & Exercise
. As Annie said, the hours of life and business in this country are amazing. It was after 5:00 PM and the market stalls were still fully stocked. Elsewhere all the shops remain open until everyone has gone to bed and there is no longer any chance of making a sale.It was then time to choose a restaurant for supper. We started off by going back to the "Foreigners Street" where we had enjoyed breakfast. It seems that every restaurant turns into a disco-restaurant, each competing for business and the title of loudest restaurant. We quick-footed it off to a restaurant recommended by our hotel called the Petit Lijiang Book Café, a delightful French-style Bistro restaurant. We sat out on the roof terrace and had it all to ourselves for a delicious supper including local Naxi fish (again), local beer and local coffee.
By being moved into our new home, today has turned out to be just what we were expecting of Lijiang, thank goodness for our new guide.
Tomorrow morning we head off on a 6 hour drive to Lugu Lake which is apparently very beautiful. I hope to update you on that soon.
