Dali!

  Dali, China
Sunday, July 27, 2008

We got off the Mafia bus and cabbed from Xiaguan to Dali old city to arrive in the pouring rain.  No matter.  Dali felt a little bit like Ireland - wicked green and for the same reason, cool weather, a more relaxed pace, an old town center, and very friendly, very cool people. 

The city, most of which is still inside ancient walls and has traditional architecture unlike most of China, is sandwiched between a lake and a mountain.  We stayed in a guesthouse on the edge of the city near the mountain.  It was run by a group of Bai people - the majority ethnicity in the city - who took good care of us and cooked really well.  

Ma Jieming zai ma

After having an excellent meal that first day, we rode horses up the mountain.  I'd never been on a horse before - something about falling off a pony-sized great dane when I was three years old.  Not sure if this really counted as riding since the horses were lead by a guide, but up trails that steep I don't think there'd be any other way.  It was a blast, riding past rice paddies and corn fields to the mountain, through the tea growing in the hills, through the mountain forest to an old Buddhist/Daoist temple at cloud level. 

Later on that night, I went into the city myself.  It's hard to find a bar to saddle up to and meet people in most Chinese cities (see earlier entries on nightlife), but Dali is different.  It's a place where a lot of artistic Chinese and hippie Americans/Australians end up.  A little place called "Vodka Bar" caught my eye - well, really the sign that said "Six vodka sampler 25 Yuan" did.  A beautifully tatooed bartender named Kiki originally from Changsha served up homemade vodka infusions - some with Chinese flavors like Sichuan Hot Pot, Ginger, Dama, and some medicinal berry - while I chatted with a young man from Chengdu and a beautiful writer from Shanghai.  An Oregonian named Emily who just graduated from UPENN came in later with an Australian traveller.  I ended up spending most of the night talking to Emily, whose brother lives in Somerville.  It was about the coolest group of people I could've asked for.

The next day, we went on a tour arranged by our guesthouse. I normally don't like to do tours, but it was only a few of us and our guesthouse staff were great.  We checked out some Bai village and Bai cultural stuff and went on a Lake Erhai cruise.  The best part of all that was probably the speed boat that took us to the cruise boat full speed when we showed up late.  It felt good to be out on the water.

Torch Festival

We had originally planned to leave for Lijiang that night, but decided to stay for the "Torch Festival" - best decision of the trip so far.  The Torch Festival is exactly what it sounds like, a huge crowd of people playing with fire.  We went with some people from the guesthouse to a Bai village half an hour away.  They had a huge totem-pole looking thing they set on fire and sold wooden torches for about $.50 along with gunpowdery stuff for another $.25.  People ran around lighting torches off eachother's and trying to build big fires.  I couldn't resist doing a little bit of a sword form with my torch at one point, which got me even more attention than my albino-white skin.  

flame on

After a while at the village, we went back to the city.  Things had mostly died down, but groups of young men still celebrating shouted "Laowai (foreigner)" and tried to immolate me when I passed.  We went back to Vodka bar and caught Kiki right before she closed up.  The real party was a few doors down at a place called Kafka.  Everyone I'd met the night before was there, and the place was packed by artsy Chinese and foreign hippies dancing to trance music, drinking, and smoking.  I ended spending most of the night talking to the writer from Shanghai.  She had come to Dali for "a change in life" and was endlessly fascinating.  Jen fended off some Australians and then talked to an 18-year old Chinese girl who was having her very first time ever in a bar.

I left Dali the next morning with a heavy heart and heavier head wishing I could've stayed longer.  Don't know whether/when I'll make another trip to China, but I need to see Dali again.