Kunming and Lijiang

The three major backpacking cities in Yunnan are Kunming, Dali, and Lijiang. Since we planned to see a lot of different parts of the country pretty quickly, we inevitably had to make decisions, and Dali was scrapped. We stopped in Kunming but only as an overnight before our flight to Lijiang. A few travelers asked us, perplexed, why we would skip Dali. “We had to skip something,” I’d reply. Plus, we were more interested in the Northern Yunnan to Sichuan province overland route, and Lijiang is the perfect launching point for that as well as for the number one sight on our list, Tiger Leaping Gorge.

We arrived in Kunming mid-morning from a much more pleasant long distance train ride from Guilin. It had been an 18 hour ride in a much cleaner and emptier hard sleeper car. We discovered that if you want an emptier car, you should try to get on the fastest train available (zue kuai) because the Chinese will avoid springing for the extra 20 yuan or whatever the small difference in costs may be. Even the most comfortable long distance train ride is utterly draining, so we napped most of the afternoon and tried to sign up for our hostel’s cooking class. Unfortunately we were too late and didn’t have the staff to take care of us. As we were only in town for one night we chose dorm beds, and met a Canadian and an American who were traveling from Thailand where they were teaching English. We would later collide with the American girl in Lijiang. It was the Cloudland Youth Hostel, and among the large communal hostels this was the least cozy. It was also our first introduction to the frustrating and laughable hippie-chic aspects of backpacker culture.

We came across tons of pleasant and respectful travelers over the course of our trip. However, often we encountered a smug faction of the backpacker crowd which consisted of travelers dressed like hippies who never seemed to leave the hostels and were most excited about the cheap beer and cigarettes, telling competitive travel stories about filthy bars or dangerous circumstances. We were frustrated that these people appeared to believe that almost getting arrested or hooking up with the local girl who works at the hostel were examples of how best to appreciate a place. They seemed to only eat the overpriced western food at the large hostel’s in house restaurant and really soak in the building’s atmosphere (believing it to be equivalent to the city the hostel is located). Sometimes these all Although, perhaps we’re the arrogant ones for looking down on these hippie-chic. We know we’re not exactly backpacking purists, we also know we haven’t come close to fully understanding the places we’ve visited, but at least we have a realistic impression of how much we have or haven’t learned. We tried to speak the mandarin we’d learned as much as possible and took much more from the interactions with the Chinese that resulted; we seldom broke from eating only Chinese food and tried to get as much of the local and typical fare as we could find. I like to think that we were, at least most of the time, aware of when we faltered or missed the point.

Speaking of faltering, somewhat, we did find a delicious dinner (had a killer pad Thai) at the fancy but inexpensive Blue Bird (Thai and Burmese). The next morning we flew to Lijiang. Walking out of the baggage claim area of Lijiang, we were twice shocked. The cold air was our first surprise. We could see our breath in the baggage claim area, and until we made it out into the direct sunlight we were freezing. This became the story for the rest of the trip (aside from low-altitude Chengdu): at the higher altitudes the sun may be more intense and harsh, but once it is gone it gets cold fast. With my wool hat on, I saw that there was a bus outside that takes you to Lijiang for 25 or 30 yuan per person (thats about 3 or 4 dollars). Since usually the cab rates start between 5 and 10 yuan, rising relatively slowly, the town wasn’t supposed to be very far away and there were two of us, we declined the bus and walked across the road to the taxi line, which was a full 10 cabs long. The taxi drivers however, refused to take us to Lijiang. They told us they didn’t recognize the address we were showing them, and pointed to the bus. By the time we realized that it wasn’t just the driver in front who would refuse (the entire line of taxis wasn’t interested in taking us to Lijiang) we watched the bus pull away. We waited an hour till the next flight came in and a bus could be full enough to take us into town. Lesson: take any form of transportation that is organized for you, because taxi’s are far from dependable and you often have fewer options than you think. After arriving in Lijiang, we took a taxi to the vicinity of our hostel. Inaccessible by car, Mama’s Naxi Guest House is a large hostel with three separate buildings clustered in the beautiful alleyways of old Lijiang.

The city itself is divided into two distinct areas: old and new town. New town looks like all of urban China, while old town has, depressingly to me at least, been renovated and redecorated to look new-old, a bit epcot-esque, and is consequently filled with tourists to the brim. Despite being slightly out of season, the neighborhood officially recognized as Lijiang’s old town tourist area full of nothing but souvenir shops. Despite its dizzying atmosphere, there was something to take away from it. It was not only fully of beautiful architecture and a joy to imagine in its ancient state, but it was a prime example of Chinese tourism. To the Chinese, it seems that the shopping is the experience. Sights in China often have much larger gift shops than they would anywhere else I’ve been in the world, and can sometimes dwarf the attraction. Also, there are often souvenir stands located inside temples whose attendants tell people not to take pictures out of respect.

Furthermore, our hostel was located in identical streets just a few blocks outside of the official “old town,” but due to a lack of shops they were always nearly empty. The streets were gorgeous, though, and within 5 minutes of arriving Liz was convinced they were her new home. We had a relatively cheap double room at Mama’s. The door to the bathroom was held together by packing tape and the bedroom looked like it was stolen from a boat. And this boat would have leaked and sank, as the room was terribly insulated but luckily the blankets were super heavy. It is also worth noting that unless you are paying more than 30 dollars a night for a room you will find no heat in a Chinese hotel, regardless of climate.

One of the attractions in Lijiang is the Black Dragon Pool Park. It was relatively uninteresting, but provided some great photo-ops (above). There were areas of the park which for some reason were entirely unmaintained and disappointing. Our bike ride the following day was far more successful. With rented bikes we traveled north of Lijiang to the village of Baisha. It was historically the Naxi capital. The Naxi is this part of Yunnan’s local indigenous ethnicity. Evidence of their culture is most visible in the traditional clothing, these days worn primarily by the older women. It was a much smaller village than we expected; you could walk from one side of it to the other in less than 2 minutes. However, as we tried to get our bearings we were approached by a tiny Naxi woman. She spoke little or no English and pushed a notebook into our hands, which was full of testimonials in all different languages of the service she provides. She invites foreigners into her home, gives them tea and cookies, and dresses them up in traditional Naxi outfits and takes pictures for them. She asks for some money afterwards, of course, but we didn’t turn down the opportunity. She was in her mid-seventies and half as tall as Lizzie and spoke no English and only a couple words of Mandarin. She spoke only the native Naxi language. I was skeptical about the whole thing at first, but we had a great time and wrote a good review for her notebook.

We also met the apparently legendary Dr. Ho, man of traditional Chinese medicine, whose home and practice is in Baisha. The walls of his office were covered with business cards from all of his international visitors and articles about his work in many languages. The doctor himself speaks several. His story is that he was terribly sick when younger and healed himself by experimenting with all the herbs in he found in the wild. Since then his career has been romanticized by writers and film makers and, according to him, will be featured in a National Geographic special in the next year or so. He charges no money for his treatments and is entirely convinced of his celebrity. When we visited him he gave us a bit of a speech and he repeated at least three times something along the lines of, “And you may be wondering just how I became so famous!!! Well let me tell you how I became so well known around the world!” His spiel included showing us the medical report of an American man whose leukemia he had cured. He was a very nice man and scribbled his email address out on a piece of paper for us to take with us. Later that afternoon we visited a monastery nearby before biking back to Lijiang. It was there that we had the opportunity to dance with these elderly Naxi women.

Our nights in Lijiang were uninteresting, as our exhausting days caused me to crash at 8pm multiple nights. We ate our dinners family style at Mama’s for a $1.30 a person chatting with other travelers, and discovered that there was going to be more than ten of us leaving Mama Naxi’s for the Tiger Leaping Gorge on the same day taking advantage of the cheap ride which Mama’s arranges.