The girl in the hat

In the town of Dali we had our first taste of Chinese spring sunshine. Warm days, a less cynical money-hunting air than Yangshao's, I expected Dali to be a horrible backpacker resort but came to have a very fun few days there.
I didn't just chat with fellow travellers in bars, although that was the admittedly the main focus.

Myself, Tim and a Californian Meghan (whom we had met on the bus from Kunming) went cycling among small villages by the nearbyish lake Erhai. We stopped by a village square food stand and they mixed me up a cold conglomeration of noodles, vegetables, unexplicable funghi and spices. I stood with my meal in a plastic bag, withdrawing each mouthful with chopsticks, with most of the village watching me like a circus performer. Old men laughed when I all but choked on a ball of chili, small children looked on with a blend of fear, suspicion and loathing. Amidst the circling flys, dozing cows and dark streams escaping from piles of the village's rubbish, one girl, perhaps nine years old, wore a cheap plastic white and black striped sun hat, with the posture of a debutante at Ascot. In her mind, she was living the high society of Shanghai or Paris, her hat created the air of one born to a life of privilige. I hope Meghan emails me the photo we nabbed of her [and she did!].

Tim, Meghan and myself shared a room, and we were reunited with Brian and George from Kunming. Our informal group consisted of the above plus three English girls travelling in this part of China. Meghan's story was that she had been teaching international politics in a Xian university (in English) for a year. This seems a very cool thing to have done, but overall Meghan seemed very ready to come home by the time we met her - she only had a couple of weeks left to travel in China before flying back to California. We quickly discovered that Meghan found the Australia/British coarser sense humour almost physically disturbing and we respected this by making endless crude quips on unwholesome topics. This perhaps reached an apogee in the next town that we all travelled to, when Meghan, trying to prevent her newly arrived coca cola milkshake from spilling over, unwittingly uttered in her defense, "He spilt some on my pants because I didn't suck hard enough"! As we collapsed into childish if justifiable hysterics, Meghan was so disgusted she had to retreat to the toilet for several minutes.

There were also some really irritating backpackers in town, which I wondered might be a taste of things to come. A borish drunk Englishman and his American and French companions imposed themself on our group one night. After we eventually left in frustration, a friendly tall Swedish guy, Chris, whom we had been chatting with, walked up to the Frenchman, looking to start a conversation. The French guy told him coldly, "I'm not interested in talking to you", and as Chris walked off somewhat perplexed, he was smashed over the head with a beer bottle and the Frenchman had to be dragged off him, punching and kicking. The next day Chris told Meghan this story and left town, his head wrapped in bandages - he didn't want to press charges. We saw the flat capped French bloke later that morning, looking as though he didn't have a care in the world.

Here's a photo of our little group of friends... Not sure why I'm making this face.

Tim

An interlude here to describe Tim for a minute. Tim and I have just finished about three weeks of travelling together and as he features in the next few entries, I really should give a description of him. Before leaving for Australia a couple of days ago (23 Feb), Tim commandeered the portable typewriter I use to write these articles, read what I had drafted and left me a message demanding:

"Daniel, I'm frankly disappointed in my miniscule role in events as you have portrayed things in your articles... You should take some time to look back over some of your articles and see how best you could emphasize my good qualities, namely my blisteringly fast wit and my Kevin Sorbo good looks. What I would ideally like to see is a whole lot of comments on your website saying "How can I meet this Tim fellow, he sounds like a fascinating bloke, and a spunk to boot, he can feast on my woman-meat anyday"".

So: Tim is seventeen but seems much, much more grown up, although this is conterbalanced by some lamentable laziness during his school years. He is about six foot tall and, although growing up in Western Australia, has no suntan of any kind, had never been drunk before arriving in China and has an almost undetectable Aussie accent. In a base and unfeeling world, Tim is looking for romance - he describes himself as a SNAG (Sensitive New Age Guy). He is infinitely cooler than me in terms of musical knowledge - I feel very past it as Tim holds forth on Jeff Buckley's planned second album. Tim was travelling in China because his dad now works here, so Tim had two months to explore with dad and then on his own. Ladies, Tim is ready for love, so read about our exploits in the following few articles and if you are interested, I have his email address. Here he is at his laconic best:

Last chance to see?

Perhaps some years ago Li Jiang old town was a fascinating example of the Naxi minority people's architecture and lifestyle, but when we arrived, aside from some quiet backstreets, it seemed essentially a shopping mall for tourists. Escaping the Disneyland restoration of Li Jiang's admittedly picturesque wooden buildings, Tim and I hired bikes and followed a vague map north. We were in search of two villages of the Naxi - a people Tibetan in origin who have lived in this area for centuries. Through the bicycle lanes of Li Jiang's modern town, past endless housing contruction sites, we got rather lost. We cycled on through a final conglomeration of lorries, workers and half built Li Jiang style wooden and brick houses and came upon the first village. Tourism infrastructure is exploding here and all over Yunnan province, most of it aimed at Chinese holiday makers. There seems only to be concern for increasing capacity, none for authenticity - in a few years tourists will be visiting an "old" Li Jiang only just erected. It seems likely there will soon be no separation between Li Jiang and surrounding villages - there will only be one swollen Li Jiang.

The Naxi wear interesting clothes, the women carry vast loads on their backs, and they look Tibetan rather than Han Chinese, but beyond that, the only thing I can tell you about them is that their children are lary little shits. We sat in a restaurant next to the one of the narrow, fast flowing canals that the Naxi use for washing food, clothes, themselves and spitting in. I went into the kitchen to mime what food I wanted - my pointing and sound effect routine usually surmounts the language barrier pretty well. I passed the owners' toddler on the way in and he started kicking and elbowing me as hard as he could. Tim joined me in the kitchen and the kid lost his shoe he was so keen on kicking Tim. We sat down to wait for our food and quickly the brat ran out with a feather duster and whacked Tim's leg with it - I decided, although none of this was in the least bit painful, a lesson needed to be conveyed about hitting people. I roared, spun him upside down and holding him by his legs whirled him around a few times - he didn't bother us again after that. He in fact turned out to be the nicest of the local children - as we ate, a small boy messed with our bikes' mudguards while grinning contemptously at me and a girl perhaps nine years old threw lit matches at us.

Oh, and the Naxi also make very explicit brown wood dolls: long lurid coloured pigtails, grinning jagged teeth and a wooden penis about half the length of their body.

We cycled on, and the view from the dirt path to the village of Baisha was Nicole Kidman level beautiful. A long curving valley basin in front of us, exquistely proportioned yellow and brown hills to our left, the mighty and mythical Jade Dragon Snow Mountain 25km away in the near distance, little clouds billowing from its peak amidst a bluest sky. We arrived in Baisha exhilarated and proud of getting here independently, a pride perhaps only enhanced by seeing the parked tour buses that had driven straight here from Li Jiang. We cycled past chickens and pigs and generally smiling Naxi villagers.

By chance meeting up with two of the English girls whom we had come to Li Jiang with, we came across the house of one Dr Ho. Dr Ho's son, a middle aged Chinese man with a powerfully friendly manner ran out and enveloped us in his frenetic eulogy of his father's work. Dr Ho was apparently famous all over China and globally as a herbal medicine expert. Through collecting herbs from the verdant Snow Mountain, he had cured his own terminal illness decades ago and since then had prepared mixtures of herbal medicines for patients all over the world - Dr Ho Jr showed us cabinets and cabinets filled with case notes. Drinking the cups of "healthy tea" offered to us by Dr Ho's silent elderly wife, his son's explanations of Dr Ho's work rushed on: we saw Mayo Clinic reports implying Dr Ho's remedies had brought cancer cases into remission, we read Michael Palin's warm praise for the Doctor (John Cleese had visited later and commented, "interesting bloke, crap tea"). The admiration for Dr Ho also came, we were told, from his never asking for money for his medicines, but this spiel had gone on so long I was now rather suspicious. I'm regretful of this attitude now, as I didn't ask as many questions as I would have liked to. With the talk finished, I asked if I could buy some of the "healthy tea", as I did seem to feel good after two cups. This seemed to take the son aback slightly, but he brought us into Dr Ho's work room, filled with buckets of pastel coloured herb powders and the great doctor himself. Dr Ho was a smiling, welcoming man of about eighty with a peaceful manner. He asked where we were all from (he also had been the vilage English teacher for a while) and mixed some packets of healthy tea for us all to take away. He then asked if any of us were suffering with an ailment. It occurred to me that as I was facing this renouned Chinese healer, it seemed silly to say nothing, so I spoke up about how I thought my eyesight was worsening slightly. I have a stigmatism in one eye, I haven't needed glasses in the recent past, but the imbalance seems to be worsening lately, and I was aware how Western medicine only really offers the possibility of limiting the symptoms through contact lenses etc. Dr Ho's manner firmed into his clinical posture, he took my pulse for a few seconds, looked in my eyes and bade me stick out my tongue for him to look at. He muttered that the eyes were connected to the liver and the circulation - him and his son rushed around and mixed two big bags of herbs for me. "Take two grams with hot water three times a day - if you need more please telephone us". His son then explained I should pay whatever I felt appropriate. I awkwardly tried to ask what would be an appropriate amount, this got them very awkward and they waved us away - we walked out of the house having handed over no money. This was clearly a crap thing to do, so I walked back in and gave Dr Ho a fifty yuan note - no idea if this was too much or too little.

So I now have three bags of brown powdered "herbal tea" in my luggage, which will make crossing borders a bit more nervous. I plan to have drunk these medicines before entering Thailand or Laos...

Adventurer in a red coat

This next topic is a little funny to write about. I don't want to go into detailed specifics, but a very memorable aspect of my time in Dali and Li Jiang was how my fortunes at pulling seem to have reversed themselves. From Central America, where no female traveller seemed interested in me in the slightest, it seems lately I have become rather appealing. Two theories on why this is: firstly, I'm extemely happy to be travelling in China and I'm sure this is making me a more interesting person. Another is how other travellers seem to see me as somewhat rugged and experienced. This is rather amusing to me, seeing as I am principally someone who wanders around reading books, chatting to random people while looking for the next place to eat lunch, but I seem to be giving off a quite different aura here in SW China. When I told George how I had started my travels, he laughed, "I just can't imagine you working in a bank"! One night in Li Jiang a pretty German medical student who had been studying acupuncture in Hong Kong took a few of us to a great wild west of Chinese type bar - we huddled around an open fire, drinking ginger tea and plum wine, smoke rising to wooden slatted roof. As we sat together, I mentioned to her, "I'm really quite a lazy traveller" - she rebuked me: "I don't believe you, haven't you spent all day bike riding and climbing hills?!"

I frankly suspect a lot of this misconception about me is the North Face bright red fleece-jacket that I'm wearing all the time now. Maybe it encourages people to see me as some kind of very savvy and well equipped explorer... Either way, I'm definitely going to keep wearing it.

Incidentally, using her accupunctural training, she took my pulse the next morning, as the two of us sat in the sunshine waiting for the rest of our group to get ready for breakfast. Chinese pulse taking involves monitoring the heat beat on various points on the wrists of both hands, I discover. She told me I had a strong heart but weak kidneys, that my inner energy was strong but my outer energy was weak, which was why I was always sniffling. "Strong inner energy, that's good isn't it?" I hoped - "Yes, but you have to be careful that you don't let outer illnesses drip into your inner organs". Hopefully Dr Ho's medicines will help strength my outer shell.

From Li Jiang, one by one George, Brian and Meghan headed back south, while Tim and I planned to continue north through back roads and remote villages into Sichuan province. It sounded like a rough and uncertain journey, but at the very least we wanted to make the first step to the highland town Zhongdian.

Zhongdian, marketed as the fabled Shangri La by the Chinese, is largely Tibetan in population and home to the largest Tibetan monastery in SW China. It was also 3300 metres above sea level, the highest by far I had yet been. A middle aged French woman, who was dressed in a large amount of purple, overheard me mention our destination - she shook her head in dour warning. "It is cold there, cold". I asked her if she had been - "no, I haven't, but I know, it is too cold", she replied with the certainty of the unexperienced. I pointed out we could go and have a look, and come back down if we didn't like it. She didn't try to conceal how foolish she thought this statement, simply staring down her nose at me - but undaunted, Tim and I set off.

Daniel, 18 Feb (aside from the Tim section, which I wrote a day or two ago)