Echo & Li…Competitors
Monday Dec 9 2002
In Old Town Lijiang, we are woken up by a knock at the hotel door at 8am. Two couples from Taiwan were on their way to Zhondian with a driver and wanted to know how we found the city. Then we breakfasted at Sakura Cafe.
Later, we moved to Mr. Yang’s Inn, a brand new beautiful guesthouse right on the canal where, playing with Fifi, his Lijiang dog and Debu, a pure white 3 month old Beijing puppy, we saw a large group of young people with chef’s hats on walking through the streets…we followed them until they ended up at an orphanage with children whose parents (600 people) did not survive the 1996 earthquake and more than 16,000 people were injured. Turns out we had happened onto a celebration.
On the way we passed a group of men building a traditional Naxi structure…with pegs…no nails. They had a roast pig on the spit…a traditional way to celebrate the birth of a new building, we are told.
Dinner at Sakuras…a western hang-out…guy at table next to us was from Eugene. I said we made a big mistake going home in February! He laughed and said he wasn’t going home until spring to avoid the Oregon winter.
Bob arrived in Lijiang from Dali by 1pm on bus but we didn’t connect. We were communicating via email; he told me to meet him the next day at noon in the Square. Bob couldn’t follow my directions to our hotel so he got one of his own in a Naxi Family House for Y80 or about $10 per night; tiny but very clean with 24-hour hot water.
In the meantime, Jana had gone to one internet cafe and I had gone to another at Sekura’s because there was no room for me. Thirsty, I drank a 40 oz beer while answering email…and feeling quite good, I emailed Jana and told her she should join me in another beer. Later she told me she laughed out loud reading my email.
Tuesday Dec 10
Breakfast in the cold courtyard of our hotel…Naxi fried bread with chives, rice porridge with pork, steamed bun, eggs, stir fried cabbage and coffee. I worked on my journal sitting in my heated bed while Jana washed her hair.
Later, Jana and I ran into Echo and invited her to eat with us…meeting Bob in the town square. Jana and I didn’t know it, but Bob had arranged for us to meet with Li, a Naxi minority woman Bob had hired to take us to the gorge the next day and to take us to a Naxi music concert after dinner. Echo, a city-bred Chinese Han from Beijing, bristled when Li walked up to our table in the restaurant. Li tried to talk Bob and I into watching a Chinese play instead of listening to Naxi music…the previous client of hers from Illinois liked the play much better than the music, she said! Echo, whispering in my ear, insisted she just wanted the higher commission on the play but we persisted in getting to listen to the music. I would find out later that Han Chinese look down on the ethnic minorities…feeling very superior to them. And Echo was horning in on one of the few jobs Naxi people can get that isn’t scut work…as tour guides.
Then there was a mixup on the seats at the concert…some Chinese patrons made us get up and give our seats to them…then Bob questioned whether we actually had Y50 seats…so Li offered for us to move up to the front. But as the concert had already started and we didn’t want to disturb the others, we declined.
Don’t know why we bothered with the consideration…others were coming and going and talking out loud with each other as they pleased during the whole concert.
Tags: Altercations, China, Culture, Food, Hotels,Hostels & Guesthouses, Lijiang, Minority Groups, Yunnan
Zoe