Backpackers and Banana Pancakes - Yunnan Province

My first summer in China, I was delighted to get my new residence permit back in time to have an extended vacation to travel around the country. During my trip, I met up with two Chinese friends (also teachers at my school) to explore 云南 Yunnan Province, southwest China's backpacker haven.  Though there is (still!) much in the region left to explore, we made it to these four big-hitters, below:

Kunming 昆明

Nearly all trains in and out of Yunnan pass through Kunming, and I took my first soft-sleeper from Jishou (gateway to Fenghuang and Dehang, in Hunan) to meet up with Yucca there. Kunming is famous for having spring weather year-round, and it was gloriously warm without being hot and humid. I found the downtown particularly clean for a Chinese city. We met up with Stacy, her boyfriend, and a roundtable's worth of his friends for dinner, sampling a plethora of delicious local dishes and feeling boggled by the local dialect.  Yucca and I then retreated to the 如家 Home Inn and caught our train to Lijiang the next morning by a hair - a restful 8-hour hard-sleeper during the daytime!

Lijiang 丽江

It’s easy to see how Lijiang was a beautiful place before it was swallowed by tourism. Clear streams run throughout the town, occasionally collecting in three pools where the odd local will collect drinking water, wash vegetables, and do laundry, respectively. There are little stone bridges connecting narrow walkways between quaint crumbling buildings converted into shops, cafes, and guest houses, all in the shadow of YuLong Mountain.  The lights in the square at night were picturesque. I bought a Naxi patterned scarf for 10 RMB.

We stayed in a small suburb called Shu-He, architecturally like Lijiang, but much smaller and less crowded. We bought mushrooms from a local woman in liberation shoes and Yucca fried them up in the huge walk in the guesthouse kitchen, where we improvised a potluck with the family. In the courtyard were various vegetables, dogs, and tea tables. We climbed a mountain with one of the brothers, and took a horseback ride (tame, of course) to a large lake filled with couples taking wedding pictures. It was beautiful, and more authentic than the main drag. 

Shangri-La 香格里拉

I read Lost Horizons and thought the idea was beautiful. I have to confess, however, that the place labeled "Shangri-La" on the map did not inspire the same feelings as the book. Of course, it was cold, and that is rather far from my idea of paradise - but I also found it rather grey and colorless, with flat lakes amid mountains covered in the same green moss.

We joined a tour bus to simplify transportation matters, which then entailed a tour guide with a microphone, a cookie-cutter hotel set apart from everything of note, and even a cheesy "minority" dance performance.  Sigh. Plus, because of the altitude, we had to use canisters of oxygen to aid our breathing (those worked, though, and I lamented not having them in Peru the year before).

The highlight was a visit to the lower path of Tiger Leaping Gorge, where we walked alongside churning chocolate water carving tiger statues out of rocks (I'll save the more extensive trek for another trip.). At the end, Yucca returned to Hengyang, and I spent a night in Lijiang again, with Stacy and her boyfriend, before they left for LuGuHu and I went on to Dali.

Dali 大理

Dali seemed more real.  There were bookstores, cafes, live musicians in the street, and small art galleries; plus locals actually live in town. I did little but wander the grid of the old town, taking in the squat buildings and the odd collection of people who had accumulated there, passing fountains and jade or silver stores (I only bought two cheap bracelets) sprinkled among vegetable markets and coffee shops. I ate at little vegetarian cafes and then got meat skewers at street food stalls. I wrote and studied Chinese at the hostel, sandwiched between Cangshan Mountain and Erhai Lake.  I talked to Kitty on the phone, and her dream of Todd moving to China was born.

After a few days, I headed back to Kunming on my own to catch a flight to Beijing to meet Todd.    This was my first domestic flight in China, and to this day I am still amused by the safety announcement that, in the event of an emergency evacuation by inflatable boat, women should take off their high-heeled shoes.