Three weeks in Yunnan 2005

Friday 4 November	Arlanda - Bangkok - Kunming Check in around 12 at Arlanda, then lunch in the cafeteria to watch the planes taking off and landing ... still gives me a thrill. Comfortable Thai International flight to Bangkok left at 14:40 and arrived around 06:30 in the morning. Food reasonable and plenty to drink available.
Saturday 5 November	Arrival Kunming Bangkok airport transit lounge offered several kilometres shopping as well as plenty of food and beverage outlets; I had a few hundred baht from earlier trips to Thailand so I could begin to sample fruit juices and Asian sweets, mmmm. There were massage parlours that several in the group utilized. Bangkok to Kunming in Yunnan was a 2-hour hop also on Thai - and entry into China was as it always has been for me, quick and easy. The new Kunming Airport however was nothing like the airport I flew into in 1987 ! Met Mr Zhou Ben (call me Ben) and took a private bus to Jin Sui (Golden Rice) hotel in central Kunming. The hotel is a modern tower block, from our rooms on the 12th floor we had an excellent view of the city and in particular the traffic movements below at the corner of Ren Min Dong Lu and Zhong Shan Lu. However the distant hills were indistinct because of the smog and pollution. After a quick shower we walked together to the Bird and Flower Market, which is in the only area in central Kunmimg where the developers have not yet totally renovated everything. Thre was a Muslim street in the area which was still extant last year according to Ben, now there was just a large hole. Presumably next year there will be high rise shopping malls, hotels, and office blocks there. Later we walked to a local restaurant to try the Kunming speciality - "Across the Bridge" noodles" and see a dai dance show. The dish is called "Across the Bridge" noodles" because the wife of a poor scholar who was studying across a bridge from his home discovered that she could keep his lunch hot by pouring a thin layer of oil in the bowl. The dish actually consists of a large bowl of noodles surrounded by a number of side dishes which are added to the broth. The variety and number and rarity of the side dished decide the cost, ours was 20Y per person - Ben proudly told us - and consisted of several thinly sliced meat and vegetable dishes. The dancing was noisy and good-natured (renao) but presumably we will see more of the Dai later.
Sunday 6 November	Kunming - Lijiang Poor breakfast at hotel, and then we took a bus back to the Kunming airport for a noon departure. Kunmings airport is very modern, check in was painless, there are plenty of shops selling local specialities such as tea, fruit,ham and smoked ducks. Nuts and water were provided for the 45 minute flight. Lijiang is at 2400 metres, and the air was fresh as we left the airport. It was however about 30 km to the city of Lijiang, and we left the bus at the entrance to the old city, and walked to our guest house, the well-known Sanhe. Nice rooms around a courtyard. Immediately out to find a late lunch, plenty of vegetables and a couple of local specialities, Lijiang pancake and so on. In the afternoon we explored the old city of Lijiang. The real old town was destroyed by an earthquake in 1996, so almost everything today is less than 10 years old. However the buildings and streets and bridges have been reconstructed closely to the original plan, and the impression is of a mediaeval Chinese city - at least in the evening when the Chinese day trippers have returned home, and the trappings of 21st century life are less visible. It is possible to imagine how life has been lived here for hundreds of years, many of the people wear national dress, both those employed by the tourist office to dance in the main square, and those who appear to be going about their daily business. Around 7pm we met for dinner - the old town was lit up by candles and electric bulbs and pretty girls sold flowers which could be dropped into the canals, where they floated away for luck, as well as invited passers-by into their restaurant. The food was good however, and we all enjoyed the ambience.
Monday 7 November	Lijiang (Jade Dragon mountain) Noodles around the corner for breakfast, cool in the morning. Our bus left around 8 am climbing up to around 3200 metres in the foothills of the Jade Dragon mountain. On the way we passed a group of traditionally dressed Naxi and stopped for a photo op. Naturally it was a film set, but picturesque nevertheless. The scenery was spectacular with Jade Dragon Mountain growing as we approached it. This is a prime tourist spot for Chinese tourist groups, now able for the first time to see their own country, and so a bus was provided from the brand-new Visitors Centre uphill to the equally brand-new cable car station. The pressure on these facilities is already high, and after about a half-hour wait at the 3600 metres mark, where oxygen cylinders and padded overcoats were rented out it was up, up above the snow line in a spectacular swoop to 4500 metres for a brief walk on the glacier. It was the highest altitude I had ever been, but I didn't feel any trace of altitude sickness, or even lack of oxygen. Light lunch at the visitors centre, and return to Lijiang via Baisha (frescoes, shopping). Lijiang hotpot in the evening on "hotpot street". The owner was an American woman who had decided to settle in this corner of China. We ordered piles of vegetables and platefuls of kebabs which we cooked directly in the boiling pots of soup, one mild, and one not quite so mild. We ordered "one of each kind" of beer, and a surprising number of bottles arrived to taste, including a rose flavoured one. Unfortunately we had to hurry a little to get to the Naxi concert afterwards. This was one of the "must sees" and consisted of the expected bearded elders, but also some young faces, so perhaps there is hope for the future - at least as long as the tourist stream continues.
Tuesday 8 November	Lijiang Early in the morning I wandered to the market square for breakfast, before the tour buses started to arrive, and enjoyed a Naxi sandwich. The old town covers quite a large area and it is still very pleasant to wander through the lanes and alleyways with water running through and beside the streets. Surrounding the old town, of course is a large and ordinary modern Chinese town with little of interest. There is still a Mao statue and of course many of the minority people live in the new town as well. After lunch I decided to visit Shuhe - a small village about 12 km from Lijiang, and took a taxi. Surprisingly Shuhe has (presumably in the last year or so) become a tourist destination in its own right, with a ticket booth charging an entrance fee of 30Y to the village, Naxi dancers in the main square, and squeaky clean streets and tarted up buildings. Unfortunately for the local authorities that have spent so much money, I appeared to be the only visitor. But they will probably get plenty of busses over the weekends and holidays. In the evening we tried to eat dinner at the same restaurant as Sunday, but it wasn't there !!! Such is the pace of change in China.
Wednesday 9 November	Tiger Leaping Gorge An early start before sunrise to be able to get on the trail - we took our bus to Qiaotou (now renamed Tiger Leaping Gorge village) via the First Bend in the Yangtze. We provisioned (bananas) and waited for the local guide in Qiaotou, and entered the Tiger Leaping Gorge National Park at around 11:00 am. We continued by bus to Tiger Leaping Stone, which was as far as most of the Chinese tour buses and day trippers would get, and then we started to trek just past the tunnel. We climbed slowly up to the High trail, and on to Halfway Guest House. This trail was easy and reached a maximum altitude of about 2600 m. (compared with 2900 m at the top of the 39 bends.) But the views were still magnificent, The Yangtze (or Golden Sand river as it is known here) is around 1800 m. so it was still nearly a kilometre down. And about 3 kilometres upp to Jade Dragon Mountain to the south, and Haba Snow Mountain to the north, both around 5500 m. Halfway Guesthouse is basically a farmhouse in one of the tiny villages along the Gorge. Ambitious farmers realise that there is money to be made by renovating and building new rooms to house trekking foreigners. But they still grow corn and vegetables, and the pigs and chickens can be seen and heard everywhere. Good fresh food for dinner with wonderful night sky in the background. The moon, Venus (shui xing) and Mars (huo xing) were all shining brightly.
Thursday 10 November	Tiger Leaping Gorge Today was basically a short trek, climbing down the mountain to meet the river at the slightly larger and rather ugly village of Walnut Garden. This area along the river is being developed rapidly and in a very few years there will be a good motorable road from Qiaotou along the bottom of the gorge and then towards Haba village and the "back" way to Zhongdian. This will open the area for tourism and enable rapid economic development for the area, and a large environmental impact. We checked in and ate lunch at Woodys Guest House. They gave us a bowl of the walnuts the village is named after. Several of us walked down towards the river at around 4 pm with our local guide, past villages and fields, caves and rocks, down to impenetrable high grass on the edge of the river. It is difficult to realise that this is the same river that I saw last year entering the sea just outside Shanghai. We returned the same way as the sun was setting.
Friday 11 November	Tiger Leaping Gorge - Haba Village Today was a long trek. We started out in the bus past the dangerous rock falls with beautiful views of the rising sun burning away the mist on the plains towards Daju. Then we trekked away from the river and first through the fields and then up into the pine forests winding our way around the side of Haba Snow mountain to Haba village. We stayed at the Snow Mountain Guest House. These places don't attract the Chinese tour groups and cater largely to Western back-packers of whom we have seen perhaps a half-dozen these 3 days. Found a local noodle restaurant for a second lunch, and walked around this interesting village until dusk. Prosperity is coming, many of the vllagers are extending their home or building new houses - in the fields water-buffaloes are still used as draught animals. Excellent dinner conjured up in full view on the hearth in front of us in two woks, followed by entertainment from the local population.
Saturday 12 November	Haba Village - Zhongdian First stop was Baishuitai and its Pamukkale-like limestone terraces. Then through the mountains passing Yi villages, and suddenly across one last pass and we were in Tibet. At least geographically and ethnically. Zhongdian was originally Gyalthang, and has now been officially renamed Shangri La efter James Hiltons mythical paradise in "Lost Horizons". The hotel was outside the town but perfectly situated beside the Songzhanling Monastery. We walked up to the dagoba and across to the little Tibetan village as dusk fell. The contrast between China and Tibet is striking, both in the scenery, the style of building and the way the people live. The hotel dining room was attractively decorated, two open fires provided a cosy warmth. Dinner with some Tibetan specialities, dried yak, and some kind of barley pudding. At these altitudes the temperature plummets as dusk falls, and is certainly below zero during the night.
Sunday 13 November	Zhongdian Breakfast consisted of a buffet with yoghurt and cornflakes and juice plus a hot dish from the menu either a noodle soup or a Western ham and eggs type dish. Spent the day lookong around Zhongdian. There is an older Tibetan town, with wooden buildings currently being smartened up for an expected rise in tourism, it surrounds an open square, and a little distance away is a Buddhist temple with prayerwheels and tower. Surrounding it and growing is a pleasant Chinese town although largely inhabited by Tibetan nationals. There are several interesting market areas in this part of town where besides the usual vegetables the Tibetan saleswomen sell butter and cheese, and there are several yak-meat shops. Around the main crossroads, where the Tibetan and Chinese towns meet a small travellers centre is growing up with one or two Internet cafés, some coffee shops, and trekking and tour centres. I sent away a few emails, and surfed (Swdeish sites) without discovering any censorship.
Monday 14 November	Zhongdian We made a trip to Napa Lake, a part of the grasslands that have been turned into a touristexperience, with horse riding, sheep, yaks, and possibilities of seeing a number of birds. Our driver took us afterwards to his home - he was a native Tibetan. Entering through the courtyard we passed pieces of yak hanging up to dry in the eaves. The main room was large and well-furnished with tv, video, dvd player, as well as microwave, washing machine and refrigerator. We were offered butter tea, the butter being freshly churned in front of us, with tsampa (soaked, then dried and roasted barley) to mix in. There was also an array of cakes and pastries. Over 110 000 Tibetans live in Yunnan and cultivate wheat, corn and rice, they own yaks and other animals for both milk and meat. I spent the afternoon on another visit to the temple, the whole complex takes a long time to explore, including the living quarters for the monks. The main temple is a 4-storey block-house structure with a gold-plated roof, and is reached from the entrance by a long flight of stone steps. The monks are the Yellow Hat Tibetan sect, and the monastery is a smaller version of the Potala in Lhasa. There are more than 700 registered monks so it is the largest working monastery in Yunnan.
Tuesday 15 November	Zhongdian - Dali - Jinghong Bus to Dali through a verdant and fertile countryside. The lunch stop was in a village with a restaurant with primitive cooking and hygienic facilities, the food was unusually poor, most holes in the wall can provide delicious dishes but this was an exception. We arrived at Dali about 16:00 and took a quick peek at the 3 Pagodas through the entry gate before stopping at the Old Walled City for about an hour - enough time for a quick look around. On to the Erhu lake for about 10 minutes, and then to the airport. 50 minute flight to Jinghong, and out into the tropical night. Ate a few sticks in Jinghong.
Wednesday 16 November	Jinghong - Damenglong Excellent breakfast in the hotel, buffet spread of all kinds of Chinese and Western dishes. We had our own bus again to take us to Damenglong, the road started as a motorway but rapidly deteriorated and the last 20-30 km went at a snails pace. However we arrived at Damenglong around 11:30 and the place was buzzing. There was a colourful market and Dai festival being celebrated, we didn't find out exactly what it was but someone said that it was only one day a year - if so we had struck lucky. The restaurant had a coal grill outside and among the local vegetable dishes we chose some skewers of meat, chicken and fish to be grilled. Continued slowly by bus, past Burmese border checkpoints to an Akha village, trekked 2-3 hours to our night stop in one of a group of 4 villages. The truck was delayed bringing supplies, the tracks we were using were too muddy for the truck, it had to take another route. Hungrily we bargained for a chicken to be killed, when it was nearly cooked the truck arrived so we had plenty to eat. Then we spread our sleeping bags in the surprisingly spacious house.
Thursday 17 November	Xishuangbanna Breakfast was brought on the truck, bread, jam and cake, theoretically so we wouldn't embarass our hosts, in practise they fried up some rice and eggs so we ate a filling breakfast. From our village we followed the trail down into a river valley, with extensive views, but no other village within sight. Up, up and up to the crest of a hill and down, down to the Red River, finally the last hour along the river to Weidong, a fairly prosperous village, for the night. Weidong has a tea processing plant, a modern school and some well-built houses. At the moment it lacks a road link but this is changing very rapidly throughout the region (and all of China). This time I wanted to sleep outside on the terrace, inside was stuffy and a little smoky, although noone else was particularly anxious to sleep under the stars.
Friday 18 November	Xishuangbanna About an hour after leaving Weidong we came to the road construction project which very shortly will link Weidong and several other villages with Damenglong and ultimately Jinghong. Trekking here was not particularly interesting. We ate our lunch in a road workers camp, I shared their food, and abandoned the packed bread we had been carrying. Tiring of walking through road works some of us took a tractor after lunch the 7-8 km to our overnight stop at Banpo. Banpo is a Bulang village, with a large Buddhist temple at the top of the village, and many of the monks are in fact local boys. Some of us went to visit the temple - I don't know how many foreigners get to Banpo but the monks took the visit of some 8-10 Swedish tourists calmly enough. They invited us to share their liquor and have a smoke. Some of them had Buddhistic messages tattooed on their arms in both Chinese characters and Thai script. The village had two shops selling mainly cigarettes, liquor, biscuits, sweets.
Saturday 19 November	Xishuangbanna Morning trekking along the new road. Past Akha village to our starting point and then to lunch at the same restaurant in Damenglong Continued to Jinghong. Shower. Dinner with sweet and sour fish, crispy pork and eggplants and leeks and a bottle of dry Tibetan wine.
Sunday 20 November	Xishuangbanna Many of the villages in Xishuangbanna hold their weekly market on Sundays, we went to the village of Menghan (also known as Ganlanba) for the day - this is an interesting place but being so close to Jinghong, about 20 kilometres it is quite touristy. Formerly you could take a boat along the Mekong (known as the Lancang) River to get there, but now bus or cycle is the only practical route. The trip follows the Mekong through lush tropical vegetation and the village iself is larger than expected but quite spread out. It lies in the fertile Olive Plains, and Dai villages are dotted all over the plain. We took a ferry across the Mekong - Ben thought we could take a walk on the other side but there was not a lot to see - he was killing time until the Dai exhibition park opened I think. The Dai exhibition park is built especially for tourist groups, and basically consists of what were previously 5 separate Dai villages enclosed. There are just over 1 000 000 Dai and most live on the plains and river banks of Xishuangbanna. There are related groups across the borders in Laos, Burma and Thailand. Like these groups, Chinas Dai are Buddhist and temples and pagodas are numerous in the Dai area of the country. The villages consist of bamboo houses, usully built on stilts where the lower storey is a storage area, or a place for animals, or a weaving area. Some common buildings have been built in the centre of the exhibition park to serve the tourists - a concert hall and large open area where water splashing festivities are performed. The Water Splashing Festival (Poshui Jie) is actually in April, but it is so popular with turists - and the Dai - that it is now performed daily. After time to wander around by ourselves we met up to eat lunch at a Dai house. It was very good with many specialities, spicy vegetable dishes including eggplants, buffalo skin with a hot sauce, fish, meat, a banana flower dish all served with pineapple rice and home made Dai liquor. Then we walked over to the central plaza to see first a song and dance performance with troupes of very attractive Dai boys and girls, and this culminated in the water splashing which everyone, Dai participants, Chinese tour groups and we all found very good fun. The costumes of the Dai, brilliant reds, yellows, and black are more similar to Thai dress than to most other Chinese minorities. We were back in Jinghong by 18 and I wandered around eating dumplings and skewers of grilled meat.
Monday 21 November	Kunming Our flight to Kunming was at 12:15 so after breakfast I wandered around locally, around Manting lu, and in department stores, the only thing I bought was a packet of star anise. The flight was uneventful and after a late noodle lunch I wandered around the backstreets near the hotel. In many places the pace of life was still as in the 1980's with small one-man businesses and craftsmen, street committees and other evidence of the Communist Party influence. Later I went for dinner with Stefan. We went to a modern restaurant which appeared to be closing its doors at 8 pm. However they somewhat grudgingly admitted us and prepared an excellent meal of aubergine with egg, kidneys with chili, an onion and mushroom dish and a soup with bean curd dumplings, all for 58Y. With 2 bottles of beer of course.
Tuesday 22 November	Kunming Remembering that the breakfast at the Jin Hui is very poor I went out to find a noodle shop. Quite close was an excellent newly-opened place that served a wide variety of noodle dishes with pork, chicken or beancurd on the side for 4-5 Y. Today the rest of the group went off to the Stone Forest. I didn't want to go so I made my own excursion, I took a number 17 bus from the station across the road from the hotel to Anning. The road was suburban and more or less industrial all the way. Anning appears to be an important mining town. As it happened the 17 bus didn't go to the centre of Anning but to a suburban centre which was interesting. First I went to a tea shop where the girl didn't seem to find it extraordinary that a lone foreigner should find his way to her shop. She spoke very good English and I spent a pleasant half-hour sipping exquisite teas, Just across the road was an open-air market with an entirely different clientele, here people were very poor, and the goods were shoddy. The baijiu was flowing at 11am and a number of the guests at the wine shop were already stone drunk. I returned to Kunming and spent some time exploring the station area. I snacked all day so had no real sit-down dinner. The railway station is always the area where migrants gather, moving in or moving on. There is always fast food, cheap hotels, life and action. Plenty of pick-pockets and prostitutes too, and in general not an area to linger in after dark
Wednesday 23 November	Kunming Today it rained, for the first and only time on this trip. Rain in China is often heavy and roads flood, garbage floats around, and everything is damp, indoors and out. However I braved it to my noodle shop where I was greeted as a regular customer. It slowly stopped raining so I was able to explore more of Kunming. I was there previously in 1987 but remember almost nothing from that time. After lunch Lisa and I decided to visit the Bamboo Temple north west of the city, we took a taxi and the driver waited while we explored. Luckily while we were there the rain held off and we were able to see this very pleasant temple in comfort. The templea main claim to fame is the 500 arhat statues sculpted by Li Guangxiu in the 1880's. Apparently they were modelled after real people of the time and many of the poses are not flattering, so there was a certain amount of criticism at the time. In the evening we celebrated Görels 50th birthday in the restaurant at our hotel. Despite their inability to make breakfast they cooked a number of interesting dishes including a splendid iced birthday cake.
Thursday 24 November	Kunming-Bangkok Breakfast at my restaurant and then time for a last exploration of the area around the Bird and Flower market before the evening plane homewards. Some of the houses are interesting, with wooden upper halves, and probably around 100 years old. It is a matter of conjecture how long they will last on this piece of prime real estate. For now there are herbal medicine shops, small street restaurants, ironmongers, textile shops and a host of small family businesses, as well as fruit-sellers, sweet salesmen and other street salesman walking around and crying their wares. Around 3pm we made our way from the hotel to the airport where Ben left us, and we flew uneventfully to Bangkok at 18:20 arriving at 9 pm in time to buy orchids and Mekong whisky, be massaged and eat tom yam soup before the 1am flight to Stockholm.
Friday 25 November	Bangkok-Stockholm Arrive Arlanda 06:50 and I was home by about 8:30, tired but content and pleased with the trip

Three weeks in Yunnan 2005 (5 November 2005 - 24 November 2005)