Dallying in Dali

I am writing this sat in a traditional Bai courtyard in the market town of Shaxi. Shaxi is one of the last surviving trading posts on the old Tea Horse Route, where tea from Burma was swapped for horses from Tibet. This trade has obviously stopped now and Shaxi is now just a village in a valley surrounded by fields and high mountains. Albeit one UNESCO is worrying about. The sun is just clearing away the last of the morning mist.

I do get to some special places!

My last two days in Dali were miserified a little by a drizzle straight from Scotland but there was one more adventure. Warning: the next part is about Becka and I being young and reckless...

We decided to hire an electric bike and head up the lake to several fishing villages. Neither of us had ever ridden an electric bike before and I hadn't even ridden pillion on a moped or something like that. Our induction consisted of being shown how to turn the power up and put the stand down. I had a brief try as I was driving first. I jerked forward, ascertained the brakes weren't so good at braking, before waving Becka to hop on the back. We jerked off again, narrowly missed a woman and baby before zooming onto the highway, hair flowing in the wind as we hadn't bothered with bourgeois helmets. We wobbled up to a junction where we turned around and then zoomed along at the bike's top speed of 40kph. As I didn't dare turn my head in case we lost our balance, Becka was put on checking behind duty while I hunched over the handlebars. Every now and then the rest of the traffic roared past, preceded by Becka's yell of “TRUCK”. We headed along the highway before the highway stopped as it hadn't been finished yet. Then down a bizarrely grand link road, pillars with inscriptions and grey marble like we were heading up to some palace, before pulling out onto another highway, with only a cursory check to see what else was coming. Then we carried on with Becka yelling “TRUCK BIG ONE BIG ONE” while I planned how to fit this in with the oncoming bus overtaking a truck and an old man pulling a cart full of vegetables on my side of the road, all of which left little room for two laowais and an electric bike.

But we survived.

We had been heading for a village called Zhoucheng but hadn't bothered finding a map so we ended up turning off the road at some point and pootling along through a village. The houses were all old and small and the road was dusty and not incredibly well-maintained. There were flowers growing from the roofs and paintings on the whitewashed walls. Every now and then through gaps in the houses we could see the blue Erhai lake and green fields.

“TRUCK”

We had a niggling feeling that we might not be leaving enough power to get home so we turned back down a road that we didn't really look at first... I say road it was more a collection of islands of concrete surrounded by the eroded valleys of sand. This wasn't so comfortable.

And then we zoomed on back to Xizhou which is a Bai minority town. On the way I'd been pedalling a little to save electricity but then one of the pedals fell off... So we had a brief stop at a repair shop to fix it. The bike fell on Becka and it started to rain. She wasn't happy. We ate some fairly disgusting fried rice at Xizhou which instead of a menu had a display of Stuff that we looked at, admired and then went for the safest option we could think of. I dragged Becka for a walk around Xizhou which was much like Dali. Everything was ever so slightly too pristine so I got the feeling it had been redone a little in the past few years. There was a square with stalls and a small antique shop to the side that had an ancient saddle that I was interested in. And then back to the bike through more small streets dodging youths on mopeds and old men driving small carriages pulled by grumpy ponies.

Becka drove for a while. Then we ran out of power. Then we pushed the bike. Then we realised the bike might have enough power to get Becka home on the bike while I walked. Becka rode off and I walked the 10km back. It rained a bit. My feet hurt.

Moral of the story: take the charger...

For one meal, we had yak steak and Tibetan butter tea. The yak tasted like beef and the tea was rather buttery. In fact it seemed to me to be just melted butter... Still, not bad! I suspect it was better than the pizza covered in chocolate and fruit on offer...

For our last meal in Dali, we headed to one of the countless small pub-like restaurants that serve lovely, lovely western food. We sat down at one and were slowly perusing the menu when we attracted the attention of the group of Chinese men next to us. One of them proceeded to take charge of us and ordered two burgers for us as well as two bottles of Carlsberg and, when he spotted Becka sniffing, he also ordered a a concoction of coca-cola, ginger and pear to cure her cold. They then returned to their game which seemed to be who could smack their cards down on the table hardest. We had sporadic conversation with them and they invited us to go to the hot springs with them the next day but we declined.

As our Chinese improves I've noticed that the standard question has changed from “how many months have you been in China” to “how many years have you been in China”. *Pride*

While randomly walking through the streets I spotted the freshly peeled skin of something brown and hairy on the floor. I wasn't keen on investigating closer so I don't know what it was exactly. I also bought a 1 yuan note from 1960 in an antique shop. It cost 30 to buy, I suspect I should have haggled more, but I love it. On one side is a happy woman driving a tractor and on the other a happy shepherd on a mountain pasture. Becka bought a sword.

Finally we had to leave Dali. My final conclusion on the place is that it is nice to visit, and the ancient architecture is appealing, but there was something missing...

To get to Shaxi was rather complicated. We walked down to the main road where we waited for the bus with Jianchuan written in the window. The first one ignored our waving but by leaping up and down, we got the second. It was rather full. I ended up squeezing onto the back seat, basically sat on an old granny, with my bags added to the mountain of packs in the aisleway while Becka perched on a stool in the last available space. We rocked and shook over a mountain road for 3 hours to Jianchuan. It was quite a spectacular ride through steep mountains, many covered in snow, past villages and towns, overtaking, being overtaken, precipices down one side, old men on bikes on the other. Eventually we reached Jianchuan where we climbed into a minibus to Shaxi. Our driver was a bit of a Michael Jackson fan as he had various pictures of the guy as well as continuously playing his music on the radio. I suspect his hairstyle was also modelled after the star too... The minibus was not large but we still managed to squeeze 10 people and a lot of boxes in.

The road to Shaxi was small and winding and as a consequence the woman in front of me spent the journey being sick.

We got dropped off in Shaxi. I had both directions to the hostel and a map but both proved useless and after circumnavigating Yunnan and asking most everyone where to go we eventually stumbled across it. The hostel is a renovated traditional courtyard house and our room looks like it might have been the old stable. There are three dogs here, one small and sandy, one big, black and Tibetan and what looks a St. Bernard. When we arrived there were two bones for these three dogs which left the black one anxiously trying to persuade the others to give it their bone. The small dog hid under the table and the St. Bernard just growled.

There are three very, very old Americans here. I have no idea how they made it this far without falling apart.

Shaxi is not big. It is a town with old style buildings and roads as well as the odd corner with really old buildings, like ours. Outside is a square with a temple and a theatre stage. The stage is fascinating as it is the classical style and surprisingly small. It is decorated with lots of figures. There is a small pack of children outside who run after us. Two tried to hug my legs. One lifted Becka's top up to stare at her stomach. I asked one how it was but, as always happens when I try to speak to rural children, it just stared back blankly.