From Guilin, I flew to Dali and was met at the airport by Linda, my Dali guide who promptly proudly informed me she was Bi. Our first stop was to look at Erhai Lake (also called Ear Lake – because it looks like an ear). The lake is 45 kilometers long and 3 to 9 kilometers wide depending on the location. And at its deepest Lake Erhai is 21meters deep.
While walking the promenade of the lake, Linda informed me that there are 16 ethnic minority groups living in the area. And it turned out Linda was not Bi but Bai – the largest ethnic group in the area at 1.7 million. The Bai people can be identified easily because they dress in white and their homes are all painted white with black trim. The rest of the city’s population is made up of the Han people.
My hotel was located in Dali’s ancient town established by the Bai people in 1382 during the Ming Dynasty. The town is laid out like a Chinese checkerboard with four outer gates and one center gate. The Bai are known as expert silversmiths and jade, stone, and woodcarvers. I found it interesting that the Bai have their own ancient language but the Chinese government prohibits the teaching of it in the local schools.
The walking tour of the old town was one of the highlights of my visit to China. The old city has retained its old-world charm, its ancient buildings and its local flavor with the local ethnic groups still wearing their traditional dress.
A couple of oddities in Dali that I came across included: men’s bathrooms not intended for 6 foot 3 inch Americans – see the photos of both urinal and light fixture placement, a McDonalds shoehorned into an ancient building surrounded by traditional Chinese offerings, and a Catholic Church that looked more like a Buddhist Temple than a western church from the outside. Photos of all three attached as well as photos of local ethnic group members in traditional clothes and white Bai homes.
Besides Dali’s ancient town the only other remarkable tourist site in the area is the Three Pagoda and Thong Sheng Temple Complex. The First pagoda stands at 69.13 meters high and was built between 823 and 849ad. The two smaller pagodas that flank the large pagoda were built in the 11th century and are only 42 meters high. Only the tall center pagoda has stairs and can be climbed.
“Lake, Mountain, Put Down, Dragons (Earthquakes) Forever”.
The pagodas overlook Erhai Lake and along with a golden Roc bird statue atop a temple-like structure or pavilion in a direct line between the center pagoda and the lake was supposed to protect Dali from earthquakes. The ancient people of Dali believed the earthquakes were caused by the dragons living in the lake. The Roc was supposed to pluck the eyes from the dragons each night and the pagoda was supposed to calm the big lizards. There are four Chinese characters in front of the large pagoda that read “Lake, Mountain, Put Down, Dragons (Earthquakes) Forever”.
Three Pagoda complex
Thong Sheng Temple Complex
We made one last stop in Xizhou Village before driving down to my next destination Lijiang. During this stop, we walked thru the Village morning market and then visited a tie-dying center in a Yan Compound of the Bai town. I enjoyed the walk thru the market of fresh fruit, vegetables, spices, fish and meats but not so much the tie-dying center and the attempts to get me to buy their products.
Photos of the lake, ancient town, catholic church, ethnic people, pagodas, temples, and morning market attached to the blog.
Day 1 in Lijiang
I was met in Lijiang by my guide Cindy and given a brief run-down of the itinerary as we walked to my hotel for the next few days. And I seemed to be on a streak with excellent guides! Each one seems better than the last. If you are planning a trip to China I would highly recommend Wind Horse Tour out of Chengdu (https://windhorsetour.com/). They have helped me organize both my 2017 and 2019 three week trips to China and both tours came off without a hitch.
Cindy is a member of the Naxi ethnic minority and the ancient city of Lijiang is a Naxi community. The Naxi are a fairly small ethnic group at only about 300,000 people. Naxi means black people and while the Naxi are not black they are darker than your average Chinese. The Naxi have their own ancient pagan religion and their Shaman is called a Dongba.
The Naxi also have their own written language that is over 1000 years old. According to Cindy the Naxi language is based on 1004 characters and is the only language based upon pictographs left in the world. It is kind of cool that all the stores’ signs have their names in Mandarin, Naxi, and English.
Walking thru the town on our way to a traditional tea ceremony， I marveled at the quant streets and lanes lined with beautiful old stone buildings remodeled and now housing modern shops and cafes. Every street, lane or alley was spotless and decorated with flowers, artwork and overhead in many of the small lanes – colorful umbrellas fastened edge to edge created a shaded ceiling of a rainbow of colors and patterns.
And I have been to well over a dozen tea ceremonies and lectures during my 2017 trip and now this year’s trip but I learned more about tea in Lijiang than all the other programs put together. A very nice lady, He Li Yun conducted the tea ceremony and her family the Fu Sing Chang family have been in the tea business for over 80 years. The first thing I learned is that Lijiang is the home of Pu-Er Tea which most experts will tell you is the best tea in the world. The second thing I learned and was stunned by – is the tea from Lijiang is not from bushes but from trees. And the difference between green Pu-Er Tea and Black Pu-Er Tea is fermentation.
The green Pu-Er Teacake is not fermented and the black Pu-Er Teacake has had the tea leaves fermented for 45 to 60 days at 30 degrees. And when judging the quality of the tea cake the two variables to consider are the age of the tree and the age of the tea cake. Both these variables have a major impact on the quality.
The very best tea comes from trees that are over 300 years old and tea leaves from these trees can be used up to 30 times without a decrease in the taste of the cup of tea. Leaves harvested from younger trees (less than 300 years old) can only be reused 5 or 6 times before the taste of the cup of tea suffers in quality.
The tea trees of Lijiang are harvested three times per year. The first harvest season is the spring tea harvest for 7 days in March and this is considered the best quality tea. The second harvest is called Rain Season Harvest and it runs from August to September. And the final harvest is at the end of October.
An old tea tree will produce over 100 kilos of tea leaves through all three harvests. And there are no Tea Tree Orchards. The trees grew naturally and were never planted by man. There are less than 5,000 trees on the one mountain outside of Lijiang.
I was served 7 or 8 different types of tea some fermented some not fermented. The wild black tea served me was from a 400-year-old tree. After over two hours of sipping tea and soaking up all the knowledge that He Li Yun shared I purchased a cake Pu-Er spring tea with tea flowers from an old tree and a large tin of wild black tea from an old tree.
After a very interesting and enjoyable afternoon learning about and enjoying cup after cup of tea – Cindy and I continued our exploration of the ancient city and finally ended up at the Blue Papaya Music Restaurant. For dinner, I tried the local favorite – Yak cheese, Naxi rice, and Yak onion and pepper stir fry with a nice cold local beer. And dinner was excellent! And after having my fill of excellent tea, wonderful yak and local beer I walked back to my hotel for a well-deserved sleep.
Day 2 in Lijiang
We began our day walking thru a beautiful park and along the lakeshore and across the picturesque bridges of Black Dragon Pools. You will see in the photos that the setting is straight out of a picture book. Graceful arched stone footbridges, brightly colored pagodas and pavilions, brightly colored flowers, and lush green trees all come together to make the park the place to be.
And, apparently, it is the place to be! Everywhere I turned there were groups of people exercising. Some to music others going thru the slow-motion discipline of Tai Chi, and still others being led thru an entire series of exercises focusing on every part of the body. I joined a group of about 40 older women around one of the pagodas in their exercise regiment to the delight of the ladies. They enjoyed correcting my attempts to match their routines and teased and taunted me good-naturedly thru the workout. Even my young guide Cindy joined in on both the exercising and ribbing me.
After my workout and with the ladies and having provided them with their morning comic relief it was on to the Naxi Ethnic Museum. The museum was fascinating from the plaza before the entrance to the last exhibit. One of the photos you will see has a floor mosaic with a center symbol for good luck but then also with images of bats in the corners. The Naxi believe bats are harbingers of good luck and honor them as well as eat them.
Inside the museum were displays on the Dongba view of how the world was formed, and the Dongba belief that everything in the world has a spirit that they worship including heaven, ancestors, and ghosts. There were ancient pictograph books of scriptures and samples of the written Naxi pictographs discussing the very ordinary. Displays on how the Naxi dress, how their homes look and are decorated, and even marriage rituals.
Speaking of marriage rituals and customs. Cindy told me about the marriage customs of two local ethnic groups that are so odd that they are worth mentioning. The first is the Mosuo. The Mosuo is an ethnic group that today only consists of 30,000 members that live on Lucy Lake. The Mosou are called the “Kingdom of Women” and is said to be the last remaining Matriarchal society in the world.
All property and wealth are passed down thru the women of the group. In fact, there is no such thing in this society as a marriage or husband. The women choose their temporary lovers and if a child is born out of the tryst the child never knows who his father was.
The procreation process begins when a girl turns sixteen. She is then moved into a small house next to the extended female family’s communal house. The small house is called the flower house and she is to live there alone. A dance is organized to celebrate her coming of age and at the dance, she selects the boy that will join her in the flower house for her first time. She will approach the boy to take his hand and dance with him and during the process will use her finger to discreetly scratch his palm three times as the signal that he has been chosen.
If he agrees they will part company and then later that night he will slip over to the flower house carrying three objects: pork, hat and flashlight. The pork is to give the dog so it will not alert the family, the hat is to place on a peg on the outside of the door so that if a family member wakes up to go outside for the call of nature she will see the hat on the door and not to disturb the couple and the flashlight is to find his way in the dark to the right flower house.
The boy will continue to come to the flower house every night to service the girl until she stops opening the door for him. Then he will give up and she will repeat the process with a new boy till she becomes bored with him. Now that is Girl Power! I wonder if whoever wrote that song “Girls Rule the World” had any idea that the Mosou girls DO! I have included two photos of Mosou women working in their stores in Naxi.
The other strange matrimonial custom is that of the Tibetan minority that lives high up in the mountains in Southern China but near Lijiang. It seems that it is very common for two brothers to marry the same woman or a man to marry two sisters. The custom began as a result of a scarcity of resources and suitable mates. So, I guess the logical thing to do was to take turns. According to Cindy, the brothers don’t take turns each night but rather seasonally or yearly. But still, it must make family get togethers a little awkward.
Our next stop was to Bai Sha (White Sand Village) – a Naxi settlement that is over 1300 years old. In the village, we viewed ancient frescos celebrating the harmonious coexistence of the Dongba, Buddhist and Islamic Religions in the region over 1000 years ago. I’ve included several photos of the beautiful old building in the village.
While we were in the village Cindy took me to a silk stitching school whose mission is to teach the next generation the art of using silk thread to create incredible works of art that look like paintings. One of the girls who has been at the school for two years demonstrated how the process works and showed me around the gallery. Incredibly, a master can separate a single silk thread into 10 strands and use one almost invisible strand to stich into the artwork. I’ve included photos of some of the students at work and several of the finished pieces.
And our final visit was to Jade Dragon Snow Mountain to see the mountain and glacier made up of 13 picturesque peaks. Unfortunately, I will have to take their word for the beauty of the mountain and glaciers because the low clouds and fog obscured the view of everything above the alpine meadow we were walking thru.
My time in Lijiang was well spent and I hope to revisit again next year. The city is beautiful, the people friendly, the food was incredible, and my guide Cindy was a sweetheart. If you are going to China I would strongly recommend making Guilin, Dali, Lijiang, and Chengdu the centerpiece of your visit. And you will not find better guides than Jenny, Linda, Cindy and Wendy. All of which you can find thru Murphy Feng at Wind Horse Tours in Chengdu.
