Yunnan, South of the clouds

To me, Yunnan has always had that mysterious feeling. Its remote location, diverse ethnicity and harsh terrain has made it an unknown territory and a difficult place to govern in history. It's also where the fallen officials were exiled to and home to 1/3 of all china's ethnic minorities. all of these contribute to the strong character of this border province. it's another China, apart from the great wall and the Terra cotta and I was excited to be finally there.

An overnight train took us to Kunming, the capitol of Yunnan province. From there, a 4-hours bus ride took us to Dali, the new Dali to be exact. Another taxi ride and 35 yuan later we finally arrived at the real thing - old Dali, yes the very place where Dali kingdom stood some 900 years ago as depicted in Jin Yong's bestseller Tian-long-ba-bu. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Jin Yong, he is a bestselling author of a series of chinese martial art novels. His books were the ones I once read under blanket with a flashlight at late night in my teenage years, as did many others. :) Now here I am, standing on the same ground Duan Yu stood some hundreds of years ago.!

We spent a few days in Dali, visited a local Bai market in Shaping, the three pagodas and just wandered aimlessly in the town. The old town is lovely, with cobbled streets and traditional stone architectures, but not until we later arrived in Lijiang we realized none of that could hold a candle to the latter!

the streets of old Dali

me and the 3 pagodas near old Dali

the action packed Bai market in Shaping every Monday

Lijiang is simply what one imagines China would be like - winding cobbled streets, rickety old wooden buildings and gushing old canals. we spent a couple of days here, sometimes just hung at a local cafe reading other ppl's travel log and just watch the world go by. sometimes we ventured out to nearby scenic spots like Tiger Leaping Gorge and Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. At night we'd be exploring the local Naxi dishes in one of many restaurants lined in the old town. The Naxi is one of many minorities living in Yunnan, and guess what? They have a matriarchal society!! Yes, Naxi women never get married, their "boyfriends" come to spend the night and go back to their own place next morning. The kids belong to the women and women inherit all properties! When the guide explained this to us at the Naxi museum, the lady next to me couldn't help but yell out "that's heaven!". :) The Naxi also created a hierogrlyphic language over 1000 years ago and it's still in use! They write things on Dongba papers which is said to last a thousand years. Impressive!

streets of Lijiang

a Dongba (wise man in Naxi) writing (or should I say drawing?) Naxi pictographic characters on Dongba papers

Tiger Leaping Gorge

Lijiang's freezing morning makes getting up early a pretty difficult task (the fact that we have heated blanket makes it even more difficult). We got to TLG at almost noon, after a winding 2 hours on a bus watching a horrible, loud, badly acted old movie. Perhaps because it's already past the morning rush, there weren't many drivers there vying for our business. We grouped up with two girls from Kunming to share ride. they saved us big bucks that day. Looking at them I realized what we called bargaining before was just kids stuff. they are pros! I almost wanted to ask them where they'd be visiting the following days and mind if we tag along. :)

The gorge is just stunningly beautiful, narrow, deep, and the rapids looks very unnavigable. the driver took us into the middle part of the gorge and we started descending. We got to the bottom not after long and from there it was a hair-standing narrow, slippery path to get to this rock called Tiger Leaping Stone, which stands in the middle of the river looking down at the turbulent rapids. It's said that a tiger once jumped across the gorge from here, hence the name. That's one hell of a leap!

After a bit of rest it's time for the tough part - going up! It was a strenuous hike, one of the toughest I've ever done (not that i am an experienced hiker). The sign that says "safe path to the left, dangerous ladder to the right" just didn't help at all because the ladder was what we were taking. I looked up at the ladder vertically clinging to the cliff and thought i must've been out of my mind. This ain't no climbing the Sydney harbour bridge where your auto-lock harness binds you to the ladder nice and firm. Anyway my sore legs wanted to get it over with, so I took the plunge... nice and easy, one step at a time, never look down... As it turned out, it is actually much less scary climbing it than looking at it. all those indoor climbing prepped me well for this day! :)

We made it back to the top in about 3 hours. as we arrived back at the road, the afternoon sun penetrated through layers of clouds and hit the gorge. It's really beautiful. I've read that china is planning to dam up the gorge, i truly hope it's not gonna happen. it's a shame to have this beautiful gorge buried under water.

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bargain-o-meter (courtesy of our Kunming friends):

ride to middle rapid in TLG: from Y180 to Y100

ride back to Lijiang: from Y30 to Y20, per person

access Tiger Leaping Stone: from Y10 per person to per group (the 4 of us!)

horseback riding: from Y380 per person to Y180 for the whole group (3 ppl)

awesome!

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us in front of the middle rapid sign

the hair-standing path to go to Tiger Leaping Stone. The lady in front of me is the "stonekeeper". she collects 10 yuan and leads us there. But our Kunming friends bargained it down to 10 yuan total for the four of us. :)

the trick here is don't look down

me climbing up the sky ladder

the beautiful gorge in late afternoon's sun

Jade Dragon Snow Mountains

The Chinese categorizes scenic spots by the number of As. JDSM is a AAAA (4A) scenic spot, which can translate to stunning scenery, loads of big buses and long lines. :) On our first visit, we wanted to avoid the beaten track, so we went to the furthest part and took a chair lift up to the peak called Yak Meadow. We had the place almost to ourselves. There were just us and two other people because everyone else is on the 4500m peak throwing snow balls and sucking oxygen. :). It was hailing up there and the cold, thin air gives the place a remote, Tibetan feeling. It's very quiet and tranquil, felt like a lost world. we could see yaks grazing on the grass. We returned to JDSM a few days later for the 4500m peak and witnessed the power of chinese tour groups. we waited for more than 4 hours before we finally stood on top. The visibility was pretty bad and all we could see is fog and loads of people. however, the feeling of standing on the highest point ever in my life still keeps enough adrenaline pumping!! Pascal was quite a celebrity up there, he removed his shirt to have pictures taken in the blizzard with the elevation sign. That caused quite a stir at 4500m, girls were screaming and guys patting on his shoulder. that earned him some chinese groupies asking to have photos taken together. :)

At the time we didn't know the real adventure was just about to begin. we got back down to the foot of the mountain to wait for the bus back to Lijiang a little past 4. two hours later there's still no sign of bus. we asked around and the staff just told us to wait, said "Eventually" the bus will come. later we learn (from a village worker) that the bus stops running at 4! We were very frustrated with the unhelpful staff and misinformation, in a AAAA national grade scenic spot, i really expect a little more, especially after paying 80 yuan to go in and 175 yuan for the cable car! Most people came as part of a tour group or hired drivers, there were just about 11 of us who are independent travellers. we started flagging down passing cars and asking tour guides if we can ride along. none of them offered a hand. It was getting colder and darker, where are all the taxi touts when i need them the most?! finally a mini van stopped and agreed to take us back to Lijiang, all 11 of us swarmed in. and after a bit of squeezing and stacking up we all miraculously fit in. i couldn't say enough thank-you to the driver! We got back to Lijiang feeling like refugees. it was a day with mixed emotions - frustration, excitement, and anger. At that point only one thing could sooth our tired mind and body - a bowl of steamy hot across-bridge rice noodles. We stormed in the first restaurant where the noodles are served. nothing beats having a satisfying meal after a tough day!

Pascal having pictures taken with some chinese travellers

11 of us stacked up in this tiny car.

Yak Meadow

We said good bye to Lijiang that night and hopped on a overnight sleeper bus back to Kunming. The bus is nothing to write home about, I was just glad my berth wasn't by the restroom. :) After a sleepless night, we arrived in Kunming just before the day break, took a taxi to the airport and fly to Hanzhou from there.