Off to Dali - South-West China

After returning from our 7 day guided tour, we set off for Dali in Yunnan province. Yes - another sleeper train! Most of the way anyway. The train went from Guilin to Kunming, so still needed a 1 hour bus ride from Yangshuo to Guilin and a 4 hour bus ride from Kunming to Dali. The train itself was 24 hours, so we stayed in Kunming one night. Heading that way is quite a hippy trail towards Tibet. We did not have time to go that far where the real Tibetan style mountains are, but Dali is at a higher altitude, near a large lake and surrounded by small mountains. You can see a lot from the train during the daylight hours. We saw the landscape change from the plains and 'karsts', gaining altitude into more conventional mountainous terrain. Rice fields becoming larger though some still being harvested with water buffalo ploughing and pulling carts. Most noticeable was that the scruffiness of the towns and roads I have described gave way to much neater and more attractive areas. Quite a distinct cultural change with almost none of the unfinished buildings and dumped materials we had seen everywhere else. Tourism touts and shop keepers also seemed less desperate, so in spite of Dali being a hot tourist spot, it was much calmer than Yangshuo and we were happy to stay for 4 nights.

It is always a bit of a gamble who you will be sharing your 4-berth sleeper compartment with. This time it was these two off on 'water equipment' business. The 'boss' on the left was very keen to befriend us and bought us supper on the train. He even wanted us to visit his head office, which was hundreds of miles away in the wrong direction and had to be declined. Unfortunately all this had to be translated by his engineer (on the right) who spoke only a bit of English. The engineer was quite embarrassed, partly because he was struggling with the English, but I suspect also because this idea of befriending any random foreigner is rather old fashioned. In the morning we noticed he pretended to be asleep for as long as possible!

Town and countryside were much neater. Much less building going on and not spread all over the street when it was. There were also less tourists because the Chinese holiday season was then over.

We found a hostel (shown here) with very nice helpful staff who helped us book buses and trains and suggested nice places to go.

Most houses were kept in a good state even when very old and often nicely decorated with beautifully painted panels on the outside. We had seen these before, but usually quite neglected. The panels usually depicted animals, birds or scenes that were symbolic for the family in some way.

Dali is at the base of a small mountain range with a lake on the other side and more mountains beyond. We hired bikes to tour around the valley and the lake shore, where there was a mix of old villages and large areas where all kinds of vegetables were being cultivated in very neat plots.

The people cultivating the land seemed to always use one hoe/mattock tye implement for everything although the exact design varied in different areas.

At the edge of the lake the trees seemed to be growing in the water. This could be natural, but we suspected that there was another dam somewhere and the water level is still rising. It can take many years and it is quite likely the lake used to be much smaller. Some of the paths seemed to have been raised up like causways, which reinforced this imepression.

The old town used to be walled and the four (N S E W) gates are still there along with some of the walls. The traffic still enters through some of the gates.

The streets were nicely maintained and houses mostly finished in white. The three road menders shown here are all women, which is quite common. A large amount of the work seems to be done by women - it seems to be more than half! Men seem to spend a lot of time playing cards or like the ones shown here chatting to a street vendor who is repairing shoes with a leather-sewing machine transported on his 3 wheel bike.

Liz casting an expert eye over the ceramic wares.

A hardware shop but not as we know it! All these pots and implements were being made here in the shop or nearby.

We went up the nearby mountain range where you can walk for 4 hours along the contour looking down on Dali. However this was no Welsh mountain rock climb. I dont think serious walkers among you would have approved - we went up about 1000 metres in a very modern cable car with gondolas for up to 4 people, over a breathtaking forest and a deep valley or two, then walked on an almost level and decoratively paved walkway all the way to the chair lift at the other end - much too easy! The other end however was an open chair lift as used for skiing where you get on without it stopping. It seemed to plummet straight out over the precipice with just a loose bar/handle to pull down in front of you, whilst holding our backpacks! Since nobody else seemed to be using it, we funked it and decided to walk down through the forest. Of course it turned out the lift went down quite close to the ground and would not really have been very scary. We were so close to it we had cheery 'hellos' from Chinese tourists on it. It was quite a steep walk down. We did however meet ponies on the way down that are still used to carry goods and tourists up the mountain. There were also a lot of old tombs which are always sited for good feng shui facing South and with a mountain behind. contemporary burial sites are still often layed out with an artificial mountain at the back for the same reason.