The old town of Ligiang was densely packed with chinese and foriegn tourists. To meet some locals in their natural habitat and to marvel at the species would have required some wandering or cycling to outer areas. Being tired from my walking in Deqin and at the Tiger Leaping Gorge, along with the recent heavy drinking, I decided to take it easy, reading a little and walking. The streets were cobbled and the buildings had the old style ornate facings, curls and swirls of colour from the sides of their sloping roofs.
The local Naxi tribes people, were being out done on the business side of things by entreprenurial Han chinese selling their products. They still had their customs being somewhat preserved in such things as their traditional Opera, with players of the traditional instruments being as old as eighty and one over ninety, grand and proud in posture but with humble faces and whispy beards.
On the main bar street for tourists, young women sat in the upper floor windows, in traditional dress and sang across the street a ritualistic chant about love. People from across the street, divided by a stream that ran down the middle of its length, replied in a rehearsed fashion the words of this mock ceremony. The girls appeared to be having fun but, having to do this every night, might have been just putting on a good show. Drunken chinese tourist would join in the melodious chants. This tourist gimmick stemmed from a genuine practice of this ethnic minority, one of the 56 indigenous to China. For this reason I found pleasure in seeing it. How intriguing it would have been to see these things for real, amongst these narrow, twisting, disorientating cobbled streets and quaint rooftops and bridges, with a mountain range backdrop showing whitened crests perhaps half the year. Frail sinous old ladies laiden with the fecundity of the distant slopes walking by. It would have been dream-like.
I stayed in Mama Naxi's guest house. Two french guys happily gave me twenty minutes of their time to guide me there, after they saw me dithering in the street and trying to figure out some options from a map on a wooden board.
Mama and Baba ran three buildings under one name. The hostel rooms, for 15 rmb (one pound), included free use of the internet and washing machine. In the evenings a banquet was laid on for all the residents, at a cost of 10 rmb per person. Each table of about eight people would have six to eight dishes... vegetables, chicken, beef, copious amounts of rice... and us hungry "nomads" would greedily indulge. On the wall was a quote from the biblical prophet Isaiah, expounding upon the idea that God had known us before birth and would carry us. If these owners were Christain they were fulfilling the ideals of such beliefs, choosing service over profit. Considering the amount of people finding this place to stay in due to it's mention in Lonely Planet, they could have easily increased prices significantly.
When I left they gave me a pouch of herbs, wafting a pleasant aroma, on a string, to go around my neck for good luck and two bananas. They also took me and some others to the bus station free of charge. A generous gesture. I took the bus to Dali.
Dali is situated on a plain, close to a large lake called Erhai, which has a 30 kilometres or more diameter north to south, and with a mountain range that abruptly announces its presence to the west. I settled into a lovely guest house, in a dorm room of three beds. At the beginning of my stay I was sharing with a school teacher from Kunming. He showed a little loneliness and desire for chat but was deligent in planning his holidays. I'd see him a little in the evenings. Language barriers prevented deep conversation.
I met some western friends in this touristy town. One afternoon we went to an american writers room, who told us she was writing a book related to dating and the Orient. We sat on the bed talking relaxed and jovial chat. In the evening the five of us went out to eat Peking duck amongst other things and drank beer. I told them of a night club I'd popped into on my first night in town and so we all decided to go. As we stepped into the main room, two girls were dancing on chairs and, opening a bottle, sprayed its contents in a couple metre radius, hitting me. They were in a group of about eight, all extremely wild. After we'd settled at a table and got our drinks, the other guy in the group went onto the dance floor, which was a raised stage at the front. The girls were without restraint and began pushing up his shirt and rubbing against him. A woman took the microphone from the DJ and began making sounds of an orgasm over the music. Another took hold of my arm to drag me from my seat. I resisted and took hold of the side of our table but she wouldn't be turned down and pulled until our beers began to topple. I gave in and got on the stage. Three or four writhed up against me and let their hands stroke down my body. One of the women told us her breasts were clasped by these nymphs. Sitting back at the table I said that I thought they must be prostitutes. But when they all abruptly left together we thought that maybe they were just girls from the city somewhere, on a wild night out.
I made friends with an Israeli guy and a chinese female student from Beijing. The three of us shared a dorm room. We decided to take a trip together, along with a young business woman from Shanghai. We cycled 24 kilometres, mostly along a busy road of trucks and the odd horse cart. To the right were rice fields with dozens of workers and the lake behind. Arriving in Zhoucheng we wanted to rest up for the night. After agreeing to stay in a guest house for 10rmb, knocked down by our chinese friends from 15rmb, we then watched as the girls found out that the showers costed extra. After some chinese style heated banter we left, Tal and I putting our trust in our new friends.
A lady sitting on the side of the street, selling cobs of corn that were piled on a small tarpauline-like spread, told us that she knew of a place and led us to a three star hotel that was undergoing some renovation. Unbelievably we got a room with a double bed and TV, which we decided was for the girls, and a twin room with TV and shower (the lads room), for only 15rmb per person. We happily dropped our things in the rooms and passing the splendid granduer of ornate carvings and decor that filled the downstairs courtyard/dinning area, went to find some food. The girls treated us with their knowledge of oriental food, from a mongolian couple run restaurant. We payed pennies! Then we went to the local store and bought plum wine. I fancied a little more than the rest so got myself a small bottle of baijiu and another mini bottle of something fruity and alcoholic.
We planned to catch a ferry across the lake in the morning but the girls had different plans, which they didn't candidly share with us. The business woman wanted to buy stock for her shops. She wandered the main street, looking at cloathes and other products. She took us into a dye factory, which was interesting to see, with it's Bai people in traditonal dress as they worked, sewing and stirring vats of purple dye, assorted products hanging on lines drying or else on display for people like our friend. The Israeli and I hung around as this searching for products for the womans business went on, but after a couple of hours we began to get frustrated. The Israeli said he'd go on alone.
OK, after warning the girls, we left, cycling down a track through a rice field that we thought would be a short cut, and then coming to the end of any paths and balancing ourselves clumsily as we tried to navigate through these plantations beside muddy water channels. I got my feet wet. Down by the lake we found a local fisherman and asked him to take us out on his boat a little. He charged us 5rmb each for about twenty-five minutes of him rowing us out and back again.
We then had tea with him and his grandson. He smoked from a bamboo instrument. Cycling on we stopped a few times, once to look at a market and another to buy a melon. It was good to get back to Friends guest house. We met the girls again in Dali in the afternnoon and they were friendly. The business woman showed me the many bags of cloathes and shoes that she would sell for a big mark up in Shanghai.
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