C & C globetrotting around the world…

The “Golden Week” in China is 10 days long where people celebrate the National Day, so after hiding from the masses in Lijiang, we went to Dali to lay low there for the last few days. Our bus ride took 4.5 hours, but some other people took 7-8 hours in bumper to bumper traffic for 175km. On the way we saw people working in the rice fields, harvesting. Our first day in Dali was freezing! Dali is at an altitude of 1900m, but we expected warmer temperatures. So we didn’t do anything besides chilling in the hostel and watching movies cuddled up in blankets. Felt really good though; the only thing missing was Gluehwein, but you can’t have everything in life, right?

On the second day we met up with Ben and Maayan from Israel, whom we had met in Chengdu and Lijiang again and they showed us around Dali a bit.

The old town of Dali is sandwiched between the 4000m-tall Cang Shan (Green Mountains) and Erhai (Ear-shaped) Lake. It used to be the backpacker hang-out place and is also said to be very touristy. Although we saw tourists (and Westerners, some of who moved here), the place was definitely not as crowded as Lijiang since there were no tourist groups there, only Chinese backpackers. The town was pretty small and not so pretty, but we liked the fact that it’s inhabited and you can see locals going about their daily business: going to the market, getting freshly ground beef at the butcher or carrying their kids around in the traditional back-packs.

One day we went with Ben and Maayan to watch Cormorant Fishing. The local fishermen use these birds to catch fish, a technique used since 1000AD. From the documentary we had seen in Canada, the fishermen would tie the cormorants’ necks so they cannot swallow the fish they caught. What we saw, the birds didn’t have their necks tied, but they speared the fish and the fisherman would then grab the fish. It was also cool the way he took the birds either by their necks or their beaks to move them around. It was interesting to see the whole fishing practice, but we didn’t stay very long on the boat, just enough to see them catch a few fish. The area around Dali is inhabited by the Bai minority and the lady rowing our boat was a Bai, with a nice costume and headdress.

In Dali there is a small Catholic Church, which an English couple told us about. It was built by the French in 1938, but got shot down during the Cultural Revolution. It has reopened since 1998 and even has a seminary now. It was interesting to see this small and cute church with Bai architecture. It was also nice because there was a boy playing piano while we visited, so it gave the place a serene atmosphere. The weather in Dali was pretty capricious and it rained every evening with the mornings being very humid and foggy. The last day there, we decided to go up Cang Shan, but didn’t make it to the top as we wanted to be back before dark. At least we got a bit of exercise.

In Dali we also had delicious food, both Chinese (Sweet and sour pork, yak steak, plum spirit, roasted chestnuts and green walnuts as snacks while watching movies and “Friends”) and Western (Belgian Waffles, burgers, carrot cake).