I apologize for taking so long between posts. I’ve officially entered the punk rock phase of my travels, and since being anti-social to update your blog for a few hours isn’t terribly punk rock, the journal has suffered accordingly. I’ve got a day off without a show in the little Dutch town of Den Bosch, though, so hopefully I can get close to up-to-date. Also, all the photos on here are Max's... props to Max.
The highlight of Xi’an – obligatory terra cotta warriors aside, of course – was when Max got cheated by the dumpling lady, brazenly decided to liberate the dumplings from her stand, and then in the ensuing bedlam insisted in Mandarin, “My bag is too light! How can I leave two dumplings short?” This, of course, was translated to me later, since I was standing there mildly terrified by the incomprehensible and rapidly escalating shouting match (rendered all the more surreal because of Max’s typical Siddhartha-like calmness). But the move paid off, and the laughter from fellow vendors quickly compelled the woman to relent.
In part due to the cold weather, in part fleeing enraged street vendors, we decided to hightail it down to rural southwestern China, near the border with Burma. We caught a flight to Kunming (“the City of Eternal Spring”), the provincial capital of Yunnan, and from there it was seven hours in minibuses before we got to the small city of Lijiang. Eventually we stumble upon this little unmarked footpath over a hill that leads into the Old City, and come out onto this absolutely breathtaking vista. We throw our bags down at the first guesthouse we find, where much to their Pekinese puppy’s delight the family is hacking up a massive pig in the courtyard, and retire to our balcony to sip Tsingtao as the sun sets.
Lijiang was beautiful, but got less and less cool the longer we spent there. The historic home of the Naxi people - one of China’s 53 recognized ethnic minority groups, who have their own language, religion, pictograph language, and matriarchal social structure - Lijiang is now a burgeoning tourist destination for Chinese vacationers and a “protected” UNESCO World Heritage site. I put protected in inverted commas, apologies to Prof. Gilmore, because although the physical infrastructure seems to be is nicely maintained (witness the wood-paneled public bathroom stalls, each with 9-inch TVs playing music videos of traditional Naxi song and dance), all the actual Naxi people have been priced out into the countryside. In their place are Han people wearing authentic Naxi costume, selling traditional Naxi trinkets and food, and performing traditional Naxi dances as entertainment in the bars. It felt weirdly meta-touristic watching the Chinese tourists eat this up, gawking at the gawkers, as it were.
The next five days, though, were definitely the high point of traveling in China. Leaving most of our stuff in Lijiang, Max and I first hiked off to a relatively nearby village called Wenhai. We met up with a guide north of Lijiang who helps run the one little lodge in town (founded as an eco-tourism project with help from the Nature Conservancy), and spent about three hours hiking in over a deceptively steep mountain pass. After an ungodly number of hours of muscle atrophy on planes, trains, and buses over the past little while the trek was sort of brutal, but the views back down over the valley below made it worth every minute.
It’s tough to describe how picturesque Wenhai is once you arrive. Nestled in a little a valley right at the foothills of the Himalayas, Wenhai is this tiny 900 person Naxi village. Until a couple of years ago, when Wenhai got its first dirt road link-up to Lijiang, hiking (3-4 hours over the mountain, or 6-7 hours the longer way around) was the
only way to get to there. Behind it towers Jade Dragon Snow Mountain (18,360 ft), of which we have a perfect view from our room, and all around are wooded hills and mountains where the cattle and sheep go to graze. In town there’s a big golden pig with little black piglets running around her, and a big pink one with little red piglets. In the summer the village is right on the edge of a lake, but in winter the water recedes and leaves behind a flat bowl that looks almost like a moonscape at night. We have the lodge to ourselves, and at night sit out in the courtyard around a bowl of coals watching the stars and satellites (which are probably as clear here as anywhere in China), and then pass out around 8PM since there’s not a whole lot else to do.
The next morning we try to see how far up Jade Dragon Snow Mountain we can hike. We have our sights set on a vast rocky clearing a good ways up (before it looks like the hike turns technical), but our plan is complicated by 1) the fact that Jade Dragon Snow Mountain is 18,000 feet tall and an indeterminate distance away, and 2) there’s no real trail up it. Some of the way (well, the first 15 minutes) there’s dirt road, some of the time we’re able to follow actual trails (though we have no idea where they lead), but most of time we just follow little paths blazed by the goats and cattle. When those die out, it’s “let’s go that way” and we bushwhack our way up the mountainside until we find another animal trail. At one point climbing up a wash, the road must have been nearby, we stopped for a few minutes listening to this Naxi girl singing in the most hauntingly clear voice.
It’s steep going and slow, but we keep getting higher and better views. Around mid-day we stumble into a mountain pasture where some goats are chilling and join them for lunch. There are some curious looking dug-out caves nearby with blocked off entrances – maybe for a shepherd escaping the rain – but rather than exploring we keep pushing on. (On the way down we stumble across six or seven similar caves in the woods, and I’m greatly relieved we didn’t crawl in when we realize they’re probably Naxi graves). Finally we make a last push up a steep ascent above the tree-line, and find ourselves on a ridge with one of the most epic 360 degree views I’ve ever seen. We’re nowhere near where we set off to get to up Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, but the top of this ridge opposite it is one of those vistas that just makes you want to laugh and giggle and shout. It’s like a friggin’ Shelly poem or something... definitely one of my best hikes ever.
We hike back to Lijiang, this time forging our own path through the woods the long way around mountains. Hiking is so much fun when you don’t really know how you’re supposed to get somewhere, just its general direction and approximate distance, and every so often you stumble upon a family of goats, or a graveyard, or maybe a Naxi villager collecting firewood.
The next morning we head out to Tiger Leaping Gorge. Carved out over millenia by the Yangtze River, the gorge is the steepest in the world: you look down and 1500m straight below is a river, you look up and towering above are a staggering series of peaks. The hike takes two days, and at the midway point (for less than $3 per night) you stay at a
guesthouse with bedroom views that, again, are just epic. We watched a Chinese soccer match on TV with the owner’s family, then stayed up till the impossibly late hour of 11:30 drinking beers and talking about DC and Yale, kids we knew, trading stories. I haven’t had too many “remember that time back at Yale” sessions since graduation – they offend my political sensibilities, naturally – but reminiscing with Max felt surprisingly good.
The highlight of Xi’an – obligatory terra cotta warriors aside, of course – was when Max got cheated by the dumpling lady, brazenly decided to liberate the dumplings from her stand, and then in the ensuing bedlam insisted in Mandarin, “My bag is too light! How can I leave two dumplings short?” This, of course, was translated to me later, since I was standing there mildly terrified by the incomprehensible and rapidly escalating shouting match (rendered all the more surreal because of Max’s typical Siddhartha-like calmness). But the move paid off, and the laughter from fellow vendors quickly compelled the woman to relent.
In part due to the cold weather, in part fleeing enraged street vendors, we decided to hightail it down to rural southwestern China, near the border with Burma. We caught a flight to Kunming (“the City of Eternal Spring”), the provincial capital of Yunnan, and from there it was seven hours in minibuses before we got to the small city of Lijiang. Eventually we stumble upon this little unmarked footpath over a hill that leads into the Old City, and come out onto this absolutely breathtaking vista. We throw our bags down at the first guesthouse we find, where much to their Pekinese puppy’s delight the family is hacking up a massive pig in the courtyard, and retire to our balcony to sip Tsingtao as the sun sets.
Lijiang was beautiful, but got less and less cool the longer we spent there. The historic home of the Naxi people - one of China’s 53 recognized ethnic minority groups, who have their own language, religion, pictograph language, and matriarchal social structure - Lijiang is now a burgeoning tourist destination for Chinese vacationers and a “protected” UNESCO World Heritage site. I put protected in inverted commas, apologies to Prof. Gilmore, because although the physical infrastructure seems to be is nicely maintained (witness the wood-paneled public bathroom stalls, each with 9-inch TVs playing music videos of traditional Naxi song and dance), all the actual Naxi people have been priced out into the countryside. In their place are Han people wearing authentic Naxi costume, selling traditional Naxi trinkets and food, and performing traditional Naxi dances as entertainment in the bars. It felt weirdly meta-touristic watching the Chinese tourists eat this up, gawking at the gawkers, as it were.The next five days, though, were definitely the high point of traveling in China. Leaving most of our stuff in Lijiang, Max and I first hiked off to a relatively nearby village called Wenhai. We met up with a guide north of Lijiang who helps run the one little lodge in town (founded as an eco-tourism project with help from the Nature Conservancy), and spent about three hours hiking in over a deceptively steep mountain pass. After an ungodly number of hours of muscle atrophy on planes, trains, and buses over the past little while the trek was sort of brutal, but the views back down over the valley below made it worth every minute.
It’s tough to describe how picturesque Wenhai is once you arrive. Nestled in a little a valley right at the foothills of the Himalayas, Wenhai is this tiny 900 person Naxi village. Until a couple of years ago, when Wenhai got its first dirt road link-up to Lijiang, hiking (3-4 hours over the mountain, or 6-7 hours the longer way around) was the
only way to get to there. Behind it towers Jade Dragon Snow Mountain (18,360 ft), of which we have a perfect view from our room, and all around are wooded hills and mountains where the cattle and sheep go to graze. In town there’s a big golden pig with little black piglets running around her, and a big pink one with little red piglets. In the summer the village is right on the edge of a lake, but in winter the water recedes and leaves behind a flat bowl that looks almost like a moonscape at night. We have the lodge to ourselves, and at night sit out in the courtyard around a bowl of coals watching the stars and satellites (which are probably as clear here as anywhere in China), and then pass out around 8PM since there’s not a whole lot else to do.The next morning we try to see how far up Jade Dragon Snow Mountain we can hike. We have our sights set on a vast rocky clearing a good ways up (before it looks like the hike turns technical), but our plan is complicated by 1) the fact that Jade Dragon Snow Mountain is 18,000 feet tall and an indeterminate distance away, and 2) there’s no real trail up it. Some of the way (well, the first 15 minutes) there’s dirt road, some of the time we’re able to follow actual trails (though we have no idea where they lead), but most of time we just follow little paths blazed by the goats and cattle. When those die out, it’s “let’s go that way” and we bushwhack our way up the mountainside until we find another animal trail. At one point climbing up a wash, the road must have been nearby, we stopped for a few minutes listening to this Naxi girl singing in the most hauntingly clear voice.
It’s steep going and slow, but we keep getting higher and better views. Around mid-day we stumble into a mountain pasture where some goats are chilling and join them for lunch. There are some curious looking dug-out caves nearby with blocked off entrances – maybe for a shepherd escaping the rain – but rather than exploring we keep pushing on. (On the way down we stumble across six or seven similar caves in the woods, and I’m greatly relieved we didn’t crawl in when we realize they’re probably Naxi graves). Finally we make a last push up a steep ascent above the tree-line, and find ourselves on a ridge with one of the most epic 360 degree views I’ve ever seen. We’re nowhere near where we set off to get to up Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, but the top of this ridge opposite it is one of those vistas that just makes you want to laugh and giggle and shout. It’s like a friggin’ Shelly poem or something... definitely one of my best hikes ever.We hike back to Lijiang, this time forging our own path through the woods the long way around mountains. Hiking is so much fun when you don’t really know how you’re supposed to get somewhere, just its general direction and approximate distance, and every so often you stumble upon a family of goats, or a graveyard, or maybe a Naxi villager collecting firewood.
The next morning we head out to Tiger Leaping Gorge. Carved out over millenia by the Yangtze River, the gorge is the steepest in the world: you look down and 1500m straight below is a river, you look up and towering above are a staggering series of peaks. The hike takes two days, and at the midway point (for less than $3 per night) you stay at a
guesthouse with bedroom views that, again, are just epic. We watched a Chinese soccer match on TV with the owner’s family, then stayed up till the impossibly late hour of 11:30 drinking beers and talking about DC and Yale, kids we knew, trading stories. I haven’t had too many “remember that time back at Yale” sessions since graduation – they offend my political sensibilities, naturally – but reminiscing with Max felt surprisingly good.The next day we hike out of the gorge, finally arriving in an eerily quiet little town called Daju. The buildings are either abandoned or only half-built, and we come across a school that still has yellowing exam results posted almost two years ago. The power station’s windows are broken, as are those at the old Communist Party building. Also, there isn’t a single light on in town and it’s starting to get late, though we learn later that that’s because the town hasn’t had power for a few days. In short, Daju seemed to be lifted straight from a post-apocalyptic zombie movie, and we resolved to get the hell out of there on the first bus the next morning. Max and I start rewriting the words to Bob Dylan’s “Oxford Town” (“Daju-town, Daju-town, better get away from Daju-town”), and somehow it seems a fitting end to the mountain adventures part of our travels.
3 comments:
Those pictures are amazing. I wish i could go on hikes like those! I've been stuck in Florida where real hiking is of course non-existent. Glad to see you're enjoying yourself and having incredible adventures.
I need to get out of Minnesota.
wow, beautiful indeed
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