Shaxi-Quiet and Undiscovered

As small and beautiful as our town of Lijiang is, we have come to realize how significant its tourism infrastructure is. The Old Town is flooded with "western" restaurants and full of Chinese tour groups dutifully following their guide who is holding a flag for visual identification. Most days we are glad to live a few miles north of the hubbub. We have been yearning to find someplace authentic and unaffected by tourism.

Of course authentic meant 2.5 hours by bus to the dusty town of Jianchuan and then another hour of excruciating bumps and potholes to reach Shaxi. Shaxi is nestled in a large valley full of rice and rape fields, and small villages. Its ancient market square still has the original town temple (guarded by two very large and very fierce looking red and blue gods) and theater. Every Friday the market square comes alive with Bai and Yi people. There is an animal market set up outside the town gates to accommodate the livestock trade.

We gladly stumbled out of our bright purple bus and followed a cobblestone alley to the first guest house we found. Our proprietor was a local Bai man who had 10 rooms in his traditional Bai courtyard house. As we were the only guests we got to browse through the vegetable selection to chose our dinner and hang out in the kitchen while it was being prepared. We spent a lot of time sitting in the courtyard drinking tea. Early the next morning I wandered around town with our two traveling companions taking pictures at first light. The town still boasts two of it's original gates and plenty of ancient architecture. Our host took us into some old courtyard houses and showed us into nooks and crannies. We spent a good part of the day on a 10K walk to an old stone bridge south of town. We walked through many villages and fields and answered numerous hellos. We finally found the bridge which is one of the original throughfares of the Silk Road (locally called the Tea Horse Caravan). Li played poohsticks while everyone else rested in the shade. We managed to cram into a minivan full of locals to avoid the 10K walk back and discovered the best cappuccino I have had in all of China in the market square. We drank coffee and watched kids running around playing.

The next day we returned to Jianchuan and wandered the old town which is also full of 200-300 year old architecture. Steve, Li and I stumbled onto a family making incense and watched the process while communicating in broken Chinese. Needless to say the entire process is by hand.

I thought I was getting to be an old hand at Chinese bus rides but I was still startled by the woman who loaded six 30 gallon burlap bags full of vegetables (the one nearest me was garlic) and three 40 gallon barrels of fish all into the aisle of our small bus. Emergency exit? Not. The aroma of fish and garlic combined with 2.5 hours of winding mountain roads was overpowering. Every time the bus took a sharp corner the fish buckets sloshed and splashed. I have never been so delighted to get off a bus!

Nevertheless Shaxi is a gem and still the real thing. Two nights lodging, two dinners and one breakfast for all three of us ran a whopping $17. Excellent cappuccino in the market square for breakfast-priceless!

Back in the Saddle

Life seems a little tame after two months of travel and vacation. We are settling back into a work/school routine and feeling a little stir crazy in the beautiful weather. As we suspected, all of our classes were changed. Shana has 250 new students to get to know and Steve managed to escape teaching a single 8am class. Li is back at school and continues to play with (torment) her friend by waking him up during nap time thus getting them both in trouble. We have kept our recent adventures close to home. We prided ourselves on a 20 mile bike ride (on our one speed bikes). We biked through the new city being built south of town. The entire city is built and it is completely empty-quite eerie really. We attended the end of a local festival and enjoyed watching many of the local Naxi people enjoy a celebratory day. We have started dance lessons again, this time we are struggling to learn to samba. Luckily the teacher is tolerant, and nice to look at. We are watching the days go by to fast and eagerly awaiting our slew of spring visitors. You too could be one of them!

Xi'an, Soldiers, Snow and Pineapple Beer

After a week at home we decided we hadn't exhausted our travel legs quite yet and headed to Xi'an for a week of hanging out. We found a wonderful hostel by the South Gate with our own 2 story Family Apartment. We visited the Terra Cotta soldiers. We learned random useful facts that may be helpful someday in Trivial Pursuit such as the mustaches of high ranking officers bend upwards and those of mid rank officers bend downwards. Regular soldiers apparently had to shave. We celebrated the Chinese Lantern festival on top of the Xi'an City Walls. We strolled along the enormous silk lantern displays (like floats in the US) and watched the fireworks all over the city. We think the window glaziers have a good business going since fireworks were being set off and exploding between two high rise buildings! Though the fireworks were lovely, by 3:45am we were a bit tired of them.

We managed to take advantage of other big city kinds of things while in Xi'an. We found an ice skating rink on the 6th floor of a shopping mall and after a few pointers from the handsome young "ice guard" Li was off on her own. We found a newly opened Science and Nature Museum. There were lots of good ideas at the museum, but after only 6 weeks many things were already broken! We found a huge kids park with giant cargo net climbing structures which Li attacked fearlessly. Steve chased after the pick pocket who tried to snag his GPS and wallet. We woke to wet blowing snow on our last day and braved the weather to try and find a western style grocery (we failed). Best of all Steve learned a lesson, pineapple beer is foul (Li liked it).

Sadly we also had to face two realities. We are half way through our year's adventure and our two months of vacation ends in another week and we need to get inspired to begin teaching again (all new classes, all new students). Poor us.

The Monasteries of Lijiang

We decided to spend our week at home seeing new sights around Lijiang and in essence this became the Monastery tour. Most monasteries were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution and are either in disarray or have been recently rebuilt. Some have just one Buddhist Monk, others have many. Some have been developed for tourism and others are tucked away and welcome a few stray visitors. Each one was different and it gave us a much better perspective of our "home" and our surroundings. One highlight was Fuguo Monastery. This monastery used to be the largest in the Lijiang Valley but was completely destroyed. It is now overseen by an 80 year old Monk whose favorite English expression is "Nice to Meet You". It sits high up on a hill which defeated us on bicycles months ago but which a minivan was able to negotiate. The monk warmly welcomes people into the second floor of his house with tea and incense and visitors' registers. It seems many people found their way to his home while biking up the hill in a rain storm. Li and Silas had their photos taken with this Lama and we all received blessings. Yufeng Monastery boasts a Camelia tree reported to have 10,000 blossoms in the spring, when we were there it was up to about 25. Wenbi Monastery was fascinating because we arrived during an active Buddhist ceremony. Li liked the Tibetan woman who took off her shoes to enter the temple and had on bright purple socks! There are many trails that offer hiking opportunities on the mountain and spectacular views of the Valley. Bai Ta Monastery is being built solely as a tourist destination (trap). We found Puji Monastery on our bicycles. After being told there wasn't much to see we hiked uphill on a well tramped goat trail and found a beautiful monastery with a rather taciturn 14 year old monk tending it. He was pretty adept at trying to extort money as well!

Chinese New Year

Our decision to return to Lijiang With Katie, Sam and Silas for Chinese New Year proved to be a good one since the entire town was virtually shut down. Stores and markets were closed for three days, buses ran on sporadic and very unpredictable schedules and none of the restaurants near the college were (or are) open. We opted to celebrate with our own fireworks at the track on campus. Our friend Ellen left us a pile of personal explosives under our Christmas tree which we dutifully carried down to the field to set off. We felt tame with our sparklers, volcanoes and roman candles. I did have to look the other way when Steve let Li hold a multi-shot rifle style firework by herself. Needless to say there were plenty of other fireworks happening all around us. For our Lander friends, it is like the 4th of July for three straight days. Apparently the fireworks at midnight were amazing, Li and I managed to sleep through them, but Steve claims they were in all directions. When the town awoke again, people were cheerful and full of optimism for the New Year.

Jianshui or Caves and Confucius

What can you say, our hotel was a 120 year old merchant's house with 14 courtyards a private pond and lovely wood carvings. The family got rich in the opium trade, and then lost all their fortune in the change of a political wind. One of the entertaining things was the period dress hanging in the closet in each room next to the intricately carved canopy bed and the computer. With some significant persuasive tactics, Katie was able to get her brother dressed up and photographed in a public place.

We were able to visit Swallows Cavern outside of Jianshui. The cave is enormous with an underground river flowing through it. In the spring tens of thousands of swiflets come here to nest, building nests on the roof of the cave from their spit. In the fall the locals come to harvest the nests and sell them to upscale restaurants for birdnest soup. For Li her experience was complete with a ride in a dragon boat on the underground river. For me it was watching the unroped, barefoot climber ascend and descend 150 feet of cave wall. For Steve it had to be either the shopping area a 1/2 mile into the cave or the "smoking rooms" which were simple little alcoves in the cave where you could sit with your cigarettes and watch the stalactites grow. Needless to say the key features were lit up by colorful lights and the trail was paved. As we have learned, very Chinese.

We rounded out our experience with a visit to an enormous 1000 year old Confucian Temple/School. It was so remarkably peaceful that we all thought we could be excellent students if we studied there. Li and Silas preferred sticks and leaves to historical placards.

Coming home from Jianshui we watched our bus driver masterfully fix the fuel line on our bus and smoke a full pack of cigarettes in 4 hours. That's talent.

Kunming and the Days of the Week

We flew from Vietnam back to Lijiang to rendezvous with Steve's sister Katie, husband Sam and 15 month old baby Silas. Our days in Kunming were spent wandering the parks, lake and zoo. Our fondest memory of our stay in Kunming was the hotel which had a "days of the week" carpet in the elevator. Perhaps it was so endearing because I did indeed have days of the week underwear (as a child).