My Travel Adventures

This Friday, Sun Laoshi’s students in Kunming had another dinner with our teacher. She took us to a very good vegetarian buffet. Over plates brimming with tofu, fake meat, and vegetables, we discussed everything Chinese (sorry, this is a rather obscure pun on the name of last semester’s textbook), from the Kunming dialect to the national curriculum. Sun Laoshi told us an interesting legend about why – as I mentioned previously – Lijiang’s old town does not have city walls. Lijiang’s erewhile ruler had the family name Mu ( 木 ), which becomes Kun ( 困 ), if you draw four lines around it – or walls, so to speak. Kun, however, means “hardship” or “to surround,” neither of which would be auspicious for a city.

It was sunny on my last morning in Shangri-La. After writing half of my homework and checking out, I strolled through the old town, stopping again at Turtle Hill and continuing to the south of the city, which I had not yet visited. Though the maps say the old town continues for quite a while southwards, the pedestrian zone ended about twice as fast as it should have, and I wound up outside the old city again. With my itinerary for my trip more or less fulfilled, I decided to carry on south, since I remembered that at the southernmost end of the area was an enormous white stupa. I had seen it both on my trip from the airport and during my walk from Napa Lake.

Rather stupidly, I left the window propped open, which came back to bite me in the middle of the night. The day started out quite cloudy, so after eating breakfast, I headed to the old town to partake in some indoor activities. Instead of just passing by the Museum of the Long March like I did yesterday, I ventured inside, where I was instantly greeted by a huge mural of the Chinese Red Army entering Shangri-La to the enthusiastic reception of local priests. A similar collection of statues stands outside the museum’s main gate. Furthering an account of Communist and Tibetan unity, the museum seems to be part of a former temple complex, with the exhibition looping around the still functional central shrine.

I left the Nationalities Village alone by taxi, as I had a flight to catch. The unexpected excursion had rendered the timing of my previous airport journey unnecessary for this trip, but of course it will come in handy when I leave Kunming for good. The cost of the ride was absurdly high – some 150 Yuan as opposed to the usual 80 to get to Yunnan University – but I suppose there is no use crying over spilt milk.

Last week we filled out an evaluation form about CET’s summer programme. Based on subsequent classes, I gather my pleas to be provided with more English translations were not heard out. Nevertheless, I maintain my pedagogically inexpert opinion that translating a word instead of explaining it in the source language leads to fewer misunderstandings. A plea that was heard out, however, and to the great bewilderment of many, was to have fewer exams. Now I don’t particularly enjoy exams myself, but having to memorise three hundred words for one exam does not strike me as substantially more pleasant than memorising one hundred and fifty for two.

One of my class’s topics for this week were the so-called Flying Tigers, the first American Volunteer Group of the Chinese Air Force. The group, led by stubborn and charismatic Claire Lee Chennault, was recruited with the tacit support of President Roosevelt at a time when the USA had still not entered the Second World War. Its objective was to prevent a Japanese takeover of China. With much of China’s north already invaded, the east coast blockaded, and Indochina controlled by the Japanese, defending the heartlands was an uphill battle. American and Chinese pilots faced the vastly more numerous and better armed Japanese air force. When British Burma fell to the Japanese, the only tenable connection to the Allied world was an air route above the mountains of North Burma leading to India’s far east. And yet, the Flying Tigers and Chinese pilots trained at Chennault’s flight school were able to inflict massive casualties on the Japanese air force, staving off invasion.

The morning after we returned from Dali, I discovered, to my great irritation, that I had once again lost my umbrella. The karmic balance of umbrella loss in this universe had evidently dictated that for saving one umbrella from oblivion, I had to pay with my own.

A hike up Cang mountain was planned for our last day in Dali. It was exhausting. The weather was not ideal, but we did not catch any major rain, so once we got to the top and stopped sweating like a herd of water buffalo, it was actually quite pleasant. The mountain slopes were covered with pine forests, and the trail we set out on took us through a naturally eroded archway towards a rushing cascade. On our way down – which we made by cable car – I once again saw Dali’s three pagodas against the backdrop of the Erhai.  

The second day in Dali was just as rainy as the first, but this did not stop a full program of events. While most people were making traditional Baizu tie-dye cloths, a smaller group of us toured three temples in the town of Xizhou – a Taoist temple, a Buddhist temple, and a Benzhu temple (that is, a temple to the deities worshipped by the Bai people). Seeing statues of the Jade Emperor, the Bodhisattva Guanyin, and gods with various animal paraphernalia brought back many memories of reading the Journey to the West. One of the interesting things I learned about the local religion is that the Bai people regard Kublai Khan as a deity for sparing the local populace of the Mongols’ usual massacres.

I spent very little time in class before it was time to pack up and start travelling again: CET’s midterm trip to Dali, a city about six hours away from Kunming. Sitting on some very lucrative trade routes, Dali was the capital of the Nanzhao kingdom, a state that successfully repealed several Chinese invasions, resisted Tibetan expansion, and waged wars of its own in modern day Vietnam and Myanmar. After its golden age in the eighth and ninth centuries, Nanzhao fell to dynastic squabbles that led to the establishment of the Dali Kingdom, a somewhat less powerful state that fell to Kublai Khan in 1253. The indomitable spirit of the Yunnanese, however, was not extinguished. During the Panthay Rebellion of 1856-1873, Dali was the capital of a sultanate that for a long time held its own against the Manchu government. Like Nanzhao, it too was defeated, but not until a protracted bloody war that cost perhaps a million lives. (Much of this information comes from websites not blocked by the C...

On my last day in Lijiang, I decided I would go to Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, whose allure was all the stronger for the fact that it was hidden in the clouds during my whole trip. I read on the internet that I could take a bus from the northern part of Lijiang to the mountain, but try as I might, when I arrived in the general area, I could not find it. I asked a lady working at a tourist information booth where the bus station was, at which she pointed in a vague direction and said “that road.” Arriving at the end of the road, I sought the advice of a policeman, who sent me in a new direction altogether, and when I got to the third place, another tourist information worker relayed me farther yet. When I finally got to the square where both the policeman and the second tourist centre worker agreed I should go, I could find no bus, but I in turn was found by a man offering rides up the mountain in one of those light-blue ride-share vans. Quite exhausted and very willing to let myself be ...

Lijiangers have the best taste where dogs are concerned. I have seen an unparalleled wealth of giant fluffy dogs who warm my heart almost as much as their thick coats must warm them. But today’s story is not about dogs; it is about taking local wisdoms with a grain of salt.

This Friday was a major day for travel. Having decided I would visit the historical city of Lijiang, I left for the airport as soon as we were done with classes. Well, almost. I first stopped by the dining hall for lunch, and afterwards finished packing in my room. I only packed a backpack (and, of course, took my camera bag along with me), as I figured I would not need much to keep me alive and relatively clean until I returned on Sunday.