A Storm Is Coming… and Coming

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.

Remembering one of my teachers’ recommendations from a few weeks ago, I ate lunch at the airport KFC, eager to find what makes Chinese KFCs so famously different from American ones. After eating a bowl of noodles, I can now say that I know for certain what makes Chinese KFCs different, but I am no longer sure what makes them KFCs.

The flight to Shangri-La began with a delay on the runway, and continued with some minor turbulences during take-off. The landing was especially rough, as we caught some tailwinds while making our descent into Shangri-La. The view from the window, however, was beautiful: Shangri-La’s landscape has a simple sort of majesty, with a barricade of pine-covered mountains rising steadily from the welcoming green plain on which the city is nestled.

As soon as I left the airport, I found that life in Shangri-La operates on an irrevocable order incomprehensible to an outsider. I hailed a cab, but the driver would not start until he had cajoled another passenger into sharing the ride. Despite the fact that his colleagues (and, I gather from their banter, friends) were waiting for customers of their own, he was quite happy to take a passenger who was going in the opposite direction to where I needed to go. In the end, I did not need to be present for the whole first fifteen minutes of the ride, for on the way back from my fellow passenger’s destination, we picked up a soldier who needed to get to the airport.

There seemed to be quite a couple of soldiers in the vicinity of the airport – busying themselves, it seemed, with construction. I remarked so to my driver, who replied: “Yes, there are many soldiers over there,” marking the end of that particular conversation. He was, however, very intrigued by the strange, never-before-heard land of the Czech Republic.

In general, there are three sorts of responses I get from Chinese people when I say I am from the Czech Republic. The first, and most frequent response, is the repetition of the words “Czech Republic” with a sphynx-like expression concealing varying levels of unfamiliarity. The second is an outright admission of ignorance. The third – and one that I have gotten more often than one would expect – is an enthusiastic enumeration of historical and geographical facts about the Czech Republic, sometimes augmented with an account of Czechoslovak-Chinese friendship. Even thirty years after the fall of communism in the Eastern Bloc, there seems to be a continuing fund of goodwill towards nations whose experts helped Chinese industrialisation.

Shangri-La is 3300 metres above sea level – a quite considerable increase over Kunming’s already impressive 1900. This puts Shangri-La in the same bracket as Cusco, and just slightly below Lhasa. The architecture of the city relies on stone much more than more low-lying, ethnically Chinese or non-Tibetan minority cities, like Lijiang, especially where landmarks like temples and pagodas are concerned (I am not sure whether this relates to altitude, culture, or both). Even the streets themselves are made of coarse rock and strike a visitor as refreshingly authentic in comparison with the immaculately cobbled streets of Lijiang. Of course, wood is still used to a great degree, especially in the old city’s residential and commercial houses, where it is carved to the minutest detail.

Even as we were approaching the old city of Shangri-La – which is much closer to the airport than those of Kunming and Lijiang – we could hear the sounds of distant thunder. The local radio host, who a moment ago had been introducing the history of “The East Is Red,” said something like “wow, did you all hear that crazy rumbling too?” Since it was still sunny, I checked-in at my hotel with lightning speed, and rushed through the city to see what I could see before it started to rain cats and dogs. I climbed up the small hill in the centre of the old town, called Guishan (Turtle Hill), on the top of which is a monastery and a giant golden prayer wheel. I also stopped by the museum of the Long March at the foot of the hill, in the courtyard of which stands a statue of a Chinese soldier and a Tibetan monk. A white dove perched itself on a scroll in the monk’s hands, as if to consecrate the far-fetched union.

A house in the old town

The manhole covers in Shangri-la have pictures of yaks

A street in the old town

The temple at the centre of the Long March Museum

Golden prayer wheel

Temple at the top of Guishan

The monk, the soldier, and a white dove

The monk, the soldier, the little girl, and a white dove

The roof of the temple at Guishan

Tibetan furnace for burnt offerings

The golden prayer wheel at Guishan

The golden prayer wheel from another angle

The long March Museum from above

Another shot of the temple at Guishan

Sutra streamers

The golden prayer wheel above a smaller temple in the old town

The roofs of Shangri-la's old town

I then set off for the One Hundred Chicken Temple (or Baijisi), the highest point in the old town. I got there just as a rainbow formed above the first mountain at the outskirts of Shangri-La, making for a very scenic picture, but also heralding the storm. I briefly thought of seeking refuge in the temple, but it was already closed, and the one hundred chicken – who I discovered were mostly roosters constantly battling for supremacy – did not look very welcoming. As darkness fell over the city, I ran back to the hotel, where I ate my dinner and went to sleep.