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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.

In the morning, the owner of the hotel where I was staying, and of three giant fluffy dogs and one medium-sized fluffy dog, gave me a map of Lijiang’s old town. Very kindly – and very slowly, taking note of my Chinese skills – she talked me through the sights worth seeing in the old town. She followed with a couple of suggestions about trips out of the city. Disparaging the famous Jade Dragon Snow Mountain as overpriced, overcrowded, and not worth it on a cloudy day (my experience has convinced me that practically all days in Yunnan are cloudy, if not downright rainy), she showed me some pictures of the nearby villages of Baisha and Shuhe, as well as a few natural wonders way too far away for me to consider visiting in the space of two days.

Intrigued by hearing about other villages with similarly preserved historical centres, I inquired about how to get to them, which the lady assured me was not difficult. While Shuhe was six kilometres away, I could get there by bus from the southern end of the old city. Baisha was only a kilometre away from the first village. Somehow that squared with what I remembered from the previous night of anxiously tracking my bus, so I did not check further.

The morning in Lijiang was beautiful. Even at nine, the streets were practically empty, and the omnipresent stores which have sucked the soul out of the city were still closed. I walked by one of the town’s shallow streams, criss-crossed by sturdy stone bridges and planks of hardy wood. I visited the Mu Family Palace, the biggest and by far fanciest compound in the old town, replete with beautiful porcelain vases and many, many red pillars. Above the palace, I climbed a tower with sweeping views of Lijiang and somewhat less sweeping views of the surrounding mountains, which were all covered by clouds. Farther in the north of the town, I saw Lijiang’s famous waterwheels, and proceeded to the Black Dragon Pool, where I ate popcorn for lunch because there was too much to do and too little time to do it (and also very few vegetarian fast food options). Admittedly, the park is much more beautiful when the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain is visible, but I still snagged some quite pretty pictures.

An old stone bridge across Lijiang's river

A quiet overcast morning in Lijiang

A stream in Lijiang

Another view of the streets along Lijiang's streams

A doorway above a stream in Lijiang

Deserted streets in the centre of Lijiang: It is not yet nine o'clock, which is when the shops start to open and the first tourists begin to arrive.

The outside of the Mu Palace

The first courtyard of the Mu Palace: It is still early in the morning and the tourist masses are getting ready to hit the streets.

A colonnade at the Mu Palace

A giant vase at the Mu Palace

The second courtyard of the Mu Palace

The view from the tower in the above picture

Another colonnade at the Mu Palace

A bird's-eye view of the Mu Palace

A Buddhist drum

Wangu Tower above the Mu Palace

Another view of the Wangu Tower

The writing above the entrance to the Wangu Tower

The courtyard below the Wangu Tower

Another bird's-eye view of the Mu Palace

A pavilion at the Mu Palace

Another view of the pavilion at the Mu Palace

Lijiang's Old Town Gate

Umbrellas above a street in Lijiang

A miraculously empty street in Lijiang

A stele depicting a local legend

A little pillar at Black Dragon Pool

A little crocus-like flower at Black Dragon Pool

One view of Black Dragon Pool

Another view of Black Dragon Pool

The famous view of Black Dragon Pool (mountain covered by clouds, but I got ducks instead)

Hongtaiyang Square - one can catch a shuttle to Jade Dragon Snow Mountain from here.

Having toured pretty much all there was to tour in the old city by midday, I weighed my options. Despite the disparaging attitude of my host towards Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, I was still eager to visit what is said to be the Northern Hemisphere’s southernmost glacier. Yet the mountain is quite far away from the city and I figured that if I wanted to go, the next day would be better for a visit. I decided, therefore, to visit Baisha and Shuhe, which I saw were less than half the distance between Lijiang and Jade Dragon Snow Mountain.

Since the Black Dragon Pool is in the north of town, I was not particularly eager to go to the south and try to find the bus station the hotel owner talked about. I located the closest taxi station and told the driver to drive to Baisha for the sole reason that it was easier to pronounce than Shuhe.

As we drove farther and farther away from town, the six kilometres mentioned in the morning began to feel less and less like six kilometres and more and more like – well, a lot more than six kilometres. I had planned, in the worst-case scenario, to return to Lijiang by foot, but seeing the vast stretches of flat grasslands between the car and civilisation, I began to realise that the only feasible option was to get back on wheels. No matter, I would find a bus station in the nearby Shuhe.

In comparison with the polished streets of Lijiang, Baisha was rather more dirty, dusty, and a little more decrepit. While in Lijiang I was one of perhaps five or six white people a local would spot per day, in Baisha, it seemed like I was one of the very few tourists in general. What truly betokened the fact that I was well outside Lijiang, though, was the number of people wearing traditional Naxi people clothing. I remember reading that many of the old inhabitants of Lijiang, many of whom are Naxi, were forced out of the city by soaring prices not too long ago. And yet, even in this village where the streets were roamed by dogs with cataracts, every single restaurant had a sign in Mandarin and English – one, in truly ecumenical fashion, even displayed the pictures of Barack Obama and Donald Trump munching on hotdogs and hamburgers.

The dustier streets of Baisha

Some washing to do above a Baisha stream

Another Baisha street

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An empty street in Baisha

Cruising the streets of Baisha

One of the nicer buildings in Baisha

There is one main street in Baisha and I decided I would walk down that street from the north end of the village to the south end. The largely sunny weather was interspersed with occasional misty sprinklings of rain, making for a vaguely surreal atmosphere. Nearing what seemed to be the edge of the most touristy zone, I checked the map on my phone. I zoomed in and out a couple of times to confirm my suspicions, but the verdict was clear: it was decidedly not a kilometre from Baisha to Shuhe.

Again, I weighed my options. I did want to go to Shuhe, and I was not confident that if I boarded a Lijiang-headed bus in Baisha, I would get there. I had also not noticed any bus stations, and hopeful thinking would not conjure an unoccupied taxi in that village. Not very keen on trying to locate the bus station, and quite intrigued by what seemed to be continuing settlements in the direction of Shuhe, I set off on foot.

The sun continued to mingle with clouds in what was really a very pretty day. As I went farther and farther from the village, people grew scarcer and scarcer, and increasingly surprised to see a single foreigner with nothing but a camera bag. A few times, a car would slow down a little behind me and then speed up again as I turned around. Eventually, the few houses gave way to simple, vast open spaces silhouetted by sharply rising mountain slopes. I saw a lone cow, a few horses, and some completely run-down houses, including what seemed to be a rustic woodwork shop – I could not tell whether its dilapidation was part of its aesthetic, or whether it was truly abandoned.

A lady in Naxi garb walks down a street in Baisha.

I am slowly beginning to get lost, but that does not mean the Chinese government does not know where I am.

A roadside sunflower

On the outskirts of Baisha

By the looks of it, a seller of roof tiles

My presence surprised a local cow.

An abandoned building with a scenic backdrop

More scenic mountains

Scenic mountains and a pagoda

The almost five kilometre walk finally ended at Shuhe, which turned out to be something between the rustic Baisha and hackneyed Lijiang. There were many tourists, but it also seemed much of the native populace had not yet been displaced by shops and restaurants. I wandered off into a tiny Buddhist temple built into a rock, and then strolled around the peaceful streams until I got tired and found a taxi to drive me back (a trip that was perhaps thirty per cent cheaper than the trip to Baisha because of how much I had walked).