March 17, 2008

Dali (CHINA)

Sleeping in the Clouds, Touring the Famous Three Pagodas, and How Much is that Cake?!

The overnight bus from Kunming pulled into the long distance bus station at the ungodly time of 4:30 am. Compounding my worries, the bus terminated at Xiaguan, which is 15 kilometers from the city of Dali which was indicated on my ticket. Apparently, the bus driver was tired of driving, and as three foreigners were the only ones heading to Dali anyway, he knew he could get away with it. So, between rubbing the sleep out of my eyes and stretching my travel-worn body (it has now been three consecutive nights of bus travel), there were several taxi drivers hassling me in Chinese over prices to Dali proper. I have not met anyone in Yunnan who speaks English, so this has been as good practice as any for my oral skills (which, admittedly, far exceed my written skills). Eventually, one of the drivers agreed to drive us for 25 rmb, and off we went.

We ended up waking a guesthouse owner just outside the city walls, and as we were some of the only guests at the time I negotiated our price down to 90 rmb ($12) for a three person room. To give a better idea of what a great deal this was, our room came with all the amenities one would find in a typical hotel: hot shower, four furnished beds, a desk, a television, air-conditioning, and one of the largest rooms I have ever stayed in. A lot of the pricing probably had to do with the fact that most people who brave travel in China stay at guide-book recommended places where English is (generally) spoken, but this particular guesthouse was well off the tourist radar and all of our affairs were conducted in Mandarin.

After my first hot shower in four days, I passed out on the bed and didn't wake up until just before noon. Nothing felt so good as hitting the pillow and not having to put up with a bouncing bus, smelly sheets, or cigarette smoke.

We didn't want to waste the day, so we walked into the old city of Dali, which is surrounded by 20 foot high walls, and picked out a Chinese restaurant for lunch. This is still low-season for tourists, so we were the only foreigners around, and there were only a spattering of Chinese tourists wandering the streets (the Chinese New Year was only last month). Nevertheless, prices were somewhat inflated, and I balked at paying 8 rmb for a cup of Nescafe when I can buy 20 packets for the same price at the "Wonderful Supermarket" down the street.

As may be obvious from the picture to the left, Dali is a beautiful city because of its old school charm and its superb location: at 1900 meters in altitude, it is sandwiched between two mountain ranges, including the 4000 meter high Cang Shan (Jade Green Mountains), with the Erhai Lake positioned in between. Further, as a testament to the diversity found in Southwestern China, the majority of the populace are Bai, which is an ethnicity numbering roughly 1.5 million people, and laying claim to one of the region's greatest empires roughly one century ago.

After lunch, we continued our walk across town, heading out the North gate for Dali's primary attraction: The Three Pagodas. Once more, we were the only tourists in sight, which was something I could hardly get over because touristy sights in China are synonymous with crowds. (Everyone who is planning on going to the Olympics this summer, you have been warned!)

There was a 150 rmb entrance fee into the compound, but with a student discount the price was generously slashed to 80 rmb. I actually snuck through the entrance without having to pay, but Neil loitered around expecting to be caught, and sure enough he was spotted at the last second. I tried telling him he should pay my entrance fee, but understandably my argument didn't hold much water.

There isn't a lot to say about the pagodas, except that they really were impressive to behold, and everything was in terrific shape. There must have been massive renovation work recently completed because there was a fresh layer of paint on all of them and the walkways were perfectly manicured. The only strange thing about the place was the lack of wildlife: although we could hear birds chirping, there were in reality no birds to be found. The truth is that small speakers were planted in the bushes to mimic a "natural" sound.

(As a side note, wildlife is nonexistent in China on the whole as everything has already been eaten.)

The tallest of the pagodas, which was built in the 9th Century and is shown above and to the left, has 16 tiers and actually reaches a height of 70 m. The two pagodas flanking it are 42m high and have 10 tiers.

The compound became decidedly more interesting as we began climbing the many stairways leading to a series of temples sloping into the adjacent mountain. I suppose it is also worth mentioning that the public restrooms all had ashtrays at the urinals, which is absurd in my mind: how difficult is it to go 30 seconds without smoking?! Anyway, this should give a good indication of just how prevalent smoking is in China. As we continued our climb, the altitude began hitting me and I had to slow the pace down, taking frequent breaks. At an altitude of nearly 2000 meters, I didn't have quite the same lung capacity as I thought.

There were well over a dozen different temples that we passed through, but one of the more interesting ones was chock-full of golden life-size figures of various historical figures. I included a photo to the right, where if you look carefully you will notice that Buddha is having his nipple sucked by a young boy. Much like the remainder of this particular temple, I have no idea what the point of this was, but I found it creepy, to say the least. (In retrospect, I wish I snapped photos of the hundreds of other figures because everyone from Jesus to Confucius was caked in gold.)

By 4:00 pm we reached the final temple of the compound, and scaled it for a high vantage of the surrounding area. With the largest mountains to our back, the view wasn't as imposing as I had hoped for, but it was nice nonetheless.

Shown to the left is a stone fountain I passed that reminded me of King Koopa from Mario Brothers. Does anyone else see the resemblance?

We decided to finish out the day strong, and tackled the five kilometer walk back to the hostel on foot. It turned out to be good karma because I spotted a cake shop on a side street that had some amazing artwork (cakework) on display. As it was my birthday only one week ago, and I never really had the chance to have a big celebration, we decided to buy a cake and bring it back with us. (Who doesn't like cake?!)

I have no idea how much a 15" cake costs in America, but my guess is somewhere around $30-$50 depending on what they do to it. So, you can imagine my surprise when the shop-owner told me it would only cost 50 rmb ($6), and they would make everything on the spot - that works out to only $2/person!

Below are a couple of photos showing the crazy celebrations back at the guesthouse...

Finally, some video for the day: Neil and David are passionately, albeit unenthusiastically, singing Happy Birthday.