No reservations, part 5

Back to part 4.

2008-10-08

However, when I got up the next morning, I couldn’t get the water temperature even up to lukewarm after letting it run for 20 minutes or so. Out of desperation I managed a quick shampoo, but left it at that before I froze to death.

We visited the breakfast buffet at Tianyuankui, which was a good mixture of Chinese and Western style morning foods, along with pretty good coffee, something I’d been doing without so far on the trip.

After eating, we hit a few of the smaller attractions along Nan Dajie that were covered by our tickets.
I believe these brick platforms were used for seating even in many offices. During the winter time they were heated with coals from beneath. I suppose the bed in my room at the Catholic was originally designed to work that way.
Most of the places we visited this morning were commercial enterprises, whether banks, merchants or whatever, and most of them featured living quarters for staff, including this fancy bed for a manager.
Close up of the woodwork.
This is the second courtyard back from the street. The first one had ordinary business and communication offices. If I remember right, the rooms to either side here were for accounting and sales managers, and in the back was where the boss lived and entertained important clients and government officials.
More rooms filled with antiques and historical descriptions in Chinese.
By this point we were going through things pretty quickly. There’s only so much of this you can take in at a time.

At the very back was an area where the company’s guards lived and trained with their weapons and martial arts skills.
Here’s a bank vault, Pingyao Gucheng style.
And here’s the staff kitchen of one of the compounds.
At one of the compounds, there was a suite upstairs where the boss’s wife and mistress lived a life of luxury, devoting themselves to music and womanly things while the men worked below.
And here’s something I liked that wasn’t antique at all.
Then we came to the largest of the commercial compounds, which once housed the Rishengchang Draft Bank, considered the first real bank in China. The buildings now house what is called the Chinese Draft Bank Museum.
This was the best of the business attractions in the town, but we’d seen so many smaller ones that we were kind of overloaded on them by this point.
Back out on the street on the way to the next exhibit, I spotted another member of the city’s feline population taking a nap.
Outside the city’s main gate is the UNESCO World Heritage notice sign.
After a quick look around outside...
... we went up to the upper level.
Of course they were ready to defend themselves.
I’ve read that a section of the south wall collapsed in 2004 and had to be rebuilt.
There was originally a moat around the city, but it’s all dry now.

From the top of the wall you can see the layouts of the houses inside the old city.
This one looks to be very well maintained and quite cozy with its courtyard.
This one is not in such good condition, but the residents seem quite comfortable.

After finishing with the main gate, we found a taxi to take us to the bus station to arrange for the next leg of our trip.
After arriving at the bus station, some locals advised us that we’d be better off checking on the train again, since there were no bus routes directly to Datong. So the driver took us to the train station. We managed to get some tickets as far as Taiyuan, which is the same place we’d have to change buses, but it takes less time and costs a quarter of the price. Go figure. The downside is they were wu zuo class tickets, which means without seat. Basically standing room. But it was the only option, so for ¥7 each we took it.

By then it was lunch time, so we asked the driver to take us back into the old town. It was a pretty wild ride, and I took a little video:

He really wanted us to eat at a particular restaurant (I suspect they give him a kickback for any customers he brings in) but we really wanted to go back to Tianyuankui one last time. The driver waited for us outside while we had our meal.

As we were passing under Shilou, we saw that we could actually go up into it with our General Tickets, so we did. This made a total of 13 attractions we saw for our ¥120.
The view from there was pretty nice, but there was not much to see inside.
Then it was back to the taxi and a winding trip through the back streets (since the main streets are restricted to traffic).

After that it got kind of unpleasant. When we got to the train station, my companions said they actually wanted to go back to the beef warehouse to buy some more. He argued a while, then turned around and took us back to the north gate, which was not where they asked to go. Not only that, but he drove at a crawl the entire way. When we got there, he stopped and said we could buy our beef at the store there. He got out his tools and started tinkering with his vehicle. We went into the store and they didn’t have the same selection, plus it was getting a little late to make our train, so we tried to find another taxi to the station. That took what seemed ten minutes of arguing about prices (there are no set rates for these things in Pingyao). We finally found a driver who agreed to our price, and off we went.

We rushed onto our train and managed to squeeze into a few seats in one of the cars for the trip to Taiyuan.
It’s only about a hundred kilometers, but the train stopped at a bunch of little towns, and the trip took about three hours. Once we got to Taiyuan, we rushed to the ticket counters to see what we could do to get to Datong. Taiyuan is a bustling, noisy, more-or-less-modern city full of traffic, and was quite a shock after quiet lazy little Pingyao. We managed to secure more wuzuo tickets for the overnight train leaving around 11pm. We crossed the street to KFC for dinner and discussed our strategy for trying to get beds for the trip. We ended up deciding we didn’t really want to invent some kind of untrue sob story, and would just find the conductor and ask nicely.

After eating, we went to the station’s waiting room, which was packed. We plopped ourselves down right in front of the gate where we would go out (there were no seats available). Every time I looked out at the room, I noticed a dozen or so people staring at me. I guess they don’t see a lot of foreigners here, especially not waiting for a train with them.

When the time came, it was a wild rush to the platform, then the search for the conductor. He said there were no bunks available, but eventually offered to let us sit at a table in the dining car as long as we would buy a ¥20 dinner. We agreed and off we went. I did not take a picture of this meal. It consisted of a scoop of shredded cabbage with a dash of soy sauce, a few pieces of tasteless sausage, and two slices of plain white bread. I ordered a beer to go with it. Luckily we had a fair supply of road food along with us. For this privilege we had paid ¥26 each, for a Pingyao-Datong trip total of under US$8, even adding in the cost of food.
As uncomfortable as the dining car was for eating, it was much worse for trying to sleep. And they left the lights on all night. it occurred to me that one of the easiest jobs in the world must be cook on an overnight train in China. You fix about 40 simple plates, all identical, and then sit around talking for seven hours, since no one ever orders anything.

Continue to part 6.

Ride the Black Dragon

Everyone told me that going to Lijiang for three days was foolish. It’s too little time, and there are so many things to see. But three days was all we had, and I figured three days was better than none. If we liked it we could go back some time for a longer stay. It’s certainly on the Should Revisit List.

However, next time I go there will not be at the end of August. It’s the rainy season, and as you saw in the previous post, rain it did. But as I said before, it was the only time we had, so we made the best of it with umbrellas and raincoats. At least it wasn’t too cold.

One of the places in Lijiang that was on my list was Yulongxueshan, Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. From pictures I’ve seen, this beautiful peak rises above Lijiang in a most picturesque way, but due to the weather we never got so much as a glimpse of it. Hutiao Xia, Tiger Leaping Gorge, will also have to wait for another time.

Next on the list was Heilongtan, or Black Dragon Pool. I asked at the hotel, and they said it was only about a fifteen minute walk, so we set out under grey skies on Sunday morning.
The entrance to the park is quite lovely. At first we thought there was no one at the ticket booth, then I saw a couple of ladies having their breakfast inside. At ¥80 per person the fee is quite steep compared to Beijing attractions – you could almost see both the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace for that amount. We probably could have walked in without them noticing us if I hadn’t gone up to the window. Ah, well, our contribution to the park’s upkeep fund.

Not far inside is the Green Bridge, which spans a waterfall.
Then you get to the Pool itself.
According to the signs inside the park, the Naxi people who live in the area have a very strong attachment to water, with much of their religion focusing on rivers, streams, and lakes, so this spot was quite important to them. In addition to the big temples, we saw a few little impromptu shrines with incense burning where creeks flowed into the pool.
Instead of dragons or lions like you see in Beijing, the roofs here are often decorated with fish.
It often pays to look up.
For a while at least, the rain held off.
Where there is water, there are bridges.Speaking of more formal temples, there is this one.
Its construction had something to do with an ancient king named Mu who ruled in the area. Today, the inside has a memorial to a more recent leader who died only a few years ago.
I like the way they’ve given the statue a rain poncho. Or maybe they just like things colorful.

One last picture before we move on, since the place is so darn photogenic, even when the weather is crummy.
After walking all the way around the lake, we made our way back to Old Town and ended up back at the Rembrandt Café for more Naxi potatoes, maoniu chuanr, and Yunnan coffee to recharge our batteries before hitting the shops in earnest.

I think I’ll call this a complete post, neatly covering a single topic, and finish up our all-too-brief Lijiang trip in the next one.

Pictures by D & I.

This Old Town

That’s the “street” outside the Zen Garden Hotel. As I mentioned before, no cars allowed, or even really possible.
Lijiang Old Town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, one of five I have visited in China (the others are the Forbidden City, Summer Palace, Temple of Heaven, and Great Wall, all in the Beijing area).
For the most part, the area consists of narrow stone streets winding around narrow canals, lined with little shops and restaurants. It seemed that there were really only about a dozen different stores, but each one of them had dozens of branches.

There were the shoe and slipper store and the jewelry store.
The weaving shop, sometimes with weaver at work making scarves and shawls.
The stores that sell paintings and wood carvings.
Also note the water pouring off the roofs. Gutters are not part of the traditional design.

Then there is the candy shop, where they make a tasty sweet from ginger and sugar.
And the yak jerky shop, with various kinds of dried yak meat.
And cute little yak toys.

There is the shop that sells traditional musical instruments from the area.

Yeah, that’s me buying a hulusi, with the shopkeeper showing me how to play it.

There is a calligraphy shop.
The artist is doing one for me of a famous poem I learned in my Chinese class.

And the camera shop, with batteries and memory cards, along with film for the old fashioned ones.
Note the restaurant sign above the Kodak store: OID BEIJING INSTDNT BOILED MUTTO – GUANGZHOU SIDEWALK SNACC BOOTH.

You also find a food place with various roasted animal parts.
I think this place supplied half the restaurants in the area.

There is a cultural center with displays and performances related to local ethnic minorities.
The other shops, not pictured, include the one that sells little bronze statues, the tea shop (local specialty is pu’er), the T-shirt shop, stores selling polished stones and stone carvings. Jewelry stores came in a few varieties: those that specialized in silver, some for jade and other stones, and those for cheap bangles and novelties. Take these businesses and repeat ad libitum.

Of course, there are lots of restaurants.
To escape the rain, we ducked into a place called the Rembrandt Café that sells a selection of Western dishes as well as local fare.
No, that’s not what we had. There was a guy at the table next to us doing about the same as we were: having a snack while taking pictures out the open window whenever anything interesting happened. He ordered one of the local specialties (dragonflies, I think) but didn’t eat much of it. I once saw him drop one on the floor for the dog that was hanging out, but it sniffed and walked away.

We ordered Naxi style fried potatoes, which are cut like French fries but cooked with green onions, soy sauce, vinegar, and hot peppers, and some yak meat skewers (maoniu chuanr). Both were quite tasty. And the Yunnan coffee we had was excellent. They make it very strong and serve it in small portions. As an added bonus, the café had music playing: old Bee-Gee’s hits (from the pre-disco era).

At night, the restaurants along one of the canals (helpfully named Bar Street) come to life with music and lights.
They all have employees dressed in ethnic garb trying to get you to visit their place. Inside, they have various kinds of entertainment.
Several of them had loud electronic versions of folk music, with dancers in costume, often joined by patrons interested in learning some dance moves. Other places had singers with acoustic guitars, and a couple had small bands.

Stay tuned for part two, which covers some of the less commercial sights of the town.

Photos by D & I.