Dali Days (no pictures)

So we got up in the morning, after sleeping hard in the wake of the Gorge. We weren’t really in a rush to get going, so some people did a bit of last minute shopping in the Lijiang area, getting scarves and such. I looked around for one that I thought my mom would like, but the shopkeepers would only give me foreigner prices, and wouldn’t bargain down at all, so I gave it up, though I was able to find one cheap scarf that I thought would look good for myself. Aside from some Tibetan prayer flags I had bought at the marketplace in Shangri-la, these were the only souvenirs I had purchased so far.

Soon enough we were all hanging out in the fore of Mama Naxi’s place, waiting for the bus to be ready to go and all. When it came time for us to start piling out, Mama Naxi, being the sweetheart that she is(n’t), gave us all an apple and a necklace with some damn pendant on it as parting gifts (bribes). I immediately tossed mine in the garbage, and waited for everyone else to come on outside.

In just a few minutes we were making our last walk through the cobbled streets of Old Town Lijiang, and heading to the bus that would escort us to Dali.

Dali is a town that I’d wanted to travel to for well over a year, at this point. Originally, I read about it in a book titled “China Underground” by a guy who uses the penname of Zachary Mexico. It was one of a slew of books I read just prior to coming to China, and it was a series of shorts about various people that the author had met during his own time in China. One chapter of the book was dedicated entirely to the city of Dali, a city that I understood only vaguely, and as is so often the case, eluded my grasp when I actually sought it.

I knew it was in the West of China, but at the time I didn’t know perfectly what that meant; when it came time to plot out our trip for the week off at the beginning of October, it was one of a shortlist of place names I had in my head ready to go search for, and the more research I did, the more I found out it was in the center of a fantastic place to travel to in its own right, the province of Yunnan.

Zachary Mexico described the place as basically a hipster’s indie oasis in China, and it does have a well established history as the very first backpacker’s mecca of all of China. He specified a particular bar in the place, also, the Bird Bar, which was described as being a focal point of all kinds of people from the world around coming away for a break from those other parts from whence they came, from the most humble backpacker to the biggest pop stars of Asia, and it sounded amazing.

Aside from that, Dali also has a lot of its own history, having previously been the center of a kingdom, once upon a time, with vestiges of the city walls abounding at different sections of the place. It also has one of the most idyllic set of pagodas, a trio of pagodas perched on the edge of a small body of water with beautiful mountains behind, and the rather large Erhai Lake a stone’s throw away from the Old Town center.  In addition, another thing originally drawing me to the place was the fact that there was a developing rock climbing scene there.

One other short word aside; all of the last three cities I’ve mentioned: Dali, Lijiang, and Shangri-la, are actually much larger than what we experienced, as they all have Old Towns and New Towns, and the New Towns are just standard big cities with the standard offerings of big cities that had no stakes in our interest whatsoever.

The bus ride over was nothing noteworthy; we had another couple of travelers in the bus with us, French ladies if I recall correctly, as I believe their Lonely Planet guide was written in French. We just kind of struggled through yet another few hours on a few wheels, for what seemed like the umpteenth time in barely more than a week.

I remember constantly scanning the signs, for want of anything else to do. At some point, we could clearly see the Erhai Lake, though we didn’t know without a doubt that it was that lake, as we didn’t know how the roads on the way to Dali were laid out exactly.

Eventually we pulled up to Old Town. Somewhere along the way, the driver was asking for a specific drop off point; I didn’t have one. David, though, was still carrying a stack of business cards from every hostel that has ever even though of opening in China, the same stack we got the reference for Barley from in Shangri-la, and somehow we were able to get in touch with the people at the Jade Emu, the name of the hostel. I think we actually called another hostel and asked them for Jade Emu’s number, but I don’t remember 100%. I also seem to recall David or Jing trying to look it up on the internet on their phone.

First our bus let off the French ladies, and I seem to recall they were just let off at one of the ancient city wall gates. Just across the street was supposed to be the Jade Emu. Man those streets were wide. Wider than almost anything else I’ve ever seen in China, only surpassed by some of the streets in Beijing. Each side had probably around five lanes or so, which made for a long walk.

The bus had to do some weird maneuvering to back into this upward slanting alleyway on a hill, but finally they succeeded, and, oddly enough, this was the moment we paid them. After that, we were guided in to the Jade Emu, which was almost like a fortress itself, with big padlocked doors in the front letting you into a rather large courtyard, and the lodgings just beyond.

When we arrived, we went through the standard operating procedures of rounding up all the passports, having everyone else get ferried into their rooms. Six people were due to leave Yunnan Monday, so would be leaving Dali tomorrow, which was Sunday. So we put them into two rooms of three beds each, and the remaining eight of us split up between two rooms each of four beds. It worked out quite nicely, actually.

We kinda lagged for a while after this. I think the trip was taking its toll on us all, mentally at least. The group of six leaving the next day, John, Varun, Yong, and I think maybe Mindy Julie and . . . I don’t know. One of the other girls. Maybe Ariel? Anyway, they were trying to figure out the details of their exit strategy. I had booked them another night at the Hump Hostel for Sunday night back in Kunming, as I recommended they make sure they’re already back in Kunming Sunday night if they’re going to fly out of it Monday early afternoon or morning, so they worked out the details of their transportation with the help of the people working at the Jade Emu to get back to Kunming the next day; in addition, they wanted to try to actually have a bit of fun in Dali, so we tried to figure out what they could do in their limited time there. I think it was already maybe around 5pm at this point in time.

Eventually we got things worked out, and decided it was high time to get some food, so we walked away from the hostel over to the Old Town area, and went through one of the smaller gates down what was supposed to basically be Foreigner’s street.

This old town was pretty vibrant, had a lot of little shops and stuff, and not too many hawkers. It was more spacious and grid-like than Lijiang’s, and was less crowded with craft shops, though they certainly still existed. We even wandered into a couple; the first thing we did was walk up and down this street scoping out what places we COULD eat at, then choosing from among them.

Nothing absolutely grabbed our interest, so we ended up settling on some Western-style place that looked okay enough and that had prices that were okay enough. We were pretty much the only customers there, as I recall, and the fourteen of us came in like a tidal wave upon them, setting in order a chain of orders that they just wouldn’t be able to complete very quickly.

Amongst the fourteen of us, I’m pretty sure at least six of us got burgers, and Jing got a pizza, and a couple others got some pasta, and so on.

I don’t know what the endcount was, but I’d bet it took over an hour to get all of those things we ordered out of the kitchen. Maybe twenty minutes into the waiting game, I told everyone I was gonna peace out for a bit, and I walked back down the street to look at things in the isolation of my own bubble.

There was a CD store that had caught my attention previously, and honestly was the goal of my trip out of the restaurant. The previously mentioned book had mentioned how, at the time of writing, Pinback was a well-loved band in the city. Pinback is a San Diego indie-rock band that is one of my absolute favorite bands in existence; I’ve seen them about nine times in concert in the past few years. So, given this tidbit, it was with that in mind I was curious about the offerings of the music store there.

To say it was a let down is putting it mildly, it was no better than anywhere else in Asia, which is to say, abysmal. Stacks of CDs of people I’ve never heard of and that no one even wants to hear of littered the store, along with all the latest offerings of the most standard possible big bands right now (I’m using this term loosely here), be it Red Hot Chili Peppers, Radiohead, Jay-Z, Beyonce, etc.

So whatever, I went back to the restaurant, and maybe two people had received their food. The way the food was carted out, basically, one person would get their meal, they’d finish it for lack of any desire on any of our parts to wait for everyone else to get their food at the same time, and then the next meal would roll out, and the process would repeat.

Poor Julie, she was just waiting forever, and was one of maybe four of us that had ordered bacon cheeseburgers, and she was the absolutely last person to get any food at all, and had a serious case of what I now know is referred to as the “hangers”, anger brought about by being hungry for too long of a period of time.

We all did get our burgers and whatever else, though, and it was all adequate. The cheese was cheese you’d never find almost anywhere else, though, as it was little fried blocks of locally made cheese that had more akin with dense tofu than cheddar. It was edible, though, even for me, so we took what we could get and moved on.

My memory of everything after this was a bit hazy, or at least, my memories of the next couple hours, as it was getting dark, were. I know that the group kinda split up a bit. I know that some people were still reeling from the previous night, as apparently after I left the Stone Crow, a bunch of people got up to some late night activity I don’t want to put out in the public, but it was sufficient to have them pretty mellow the next day.

Eventually David, Tyler, Jing, Christine, Julie and myself decided to wander the streets of Old Town on our own, just walkin around to take the sights in. Its been long enough since that time that I don’t remember for sure, but I think my camera batter was dead, which is why I don’t have any pictures of the Old Town. I might grab some pictures from one of my friends to put up, though, just for fun. Certainly in my entry about the next day, I’ll be using someone else’s pictures.

So we wandered the streets, we went up and down all over the dang place. I tried to put on a good face and have fun of it, despite being frustrated from the previous day, losing my phone, and not being able to spend more time in Dali, one of the main points of this whole trip for myself. I knew that the next day I wouldn’t be able to get to all the things I wanted to do, and I relegated myself to thinking I’d probably be coming back to Yunnan one day in the future anyway, so that I would get another chance at things.

This is supposed to be a travelogue first and foremost, not a blog about interpersonal drama, so I don’t want to get too much into it, but things just didn’t quite jive this night, and I ended up wandering just a short distance in front of the rest of my small pack, winding back up and down the streets, out one gate, then down a bit of distance to another gate, into a different section of the Old Town that was fairly bustling. A small plaza had a movie screen that showed screenings of some movie about the Bai ethnic minority, a group that’s rather big in the area. It was apparently a movie made a few decades ago that was a well thought of flick, and something the Bai people are proud enough of to try to manipulate for tourist purposes. From there, we wandered back up west a bit, found ourselves stumbling through some little courtyard with three screens filming an old Bruce Lee film for no apparent reason… there wasn’t even anyone hanging out watching it, it was just an empty courtyard, although from the decorations it appeared as though some sort of event had happened there earlier in the evening perhaps. I guess someone just forgot to hit the stop button?

We eventually made our way back to the hostel. We hung out there for a little bit. I think some people might’ve even gotten something to eat there. I talked to the owner for a while; he was an Australian guy that looks like a cross between Ewan McGregor and Sting from the 80s. He opened this place with his “partner”, who was really his wife that probably the two of them are just too progressive to be caught using the traditional terms of husband and wife (they have a child, for cryin’ out loud).

He told me his story about how he started the place up, and how he has plans for adding and expanding in the near future. He seemed pretty happy with how things are going, though he said the biggest challenge was finding decent staff, and training them to the standards that backpackers/travelers from the Western world expect when traveling. Making them understand the necessities of proper service and getting them to live up to that isn’t easy, apparently, and he’s gone through a lot of turnover to find the right people, though he feels he’s gotten there by now, and things are rolling along pretty smoothly all in all.

He also told me that the staff were freaked out earlier in the day, as I had originally specified some expected time of arrival for my group of 14, and 14 beds works out to roughly half the capacity of this hostel, and we didn’t show up at the time that I had specified, and in fact didn’t show up until another six hours afterward; because my cell phone had been stolen, my phone number was unreachable as well. Apparently, they were sweating up a storm wondering whether or not we’d finally arrive. I couldn’t help but chuckle a bit in my mind, though I imagine the concern was really quite severe for them.

Some of his friends were there hanging out shooting the shit and playing pool in the courtyard; as usual when trying to distract myself from other frustrations, I hung out with them instead of my own friends. They let me know that there was going to be a concert/party going on the next day at a nearby bar, and that if that’s the sort of thing I’m looking for I should definitely stop by.

I checked that into my mental file, and then maybe around 10pm or so I decided to split off on my own into the town. I let the others know I was heading out by myself, and that was that. I made sure I had a key with me, and I went around and wandered a bit. First, I wandered around the same area where we got dinner earlier in the night, and I took a look at the various bars around there. They all looked horrendous, no better than they had appeared earlier in the night. After that, I figured I’d probably get a foot massage or something, as I was still pretty sore from Tiger Leaping Gorge. Maybe an hour later, after wandering aimlessly, I found myself a place that looked respectable enough, and ended up getting a regular body massage instead. Some scrawny little Chinese guy did the honors, and it was a bit awkward. He also had his cell phone on him, and was signed into an online chat program, and as he was giving the massage,  I constantly heard the little sounds giving tell to the announcement of people signing on or off, and receiving messages from time to time, which he would usually stop and check.

So, one hour and one mostly useless massage later, I rolled out and wandered some more. I went back out one of the gates, and then wandered north for a long time, until I was well past what constituted “Old Town” and was just Chinese suburbia, or what looks mostly like what we back at home would refer to as Condo Hell. Not long after that, there wasn’t a single light in sight ahead of me, so I decided to turn back around, though I had to run across a completely dark road with a couple of cars going one way or the other.

I made my way back to the gate where I had first exited, there was some Chinese couple hiding in a bush nearby. They weren’t as close together as you’d think they’d need to be to be doing something they ought not to be doing on the side of the road, and I think of them had a camera. Go ahead and take those puzzle pieces and see what you can come up with, I dare you.

After this, I wandered back up a street. Turns out this street was where all of the whorehouses were; they’re pretty distinctive. I don’t know what they look like in other countries, but in China, they tend to be small storefronts with a few girls sitting idly on a couch, maybe watching a TV or something, and doing absolutely nothing to hawk their “wares”. A neon pink light will saturate the room, and it looks absolutely unsavory.

This time, though, it was rather more lively than anything I’d ever seen before. Guys came and went through them, some people were picking up orders of girls in vans and taking them off to whatever, maybe a party or something, and others were bringing them right back. As I walked past, I’d get the occasional query about whether I wanted a massag-ee, or maybe four of the young girls would just titter with laughter as I walked past, whatever. Eventually, I took a spot on a curb maybe a half block from it all, and watched the going ons. Seeing the transactions take place was pretty interesting. The culture of it all was so far removed from the world I know. A small stall and tent was set up on the other side of the street, making up some simple food for the girls to eat on their breaks I guess, or whatever.

A couple of young guys walked by me, throwing out a loud assured “hullo!” as Chinese people in areas that don’t often see foreigners are so want to do. I responded in kind, and maybe five minutes later got off the curb and wandered some more.

I walked through alleys, on other streets, and saw more and more seediness as time went on.

At one point, in one alleyway, I walked past what looked like the scene of some organized crime. A group of maybe up to eight young people, including one woman, formed a half circle around a guy who was on the ground with his back against a wall. It seemed as though they were grilling him for something, information perhaps, and it looked as though he had been beaten. Not to a pulp, but certainly to the point of feeling hopeless. I kept my head down and kept moving. That made me feel pretty helpless myself. I thought about calling cops or something, but what was I going to do? I wouldn’t have the first clue how to communicate what I saw going on there, in Mandarin, and it would be a futile enterprise. Not only that, but the cops likely wouldn’t care. I didn’t hear any screams after, or anything, and I took that as some small consolation.

Not long after that, it was close to 3:30am, late enough that even the bordellos were closing. You know a city is really dead when prostitutes go off shift. As I wandered back through other streets I had explored earlier in the day with my other friends, I got a kick out of seeing all storefronts utterly shuttered up, with the Chinese equivalent of corrugated aluminum garage doors lockering everything up. It reminded me heavily of a time when I went into the heart of one of Los Angeles’ downtown areas to go see the Canadian indie rock band Broken Social Scene at the Orpheum Theatre, off the 10 and 110, where every single storefront was already closed at 8pm. There, I felt rather insecure and a bit afraid, but here I just felt a dearth.

I finally headed back to the Jade Emu, and another twenty minutes, I had arrived. I had a key to open the gates myself, and let myself into my room; I hit the sack, and after a quiet six hours, I went swift asleep to wake up for what would hopefully be a better day.