Dallying in Dali

So we woke up to another day, another dollar in Dali. Group B, the group leaving this day, were going to try to go to Erhai Lake to see cormorant fishing, or something like that. To do so, they were getting up pretty early, the rest of us were getting a milder start to our day so that we could further enjoy the rest of the day.

We got up at a pretty comfy time, maybe around 10am or something, and went out to the courtyard to get some breakfast. I think I ordered a egg and bacon sandwich or something like that. Yet another fail, as it was slathered in ketchup or something like that. This time I let Ariel eat it, I think, and just sufficed with something small, trying to not be too irate at the start of the day.

Our plan was to get on a city bus, of sorts, and head north to a small town, and from there just wander around a bit, and maybe it’d be close enough to the cormorant fishing area that we’d be able to catch our other friends there.

That was optimistic. We did make it up to that town, and boy was it pretty run down and rural. Some of the houses were actually fairly opulent, all things considered, but rice paddies and the sort sprawled out of it in every direction. The bus spilled us out at a random entrance with not so much as a kick in the ass to get us going, and we just started walking forward.

Almost immediately, we realized there were a lot spiders. I mean, a bajillion. And they weren’t particularly small, either. They hung above us like a canopy of death, and the girls got pretty freaked. Almost all of the spiders were totally immobile, though, just chilling in their webs above the roofs or whatever. Here’s some pictures of them. Keep in mind that all the black specks on the screen are spiders who have a radius of a few inches, including their legs of course:

We walked, and we kept walking, in a more or less continual line. Here’s some pictures of us walking. And walking.

 

A couple of the girls got a bit tired after a while; their heels, or legs, or feet, or something were still feeling pretty ragged in the wake of Tiger Leaping Gorge. We paused a few times to give them time to relax and keep moving on. Not long after, we had run into Erhai Lake, and it actually looked pretty fantastic, though we weren’t exactly at a tourist’s location. There was a small masoned wall shoring up the edge of the land, and Christine ran out on the edge of it just to see what she could see, I guess, and I followed. We laughed at the fact that someone had used the edge of this wall, which was slanted a bit, as an outhouse, but just hadn’t managed to stick their ass out far enough to relieve themselves in the water, leaving all manner of waste clumped and dried on the bricks. For some reason I can’t begin to imagine, none of the others followed us over there. Here are a couple pictures taken from that spot, though:

We ran back over. There was actually a small artificial bay right here, and a couple guys were in boats across the way, as shown here:

We got the idea to ask them whether or not they could take us in boats south towards where our friends ought to be. Christine darted off to go ask them, and I ran after her as the others slowly followed behind. The way was even thicker with spiders on all sides, and that made me a bit wary, but I wasn’t about to leave Christine by herself. I had treated her not all that well the previous night due to my frustrations that I didn’t get into detail about, and throughout the first half of this day, I felt pretty bad about it, though I couldn’t bring myself to say much of anything.

The guys were happy to give us a boat ride, but not to any destination. They were only willing to take us on a ride out into the lake, then right back to where we were at that moment. At first, when it seemed like they’d agree to what we were asking for, it was almost exciting, as the boats were pieces of crap, with two inches of filthy water in the bottom of the hull, and we were caught up in the “oh-shit-are-we-really-going-to-go-through-with-this” feeling, but we certainly weren’t going to put ourselves through that just for a little look-see. So we backed up, then tried to walk further down the lake as best we could, but the way the streets wound, it was pretty much impossible to get back to the edge of the lake.

At one point, I saw a slogan stamped on the side of a building, shown here:

This would’ve been made back in the 1970s, during the inception of the single-child policy of China, as that’s what it’s a propagandistic slogan for. Suddenly, the buildings stopped, and we were in the middle of those sprawling farmlands on the edge of the lake. In the distance, there appeared to be some decent looking buildings, that I estimated as being the location of something or another. To our left, though, was a temple complex. No one seemed interested in going to check it out, so everyone started walking towards that other spot, except for Christine. She started walking off towards the temple, and I told everyone to just keep going and keep their phones at the ready, and I chased after Christine, again:

Before entering the temple complex, Christine scrambled up some old pipes onto this weird little building that sat on the edge of the lake. I set down my umbrella, which I had brought with me due to inclement weather hanging off the edge of the mountain range running parallel with this lake, and scrambled up after her also. A couple local boys rode up on their bikes and did the same, though they went in a slightly different direction.

Christine and I didn’t exchange many words, but looked across the lake for a while. We agreed to get going after a bit, and I ambled back down, then noticed that Christine was NOT behind me. So I scrambled right back up, again, and saw that she was choosing to take a different route down, as a very small aqueduct of sorts lead back down the road we had come from, and had a little staircase at one point not far away that could be used to get back onto the road. So I went after her again.

I asked her if she actually wanted to go into the temple at all; she IS Buddhist, and has made a point of visiting various other temple complexes in our journeys together, so it was a point worth inquiring about. At first she seemed reluctant, as if she felt like she would be invading or something. We finally went in, though, and it was a very quiet place. A small pagoda of sorts sat in the middle of it, and it was actually possible to go inside of it, which Christine did, and I followed shortly after.

It seemed like it actually doubled as a granary, and we found ourselves in pretty dark dusty rooms as we spiraled further up. Just as quickly as she had come up, Christine ran back down. And old man stood outside the place, and beckoned us further in. Christine went towards a Shrine that he led her too, and I kept my distance. To this day I still don’t feel comfortable being too close to people in temples and other religious locations while they are carrying out their religious rituals. I feel too much like an invader, like a perverter of the sacred, by being there strapped with my camera around my neck.

So I waited for her to come out, and took pictures of the other sections of the temple area as I waited. Here’s a few:

 

 

From there, we left the temple area and started scrambling back after the others. We called them, and I guess they weren’t too far away or whatever. We kept a pretty quick pace, and bypassed some farmers, and were bypassed ourselves by guys on motorbikes. I took some pictures of the countryside, if you could call it that. The reflections in the waters of the rice paddies were pretty exquisite, as shown here:

For some reason, I don’t specifically remember reuniting with the rest of the group. I know we did, and I think they were just taking another rest for the girls whose feet were in pain. At this point, our goal was to get back on the road to find another bus; we wanted to make it to another small town, a place that had the reputation of being a good source of the distinctive fabric of the Bai minority. The fabric is known as batik, and I was interested in checking it out. Of course when I say what “our” goal was, I really just mean what I was deciding we’d go looking for.

So we walked south parallel to the big road for a while, then finally we had a good view of the big road that buses ferried people back and forth on, and there was finally a dirt road that ran perpendicular to take us to it.

Another half hour later, seemingly, and we were finally there. We had walked by a great number of perplexed local farmers and such, who probably wondered what this pack of foreigners was doing out here in the middle of a nowhere road in a nowhere farm, but whatever. Eventually on the side of the road I spotted a bus that looked like it might be going where we wanted, I had Jing ask if it would take us to the location of the batik production, and the driver said yes, so we hopped in and got going yet again.

Another half an hour and we were dumped off in the middle of yet another small town. We walked up towards an area that seemed to have a lot of activity, which turned out to be a marketplace. I kind of forced most of us to go without lunch for the time being, as almost immediately an old lady showed up asking if we wanted to go see the batik. I didn’t have any other leads on how to go see it in this town, so I said sure, and immediately she started leading us on what seemed like a two mile trail to get to this damned cloth.

Some of the people in my group wondered how legit this was, and whether the lady was just pulling our leg; I figured, If it really was a tourism draw for the area, it would probably be legit, no matter how much of a pain in the ass it might be. Finally, we rounded a corner, and I could see the stains of dark blue dye on the ground running out of a building, shown here:

We entered in, and got our look at the factory of this stuff, and it was exactly what I had been looking for. I thought it was pretty cool, personally. I never really asked what everyone else thought about it, but I assume that everyone there must’ve thought it was at least a little interesting. Here’s a smorgasbord of pictures taken from the facilities:

 

 

 After that, some of the women who made the stuff there showed us examples of how its made. Basically, its tie dye, and they use little rubber bands to clump up the cloth over and over in patterns so that when they take the cloth out, then unravel the rubber bands, they have un-dyed white patches that make lovely little patterns.  Of course they explained this to us with words, but we didn’t understand any of that; however, they showed us directly how it worked, as shown below:

And it made pretty clear sense. From here, they invited us up into the building behind them to take a look at all the cloths they had made, and of course to try to sell some. Over the next hour, the girls got their shopping kicks out, as they bought dresses and whatever else. I got a scarf of sorts also, though it’s a little small to be a scarf. I got it for a good price, too, after some good tag team bargaining with Jing. Its since become a fixture on the wall of my apartment, maybe I’ll take a picture of it at home and post that online at some point. Here's a couple pictures taken from their stock, as well as in a room above when Christine and I got tired of "shopping":

We were pretty done with batik after all of this. We left the place, and tried to find our way back to the main road to find our way to the buses again. The whole time, the lady who had brought us there kept trying to sell us on the idea of going to some other batik production place. Thanks but no thanks lady. We kept wandering, and found our way back to the market where we had first been dropped off. Of all things, David ran off to try to find some star anise, and as he did so, I scoured the local convenience stores for some ice cream, while a bus sat semi-patiently waiting for David to come back. He actually beat me to the punch, so ultimately I was the one holding it back, silly me.

We took that straight back to home, and I think by then it was probably something like 4 in the afternoon or so. So at the Jade Emu, I think we all got something to eat. I think. The plan at this point was to rest a little bit, then go grab ourselves some bicycles for rent and run wild all over town.

Christine and I went to check out the bike rental place, a place I had mentally bookmarked while wandering the day before. It was right where I remembered it, and its bikes were awesome.

Like, seriously. These things were tricked out 21 speeds the likes of which I savor in memory of from America, whereas the rental bikes in every other Chinese town I’ve been in thus far were one speeds falling apart. We also didn’t need to put a deposit down, we just had to leave one form of identification (we used our fudan student ID) and that was good enough as a deposit, and it was something like 20RMB (the equivalent of about 3 dollars) for a full day’s use, though they said it closed at 8pm, which only gave us a few hours to joyride. We went out for a test run, and it was glorious how fast we could tear up those gigantic causeways on the perimeter of Dali’s Old Town. There were never any cars to speak of, and they always went pretty slow, so I never really understood the need for the size of these roads, but it was pretty awesome on the bike.

We went back to the Jade Emu, and told everyone to get ready, we were goin for a ride!

I think Lauren stayed behind, maybe Ariel also, but everyone else (everyone else that was left at this point) came along. We all got our bikes and started raising hell, bombing down the roads, honking right back at the cars (using our vocal chords) that were honking at us. Soon enough we were out of the Old Town limits, and bombing down a hill towards a village on the end of a lake. Jing and I raced against each other, and we were probably going close to 30 miles an hour (50km per hour for you metric people) down this hill, minimum. I don’t think Jing had ever raced like that in her life! It was actually pretty exhausting, and she gave me a good run for my money.

The others seemed to revel in moving like hell also, except for Sarah. I guess Sarah had missed the memo that I was tired of lollygagging and not being in control of my own ability to move around in China; for once I actually felt a bit bad for her. We started moving through the crowded streets entering into this little lakeside village, and at one point I found that my seat had become useless, as if I put my weight on it at all, it would tilt all the way up or down, depending. This meant I had to stand on the pedals most of the time. We stopped at one marketplace, and Jing helped find some tools from a nearby shopkeeper, and I tried to tighten everything on the bike, but I think it was just too stripped or something, and it all amounted to nothing, so I just dealt with it for the rest of the night, and I went wild, or at least I felt like I went wild.

I careened down streetways and alleyways, moving between cars that were barely moving due to old ladies blocking the road, or trying to fit two car widths in a lane that could really only hold 1.5, and tearing ahead of all of them, laughing at their inability to move, and shouting out obnoxious hullos in response to their own, or to their cries of “laowai!” (which basically means foreigner), I’d respond in kind yet again.

For some reason all respect had exited my system for the day, and I was fine with that. At this point, the sun was setting, and we decided maybe we should be heading back to town. So we careened back down other roads and alleyways to wind up at the same marketplace I had originally tried to fix things up with my bike, and then wend our ways down some other roads. I didn’t want to take the exact same way back to town we had used to get out of town, so we took a left at some point, and ended up spending the next hour or more on our bikes in pitch black going through dirt roads in the farmlands.  I led in the front, and shouted out in the back when there were parts that you had to get off of your bike for, or when there was any kind of flaw at all in the road. I think some people might’ve been a bit freaked out about traveling down a road like that on bikes, but hey, its all good.

Occasionally we bypassed yet more locals who were even more perplexed at the sight of these people riding mountain bikes on the farm trails, and I could do nothing but grin and laugh.

Eventually, at a point where we were starting to despair about whether or not we could actually get to the Dali Old Town from this path (though we were eventually assured by some locals that we could), we could finally see the lights from Old Town, and started bearing towards it with a bit more determination.

At one crazy point, a huge truck, almost like a trash truck from back home, but carrying farm produce, came up from behind, and I decided to race with it for a while. Apparently no one else wanted to do that on a road they couldn’t see more than five feet in front of them on. So at one point, where a random compound ended up on my left side, I stopped off, and waited for everyone else to catch back up. At this point, I think, the rest of the road was concrete, and pretty easily navigable, so in no time at all, we reached back to one of those major throughways that passed parallel to Dali, and made it in to town.

We weren’t done yet, though first we took Sarah back to the bike rental place and dropped off one bike, as I guess she was pretty beat. The rest of us continued barreling through town, all over the damn place, with no goal in mind, except for hitting the last major ancient city gate that I had not yet made it to in my wanderings of the city.

Another half hour later, and we had pretty much gotten our kicks in, so we took our bikes back and headed back to the Jade Emu. It was a bit weird at this point that our group now only consisted of 8, but hey, that’s how things go. I think I had one of their Aussie style burgers at this point, but I couldn’t swear to it. If you didn’t know, Australia likes to throw a fried egg in between the buns with everything else from time to time. I had never had that style of hamburger before, and it was actually really pretty good.

From there, we rested a while yet again, then got ready to roll down to the Bad Monkey, which is where the party/concert was going on that the friend of the owner of the Jade Emu had mentioned before.

So I got there pretty early, with Christine and Jing and David I think, and perhaps Jill too, and it was already going pretty awesome. Over the course of the next few hours, we got to see a few different bands go on. First was just a straight-forward garage rock group, dressed in odd enough outfits. They were easily beat by the two guys walking around in naked suits. Seriously, they were in costumes that made them look like either a naked man or women with extremely overly exaggerated sexual body parts. There was actually a good number of punkish people there, and rip-roaringly so, people bouncing around dancing and yelling like mad, with alcohol free-flowing more or less.

Christine kept them free flowing for me, also. We still hadn’t really talked all that much throughout the day, but there was a warmth that was being restored, spoken or otherwise. When the first band got off the stage, we all came outside; by this time, I think the others of our group that were still left in Dali had shown up. I was fairly inebriated, and Jill and I engaged in faux-martial arts duels for a while, leaving me cracking up on the ground. I don’t even remember what we were dueling over, but who cares? Someone or another saw fit to document this visually, so here’s the evidence that’s been left behind of that little engagement:

 

Not long after that, we ran back inside, and were treated to the last band of the night, an irish-punk rock band, which was totally up my alley. Canny viewers will even notice I happened to be sporting my Flogging Molly T-shirt that night, so it was a perfect fit. Inside, we rocked it out. Some Indian guy was dancing around like crazy, and though he was probably drunk, he was acting in an overly homoerotic manner that seemed to suggest some deep repression only unlocked by alcohol, and it was a bit ridiculous. Aside from that, little punk Chinese girls questioned Jing’s ideas on what It meant to be Chinese, as did the guys in naked suits call into question her ideas on what it meant to be normal and have a good time. I pumped my fist and chanted “Oi Oi Oi”. Some of the others seemed to be having a good time, too, in general, and I thought of it as an overwhelming success. Christine and I started to act close again, after far too many hiccups through the trip, and at some point during the course of this, as I was sopping wet with my sweat and that of others, probably looking my most absolute horrid that I’ve ever been in her or their presence, I looked into her eyes and her smile and knew everything would be alright.

When the show was over, we stumbled (well, probably only I stumbled) out of the place again, and it seemed like David wasn’t doing so well. I guess he had had a bit too much to drink, also. We worked out how to best get him home in the next bit of time, and got ourselves back more or less in one piece to the Jade Emu. David was professing his love to every girl there, though just as a friend, naturally, as we got him tucked into bed, and then spent a bit of time out in the courtyard to cool down ourselves before hitting the sack, in preparation for our exit plan from Yunnan. Tomorrow would be the last day we would all be there.