Three stories in three cities and one gorge - a three part epic

---------Part I: An Unexpected Adventure---------

I had a train to catch, but I had given myself more than enough time to catch the bus and check in, so time shouldn't have been an issue. I had spent much of the day in the hostel, watching the clock as it signaled departures, dates, and dinners for those around me, waiting for it to turn its steadfast hand toward ten o'clock, the train station, and my train to Lijiang.

I left with thirty minutes cushioning my trip to the station, earbuds cushioning my eardrums from the sounds of Kunming, and a hip strap cushioning my back from the added weight of newly purchased gifts in my backpack. Time shouldn't have been a problem.

I went to the bus stop in the opposite direction from the way I had arrived two days before and waited patiently for my bus. I leaned against the bus stop ads and enjoyed the sweet sounds of the Economist pouring worldly information into my head. And waited.

And no bus came. I checked the time. Time had, as it turned out, kept going, suddenly leaving me with twenty minutes to get to the train station, go through security, and get on my train. Sweat of a slight panic started to join that of carrying fifty pounds. A taxi then. The station was close, so a taxi should get me there with some time to spare.

Unfortunately, I was in the city center, and there were no taxis to spare. A guy on a motorcycle came up and asked where I wanted to go. I said the train station, but I had too much stuff and was going to take a taxi. He said I could put my pack at his feet and fifteen yuan. I said I could catch a taxi and ten yuan. He said good luck getting a taxi now and okay, ten yuan. I checked the time, saw fifteen minutes till my train left, and said where's the helmet. He laughed and said hop on.

He did a U-turn and began heading to the station. Only then did I remember that I had made the very same mistake the last time I had been in China, and that contrary to instinct, you had to get on the bus in the same direction as you arrived to get back to the station. Well, at least no harm had been done. It seemed like I would make it to the station just in time with my driver in front of me zooming along. Just so long as he didn't hit that van turning at the intersection.

BAM, and down we go. Well, he could probably thank the momentum provided by me and my bag for some of that. Luckily, nothing other than bruises, so we picked up the motorcycle, ourselves, and my things, and continued on. Only to be stopped by the angry driver of the car we just ran into, shouting at my driver for hitting his car. My driver tried unsuccessfully to calm him down and said that hitting the car wasn't his fault and that he would not give the guy any money. I was tempted to offer some money and say could we please go because I had a train to catch that was leaving in ten minutes. The driver of the van continued angrily berating my driver as several of his friends from the van came over and thankfully took our side and told the van driver that it wasn't worth it. Finally, we continued on.

We zoomed by the next several blocks, and I got to the train station, went through the security check, and got on my train with a few minutes to spare.

Now, this blog post is a long one, as it encompasses a large amount of time filled with lots of interesting happenings. So, if you, my dear reader, are in need of a break to get some tea and rest before getting back into the nerve-wrenching and tear-jerking adventures of Dylan Kolhoff, I suggest you do so here.

----------Part II: Of Gorges and Family Dinners----------

I hope that was refreshing for you, because if you really live out the stories you read in your mind or if you, like so many others, are living vicariously through me, this bit is going to leave you gasping for breath. 

I arrived in Lijiang well rested after several hours of sleep on the night train. The street outside the train station and the crowd of taxi drivers grouped around the exit made my arrival in an area with a majority of the Naxi minority group obvious. In most of China, the great majority of taxi drivers are male, with the rare female the exception that proves the rule. Not so in Lijiang. The Naxi minority group has a traditionally matriarchal society with matrilineal lineages, which in this case showed itself in the fact that the majority of taxi drivers at the station were women. 

I was able to make it to my new home at the Mama Naxi Hostel without getting lost more than twice in the winding streets of Lijiang's old town. At the hostel, I was greeted by Mama, the hostel's namesake, who lived up to her name by immediately offering me a banana and getting me to sit down and rest after my long trip. 

I spent the next two days enjoying the relaxed environment of Lijiang. I wandered the seemingly endless alleyways filled with shop after shop selling seemingly identical goods, from Yunnan's famous tea to scarfs to drums to traditional Naxi clothing to more of the same. I ate at the family dinners cooked by Mama Naxi herself and attended by a large portion of the hostel-dwellers, meeting a number of interesting and fun people from all over the globe. I went out with some of those travelers to one of Lijiang's many bars, where a fellow American bought me a drink for simply being an American (after confirming that I was, in fact, an American from my friends). Finally, with three new friends from England, another from Canada, and one more from the US, I planned a two-day hike of the Tiger Leaping Gorge.

So it was that bright and early the next morning, leaving everything but the bare essentials in luggage storage with Mama and still shivering from the frigid walk to and from the shower that morning, I left Lijiang with my five new friends on a bus to the Gorge. I should mention that while Lijiang's weather was decidedly temperate during the day, it could get very cold at night, making the electric blanket supplied by the hostel a very nice accessory.

We started hiking around ten in the morning. The trail was like no trail I have seen in China, and like every trail I have seen in the United States. It wasn't steps. For those of you unaccustomed to hiking mountains or places of natural beauty in China, I should explain that steps and smooth, paved paths are the norm. While sometimes nice and undoubtedly more handicapped-friendly than hiking the Appalachian Trail or Old Rag Mountain, it takes away some of the challenge and the feeling of ruggedness and the outdoors that serves as at least part of the reason that I enjoy hiking. So the smoothed dirt and rock-strewn path that we found at the beginning of the Tiger Leaping Gorge was a nice surprise.

Near the beginning of the trail, after meeting a fellow hiker from the US and making friends with him, we noticed something. We were being followed. Not far behind us, stopping when we stopped and keeping our pace when we walked, was a man on a horse. Not that it took any sort of spy-work to figure that out. He had asked all of us if we wanted to ride the horse when we had first arrived at the trail head, and a bell on the horse's bridle made us painfully aware of his following presence every few steps as he jingled on behind us. Growing tired of the constant cacophonous company, I decided to see if I could convince him that no, we really didn't want to ride the horse. He replied to my authoritative proclamation by saying just wait, just wait for the twenty-eight bends. 

The twenty-eight bends. The defining feature of the hike as far as I could tell. Distances and times to hostels on the trail were told as time to and from the twenty-eight bends, which was disguised as an innocent-looking squiggly line on the map of the trail. 

Still, I knew myself, and I knew the stubborn self-determination that would keep me from getting on that horse with anything short of a heart attack, so I told our camp follower that. The challenge was part of why we were there. We wouldn't need him. Again he said just wait for the twenty-eight bends. If you don't want my services, don't worry about it. But just wait for the twenty-eight bends. I sighed and gave up, and instead began talking with him about his family and Yunnan and the upcoming Spring Festival as we followed close behind my fellow hikers.

We met a number of other people on the trail, from people tending small stalls selling fruit, wild walnuts, water, snickers, and marijuana to a Chinese doctorate student studying astronomy to a really friendly Spanish ex-banker. A few hours in, I actually found myself a little ways ahead of our friendly follower and my original travel buddies. And then the twenty-eight bends were upon us. While the day had started cold enough to warrant a winter coat, scarf, and gloves, they were now forced into my comically overstuffed backpack as the sun beat down on me as I climbed the increasingly steep switchbacks. My boots kicked up clouds of dust as I climbed up the dry path, turning my once chocolate colored boots into a camel-hair tan color. Several breaks and many switchbacks later, I made it to the top and the payoff. An absolutely gorgeous view with a refreshing breeze to boot. People who had passed me and those I had passed congregated at the top to enjoy their victory over nature and their own weakness before heading on to one of two hostels between the peak and the pickup point for the next day. 

Several hours later, my English friends and I arrived at our hostel about an hour before darkness. We had a happy, exhausted dinner with many of the people we had met during the day, and then found ourselves surrounding by multitudes of stars. With our astronomy student and all the appropriate apps on her iPad as our guide, we delved into the beautiful night sky before heading to an early bedtime. 

 I should mention here that our Canadian and American friends had stopped at the hostel about an hour before ours after having a hard time earlier in the day. And guess what - our friendly camp follower did at last get their business once they arrived at the most difficult point. As he had said, just wait for the twenty-eight bends.

I got off to an early start the next morning after a long nights sleep, and managed to get to the hostel that would have a bus back to Lijiang that afternoon before the sun rose over the mountains (around 10:30). Thus I was able to keep my winter coat on and keep my backpack more stable and more comfortable. As I was heading down to the pickup point, it was a fun sort of game as the sun began to reveal more and more of the mountain above me, leaving part of me trying to beat it to the hostel and part of me wanting to sit and get some pictures of the sunrise. 

After arriving at the pickup point, I left everything but my camera and prepared for what I thought was a short hike to the bottom of the gorge and the river that runs along it. It was soon obvious that while the hike might be short, it was almost all vertical, making the hike down difficult and the perspective hike back up nightmarish for my already aching thighs. 

About thirty minutes into the gorge, I came upon a sign pointing left for the "Sky Ladder" and right for the "Safe Way." While I wasn't all that excited about what that meant for the ladder, I was again confronted by the stubborn, determined part of me that was certain that I would regret it if I did not take the ladder. With no good argument against that, I stepped off the edge of the cliff, slowly and extremely difficultly turned around, and began the slow descent made slower by legs shaking with weariness and nerves. About one hundred feet down, I stepped with still shaking legs onto firm ground and tried to breath through tightness that seemed to have abandoned my legs to find residence in my chest. A short break later, I got up and finished the hike to the rushing river at the bottom of the gorge, where I was able to relax with several other travelers who I had met over the past days.

I say finished, but really I was less than halfway done. I still had to hike back up. And boy was it a hike. After a day and a half of heavy hiking, I was exhausted, and my legs and back were really feeling it. Strong winds that were at first refreshing and cooling started throwing dust everywhere and threatening your balance on that cliff-edge path. Dirt got in my hair and my eyes as my exhausted legs expended every last effort into getting me back to the pickup point. And although I was completely and thoroughly spent when I got there, I am proud to say that I made it back on my own two feet. 

I spent the next two days in Lijiang relaxing and preparing to go to Dali to visit my friend from travels past, Michael, for the Spring Festival. I took a short train to Dali, where Michael was waiting for me at the train station. 

Before you start the next section, I recommend you stretch and maybe take a bathroom break. If you, like me, are getting tired of all these words and want to really see what it was all like, you could also skip to the bottom and see the pictures from the past sections before continuing on. This is coming from someone who has certainly learned the value of taking a rest every now and then.

----------Part III: The Snake and the Monkey----------

Michael began my visit to Dali by treating me to dinner, just the first step in what would soon become the norm of him being a fantastic host. After dinner, we went to Michael’s mother’s home, where Michael had prepared his own room for me to stay in. We went to bed early and had a good night’s rest.

The next day was February 9^th, the lunar calendar’s New Year’s Eve, and a day, like much of Spring Festival, full of food and family. We went into the Dali old city in the afternoon, where we found most shops closed except for stalls selling fireworks and Spring Festival decorations. We also ran into one of the English girls and the Canadian girl I had met in Lijiang, and we planned to meet up later in the evening.

Michael and I went to Michael’s Dad’s home for dinner, which had about fifteen friends and extended family members in attendance, all crammed around a small table in the living room of the small apartment. The table, in turn, was crowded with a cornucopia of dishes that were being stuffed into my small bowl by Michael’s proffering relatives. The television blared distractingly in the background with one of many Spring Festival variety shows that would continue to showcase China’s stars (as well as a few foreigners thrown in for spice) throughout the week. Michael’s grandma and step-grandparents craned to see the show as the rest of the family talked and toasted each other around them. The older family members gave red envelopes of money to Michael and the younger members, who would say they didn’t need the money as it was forced upon them. Michael’s Dad even gave me a red envelope which I unsuccessfully tried to turn down considering the fact that Michael was hosting me and had been treating me since I arrived. I ate and talked and mostly listened as fireworks went off throughout the city (it is tradition to set off some firecrackers before eating dinner).

After dinner, several of the adults retired to another room for some lively rounds of Mahjong, and a little while later Michael and I decided to retire to the old town to meet up with my friends from Lijiang. In the old town, we bought some fireworks (well, Michael did – he was always able to get better prices because he was a local) and went to the Bad Monkey bar to meet up with my friends.

We met up with my friends and ended up seeing several other travelers I had met at the Tiger Leaping Gorge and Lijiang as well as meeting a lot of other foreigners staying in Dali for the Lunar New Year. As we did this, the time was approaching midnight, marked by a steady crescendo of fireworks. We went outside the bar and joined in with fireworks and sparklers of our own.

In addition to the fireworks purchased by the travelers, the bar next door was setting off a stream of firecrackers (the lines of red firecrackers that go off in a loud crack..cra-crack..cRACK) and the people who worked at the Bad Monkey had bought a number of fireworks that went off with an impressive BOOM that shook your body and threatened your eardrums if you didn’t plug your ears in time. As we reached midnight and the New Year, the fireworks (which were being lit about ten to fifteen feet from the bar) got to such a pitch and volume and violence that many of us retreated inside in order to save our eardrums from the explosions and our bodies from the small pieces of debris that regularly flew off the bursting fireworks. It was hectic and crazy and fun. It did make me think about how it was easy to imagine how so many people had died when a flare went off in a packed club in Brazil with much fewer people than the bar we were in. And how if the small fireworks of the workers of the Bad Monkey were able to make us run to cover, then I truly did not want to experience an actual bomb (not that I had wanted to before).

I should say that it was fun until one girl somehow got hit by a firework, leaving her bleeding from the head and unresponsive. She was brought into the bar and lay down on a bench with a cloth to her head, which somehow led to two guys almost getting in a fight, with one saying that they had to get her out of there. It was unclear to me how she had gotten hurt (her own mistake or somebody else’s drunken shenanigans turned bloody) or why the two guys were arguing (somebody said it was because one said it was the other’s fault, and I thought it might be trying to get her to a hospital or just out of the bar to avoid liability), but it certainly wasn’t helping her. She was finally taken to the hospital, allowing the people who had noticed the disturbance to get back to their New Year’s revelry.

Nonetheless, it was a fun night meeting new friends and hanging out with old ones. Michael spent much of the night quizzing the foreign girls on what they thought of Chinese guys. This is a pet project of his precipitated by a common occurrence in China where while you frequently see western men with Chinese women, you rarely see Chinese men with western women. It was a nice start to the year of the snake.

Two days later, we woke up fairly early to go with his Mom, stepdad, grandma, and other relatives to visit the graves of his grandpa and great-grandma for tomb-sweeping day. Michael asked me when we in the United States did this, and I told him that I wasn’t really sure. People didn’t go to graves after the burial much except for dramatic apologies or angry bellowing to the sky or God. At least that was what movies taught me.

When we arrived at the graves, Michael’s family watered the nearby plants and set up a small feast of nuts, fruits, tea, alcohol, and dumplings in front of the gravestones. The family then kowtowed in front of first Michael’s great-grandma’s and then his grandpa’s grave in order from oldest to youngest. They then sat around for about a half hour, chatting and snacking on the food in front of the graves before packing up and getting back in the cars.

From there, we began a long, scenic drive around Erhai Lake, the large, beautiful lake that serves as a landmark for Dali. We stopped a few times to enjoy the view and the fresh air before arriving in a village where Michael’s family had been an important land-owning family before the communist takeover in 1949. Michael’s grandmother led us around the village and to the old family mansion, which was now protected by the government as a cultural heritage site. Michael said that one of his great-grandpa had fled to Taiwan before the communist takeover, and that they had lost contact with him then. They suspected that he probably had a new family in Taiwan, or perhaps had moved to the United States. Michael’s family had lost a lot during the communist revolution, and he said that was one reason that they disliked the government. After the trip down memory lane, we got back in the car to go to Michael’s home for dinner with his mom, stepdad, aunt, and her husband.

After dinner, I had a really interesting conversation with Michael’s aunt about education and child upbringing in the US. She is a middle school teacher, so she was really interested in how children acted in the US. We discussed divorce and its effect on children, discipline, and grandparents roles in raising their grandkids. It was a great conversation that made me feel much better about my Chinese ability (certainly helped by the awareness she had that I imagine came with teaching Mandarin to young students) and made me wonder about what role I would want my parents to have in my children’s rearing. In China, parents often live with their children and help them take care of their kids, especially when they are young. I said that I would like my parents’ help, but that I would like to be able to implement my own parenting style, and that I imagined my parents would want to be off traveling, writing screen plays, doing art, or engaging in social activism somewhere. Anyhow, an interesting question that exposes some of the cultural differences between the US and China.

The next day, we went to a village about a hour away from Dali where Michael’s uncle lives. Michael’s uncle is a rather wealthy government official in the rural town, yet he still lives in a small (but nice) apartment and drives a tin box of a car. Michael said that his uncle didn’t buy a better house and car because he doesn’t want to display his wealth. That could lead to people accusing him of corruption.

We had lunch at Michael’s uncle’s house with more of his extended family and then wandered around the village and some of the surrounding fields. We got back just in time to go out with Michael’s cousin, her husband, and their daughter. We ended up going to KTV (the first time I’ve been to KTV before dark), where we had some beer (a little strange with the young girl there) and sang some songs as several of Michael’s cousin’s friends came by to join in and say hi. We went back to Michael’s uncle’s apartment for dinner, and then sat around watching repetitious news and having a heated debate about the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands while most of the adults played Mahjong in another room.

Over the next few days, Michael and I relaxed and went to a few fun places around Dali. We went back to the old city as well as to a nearby temple frequented mostly by locals on a mountain by the new city and to a famously beautiful mountain by the old city. We were able to sleep late and relax and watch movies and tv shows.  I got some work done on my prospective thesis project. Michael was a terrific host, and I hope to be able to reciprocate if/when he comes to the US in a few years. All in all, it was a really great experience seeing what Spring Festival is like in a Chinese family, and it was a great time spending time with a good friend.

Now I am back in Beijing after a bus ride to nearby Kunming and an early morning plane ride back to the capital. I will start international student orientation and move into the dorm tomorrow. A terrific vacation, and now on to a great second semester!

 A Lijiang alleyway, with barely visible mountaintops visible in the distance

The view at the start of the hike of the Tiger Leaping Gorge

 With one of the hikers I met on the trail

The woman tending this stand kept on asking us if we wanted to buy some "ganja," which she said would help us get up the twenty-eight bends that were just ahead of us

 Relaxing after reaching the top of the twenty-eight bends

 

 The morning of the second day with the sun still behind the mountains

The path was cut flat into the mountain, with waterfalls flowing over it at several points

The beginning of the trail to the bottom of the gorge

 Sky Ladder to the left, safe path to the right

 The terrifying sky ladder safely from the bottom

So we are at the river, are we....

  

 Fierce like the roaring river with my new Spanish friend, Domingo

 Firecrackers like these went off throughout the 9th, the New Year's Eve of the Lunar Calendar. Part of tradition is to light some of these outside the door before eating your New Year's Eve dinner

 Fireworks of all sorts for sale

 I had New Years Eve dinner with Michael, his Dad, his stepmother, and a host of other family members. His stepmother somewhat playfully told her daughter that she wanted a grandchild soon

 Arriving at Michael's after dinner at his Dad's and meeting with friends at the Bad Monkey Bar. You can see the remnants of firecrackers in the hallway

 On the second day of the New Year, Michael and his whole family went to tend the gravestones of family members. Michael's family watered the plants around the graves, arranged a veritable feast in front of the tombs, bowed before them in a specific order (wife/husband, oldest child, his family, next child, and so on), and then cleaned up and snacked on the food that had been in front of the tombs 

After cleaning the tombs, Michael's stepdad drove several of us all the way around Erhai Lake, the large freshwater lake by Dali 

 A day or two later, we went to the countryside where Michael's uncle is a wealthy local official. Michael said that his uncle would like to (and has the means to) live in a large house and drive a nice car, but instead lives in an apartment and drives a tin box of a car because he doesn't want to show his wealth and be accused of corruption.

 Red lanterns and posters with characters for good luck and fortune bedecked most every house and business

 Michael brought me to a local temple complex, where we had to squeeze under a fence at one point to get the best possible view

 Now that's a few - enjoying ice cream in front of Dali City

 People went to one part of the temple with girl/boyfriends and put red thread around the tree to symbolize a long and prosperous relationship

 

Korean Barbacue, where you cook your own food. Michael asked me if they had this sort of thing in the US and I said no, since we would probably sue the restaurant because we had under-cooked our own meat

 View from a nearby mountain as we took a cable car to the highest summit open (the highest was closed because of strong wind)

 The clouds were like none that I had ever seen

 Michael with his mother

In chains with signs that literally say "Car Slave" and "House Slave," which are words used to refer to people who do to extraordinary means (an probably way too much debt) in order to own a car or a home