Whoops, falling behind again. I feel like I should at least have all of this trip record done before the Olympics start, though. An arbitrary deadline, yes, but I’ve got other stuff I’d like to blog about, too, so it’s time to try to wrap this up.
K. and I got up at 5am to fly from Beijing to Lijiang, a rather tourist-oriented town near the Tibetan border that our spring study abroad students visit during their mid-program trip. We were using the same tour company that the program has used for the past two years to book the tickets there, arrange an overnight stay and a mini-tour, and then get us on a flight to Kunming, the city where the spring program is based. We were, how shall I put this?… underwhelmed by the service provided.
On the way there, our direct flight from Beijing to Lijiang, which we had paid quite a bit more for than the flight with the layover in Kunming, stopped in Kunming anyway. It turns out that “direct” means that you don’t have to change planes, but do have to get out and sit in their lounge for an hour or more. It did not seem worth the added expense once we understood this, but on the other hand, all of our luggage arrived with us, so that’s something.
When we arrived, a guide from the tour company met us at the airport with a sign. He then led us out to the parking lot to meet the driver. They loaded all of our stuff into the car, we got in… and the car wouldn’t start. We got back out and the guys began to push the car, eventually with some help from some other waiting drivers in the parking lot. Apparently, the car just needed a running start. How auspicious.
Fortunately, the car was then able to get us to the entrance to Old Town without having to stop. Our guest house was located in there, in the historical center of Lijiang that has in recent years been turned into a tourist area of shops, restaurants, and guest houses. We’re told that the government moved all the residents out of their historical homes and into new apartment buildings in the newer part of town due to fears that the old buildings were not earthquake safe, which is likely true. In the meantime, though, until an earthquake actually destroys Old Town, they’ll market the area as much as possible as a tourist attraction.
One of its unique features is the historical cobbled roads, which are too narrow to allow cars, so we had to more or less hike to the guest house, rolling our luggage along behind us, creating terrific amounts of noise on the cobbles. It seems I am destined to travel to distant tourist destinations in China with more luggage than it seems like I would need. I kept wanting to explain to people, “I know I’m only here for 1.5 days, but I’ve been traveling for more than 2 weeks! Really!”
Once checked into the guest house, our guide left us for the day, promising to come back for us the next morning at 8:30 to take us on our tour. The guest house was actually very nice, in what we took to be one of the old traditional houses of the area, all built around a central courtyard and very quiet. We appeared to be the only people staying there at the time. We set out to explore Old Town on our own. Despite the endless number of tiny shops selling the exact same tourist souvenirs, these several hours were actually quite pleasant, wandering around the twisty lanes, following the walk beside the canal full of enormous koi, eventually finding the main plaza.
We also got all of our souvenir shopping done, taking advantage of the endless stores. I got some tea for myself and my parents and a purple jade dragon for Mark. Other local specialties spotted that I noted but did not buy: yak leather, yak jerky, yak yogurt (with and without fruit added), and yaks to have one’s picture taken with. Horses and small children in extremely bright “traditional” dress were also available for picture purposes.
We managed to find our way back to our guest house to deposit our purchases and rest briefly before heading back out to find dinner. We more or less picked a restaurant at random from the ones we had seen earlier that day along the canal. Bizarrely, it was called Le Petite Paris, and our waiter was wearing a beret. There was very loud music playing from the speaker more or less right over our table, but it got turned off soon after we got there, but that didn’t last long, because it turned out that they were just setting up for the evening entertainment. So that’s how we ended up eating Chinese food in a faux French restaurant, listening to loud remixed ethnic music, watching the waitstaff perform native Naxi dances, half of them in t-shirts and jeans, half in native costumes redone in practically neon colors, all under a flashing laser light show. And since we were attractively foreign, they had seated us right next to the windows to the sidewalk next to the canal, so we got quite a few, um, admirers? gawkers? One man walked directly into the hanging lantern right outside. This got old after a while.
After we finished dinner, we walked back to the main plaza, because K. had heard it got lit up at night. It did indeed look pretty, and there were a ton of people all just hanging out there. We found a place to sit for a while, too, before we decided to go back to the guest house and sleep.
The next day, the guide showed up at 8:30, led us on a reverse trip through the streets with all our luggage, put it back in the car, (a different car, this time, that seemed to work more reliably,) and then took us to the tour company’s office so we could pay for the whole package. Despite our having asked carefully the day before if they could take credit cards and getting an affirmative reply, it turned out that the credit card machine only worked for Bank of China cards. Why the guide thought we would have a Bank of China card when he knew we were there on a business trip from the US, I don’t know, but he managed to look completely shocked. The tour fee was also much higher than we recalled being quoted originally, but of course we had no access to email at this point to confirm that. So then we had to make a trip to the ATM to get out an enormous amount of cash from our personal accounts, since our work credit card couldn’t be used. Business trips in cash economies for employers who only do reimbursements after the fact can be a little nerve-wracking. We did it anyway.
Then our guide asked if we had had breakfast yet, to which we replied no. He asked what we wanted. We were feeling cranky and increasingly irritated at this point, and neither of us wanted to deal with anything very complicated, so we said, “Something small.” This led to a near-exact repeat of the first conversation we had with the restaurant staff at the hotel in Beijing. People in China appear to either not believe in small meals or in the idea that Americans could want a small meal. We eventually found a backpackers’ cafe, where K. and I got toast, and the guide and tour company accountant (who we had picked up along the way of dealing with all these money issues) each had something enormous. I honestly think the guide had spaghetti.
After the meal and getting through the frustration of explaining that yes, we really did need official receipts to verify that we had just handed them huge stacks of cash, we finally got in the car with the driver and the guide and all our luggage, and set off for Tiger Leaping Gorge, which we had been told was the ultimate destination for our spring students’ trip. K. and I were both looking forward to it, especially after all the smog and congestion of Beijing. The drive from Lijiang to the gorge was about 2 hours. We saw a lot of countryside, but I don’t know what any of it was, because our guide didn’t tell us anything about it. The main excitement was our driver pulling into three different gas stations, each miles and miles apart, and being repeatedly told that the stations had no more gas. It took two stations before K. and I figured out what the problem was, and then we started worrying we were going to get stranded out there in the mountains. But the last station did actually have some gas, so disaster was averted.
When we got to the national park, the guide paid the entrance fees, left the driver in the parking lot, and escorted us through the gate. We then walked along a completely flat, paved path along the side of the gorge. It was dotted with many signs encouraging people to stay close to the face of the mountain in case of rock slides, and there were regularly spaced guards all the way to the end of the path, armed with bullhorns to yell at people breaking the rules. Bullhorns didn’t strike me as the best equipment in an area prone to rock slides. The path ended up being maybe 1.5 miles long, and it never did get particularly interesting. It never deviated from its flat curves hugging the wall, except to go through equally flat and paved tunnels. The main sight to see was a place where the gorge became narrower and had a large rock in the middle. The story is that a hunter was following a tiger that he had wounded and thought he had it trapped against the river. But instead, the tiger turned and leapt onto the rock in the middle, and from there onto the opposite shore. There is now a statue of the tiger waiting to jump on one of the shores.
Then we turned and walked back. The entire tour had been about an hour. When we got back to the entrance area, K. and I had thought that the guide would have us get back in the car to go to the next of the three gorge areas, but instead he asked, “Is there anything else you want to do?” We were confused because we thought that’s why we had hired a guide at all, because we needed to be shown what there was to see, not knowing anything about the area. I tried to be tactful and asked if there wasn’t anything else he wanted to show us, to which he replied, “Not really.” So then we decided we might as well have lunch there at the park entrance, since there wasn’t anything else to do.
The guide and the driver appeared quite happy to be having a free meal paid for by our trip fee, and proceeded to order quite a few dishes from the owner. They did not consult us. When we asked what they had ordered in an attempt to have conversation, the guide looked totally confused as to why we would want to know. It turned out to all be pretty good, but later, when I had paused in my eating to drink some tea, he asked me, looking kind of offended, if I didn’t like the food because I wasn’t eating very much. *sigh*
K. took a restroom break before we got back in the car to return to Lijiang, and our guide also handed his stuff over to the driver and excused himself, saying, “I eat too much, and now I don’t feel good, because last night I have too much to drink.” I began to suspect that our lackluster tour on the boring path, instead of the hiking intensive one that we know our students took, was due to a hangover. On the drive back, the guide slept the whole way. K. and I were not impressed. We were deposited back at the airport a good three hours before our plane was scheduled to depart. The plane was late, of course, so we probably spent about 6 hours there in total, but by this point, we were getting used to killing time. We were very glad to get on the plane to leave.
Read on for our final days in China.
Coming in on the middle of the adventure? Start here.
