Best Day Yet

Claire & I have just spent our best day of the holiday (i think) in Dali - a historical/preserved city in Yunnan Province. The town is beautiful, and full of buildings that give justification to the cliched motifs of many Chinese restaurants back home - ornate carved doors, swooping tiled roofs and dragons and lions abound.

We awoke late and after wandering around town for breakfast rented bicycles to explore the surrounding countryside. A few kilometres down the road a few frescoes on the side of the buildings attracted us into a small village. The village had cobble-stoned streets, brick buildings dating back hundreds of years and Chinese people dating back nearly a hundred years going about their daily, agricultural lives. Our presence appeared to disturb little, other than to raise hello's and nihou's from the people. We wandered in and out of several similar, small villages which remind me of the farming villages I've visited in Northumberland, UK - except full of Chinese people. This is one of the few experiences I've had on the trip that I felt I could actually see another way of life, unpolluted by tourism.

The whole region holds a very large population of very big, ugly spiders. Around all the fields (corn mostly) they had strung up giant webs, and as the fields and towns blended together, they were throughout the towns too. The power cables provided the basis for giant webs ruling along the roads and overhead containing hundreds of spiders each.

After our ride lunch beckoned and we settled on a dumpling-place run by two very smiling patrons. The dumplings were amazing, better than I've ever eaten before, and had us contemplating whether we should go back for more today or wait till tomorrow.

Finally in the afternoon we strolled into the city's garden, which was the picture book Chinese garden complete with marble bridge. What especially appealed was the use of the garden by the Chinese inhabitants of the town who were playing marjon, chess and drinking tea with their friends.