Learn Chinese, Travel or Work in China
Lijiang: the South door to Tibet.
This story tells how instead of get on the public bus that from Lijiang arrives to Lugu Lake – the homeland of Mosuo people, last matriarchal tribe, – we trusted a crazy driver and reached the lake only after ten hours of vicissitudes.
We leave Dali to reach Lijiang in a comfortable minivan packed with German tourists, their flip flips and a some Yunnan campesinos.
The driver is annoyed because [Read more...]
Fruit market in Dali.
We leave the Stone Forest and, as soon as we arrive in Kunming, we understand we don’t wanna stay in yet another metropolis. No need to travel till Yunnan for it. Then we take a minivan – call it a “bus” would be way too generous – till the 汽车站 (qiche zhan, the bus station) where we buy two tickets to Dali, town with name almost as exotic as Timbuktu.
We are lucky: the bus leaves in twenty minutes and at six p.m. we are already in Dali New Town. Yes, in Dali they built the modern metropolis fifteen kilometers far away from the Old Town. I’m not sure whether they did it to preserve the traditional architecture or because, from a logistical point of view, it was more convenient to develop the new town in another place. Knowing the taste of Chinese for urban sustainability and business matters, I would say [Read more...]
