Lijiang, Yunnan, China Visit

 Hi family,

Read the 3 Guilin posts first!  After Guilin we headed to the southwest part of China that is north of Laos & Myanmar and to the west is Tibet.  The city of Lijiang has many ethnic Chinese minorities and there are a couple of villages on the outskirts of Lijiang where the Yi and Shu minorities (if my memory serves me correctly) live in more of a traditional fashion.  The city / valley is about 7000 feet in elevation so if you see snow on the peaks be assured that the peak is quite high in elevation.  From this "valley" on to the west is the Tibetan or Himalayan plateau.  I hope to be able to go to Tibet where the plateaus & valley floors are over 10000 feet high...and then the mountains ramp up from that elevation.

Climbing Lion Mountain to visit the pagoda on top of the hill took some getting used to because at that elevation I became winded easily. But the view was nice....

Lijiang is a village type city in that it mainly has homes and home-style shops in their neighborhoods vice the common high-rise apartment buildings that typify most of the traditional Chinese cities.

This side of Lijiang has what few high-rises there are in this earthquake-prone area.

This is the pagoda on the top of Lion mountain. One of the few pagodas you can climb up to the top and enjoy a panoramic view of Lijiang and the mountain peaks that surround this high valley.

The rammer on the left is for ringing the bell on the right but I found a fairly effective way of reducing the noise from the bell...yet my head is still ringing...why is that!?!?!?!?.  Things I do when Marian is not present to properly care for me...if that is possible.

The large buildings in the foreground are where the governor or provincial leader lived in the good ole days before the revolution.  As you can see although the style is consistent, the size of the governors complex was much bigger than the commoners that surrounded his palace.

Tree-lined street near the Lijiang market area.

Although they kept the style in some of the minority areas, clearly a lot of money has been put into rebuilding many of these storefronts and village Inns.  All of the villages and town areas were criss-crossed with many steams.

This village had many springs and mostly waterways between buildings.

There were many gardens behind the stores and homes that lined the main streets.  The villages were built around the many springs because in general this area is much dryer than Southeast China and Sichuan where I live.

Silversmithing (and mining) are very big in this area.  This silver and jewel bedazzled skull was interesting.  Not exactly my taste.  Smoking tobacco and other weeds created to torment mankind is popular throughout the region and the other artifacts in this window are designed for smoking those substances.  I guess if you used silver ornamented pipes you'd soon want a silver plated cow skull..

Many of the ethnic minorities still wore traditional clothing.  They're probably thinking that they can't wait until the tourists go home so they can change into their jeans.

In this one village silk needlework was a traditional craft.  There were two historic silk roads in China.  One in the north and one through the south and down into Myanmar.  This area was on the southern silk road.

This silk tapestry found its way into my things........and back to Chengdu with me.

This is a video of the NaXi (Na-she) minority people dancing.  Their traditional clothing includes pads on the backs and straps for carrying things....they were always carrying things for farming or for animal husbandry.

This is interesting stylized art where they used pictures posed to represent the chinese characters.  I guess we do the same thing (using people posed as letters) I just never saw this done before.  Perhaps the inspiration lies in the written language of one of the local ethnic people where they used pictographs but much more graphic in their meaning (see below)

Marriage, dancing, fishing. climbing.....more self-evident than chinese pictographs but then less adapted for abstract ideas or concepts.

This video that shows a little farm truck.  The front end is a versatile tractor section that can be unhitched from the wagon and used to pull small plows or disc.  The blue yoke sticking through the firewall has handle bars that hook to it so that it can also be used like a self-propelled roto-tiller.  Or the rubber tires can be replaced with the large diameter metal rimmed wheels for working in rice paddies.  The engine is cooled by a boiling water system with some air cooling that you have to top off through the open hole in the top.  This same design was used in Taiwan when I was there in 1976-7!!!

This same engine design is being installed in new 6-wheel dump trucks that connect the rubber transmission belts to a real geared transmission!  Needless to say they are an obstacle to traffic when they pull out with a load as we saw many times in driving through the mountains.  Actually, it is possible that those trucks have a larger displacement engine of the same design, but it is the same design engine.  This is not the most modern of Chinese farm equipment but it is still the most common and they can be found in farms outside any major Chinese city.

Intriguing English language translations can be found through out China.  However, these were some of the best translated yet very odd messages that I've  for public area signage!

Last but not the least -- the common garbage can.  China has more recycling/non-recycling dual bin garbage cans everywhere.  In Lijiang they are stylized to match Chinese architecture.  They even have a battery recycling compartment.  The wood hanging fish is a Lijiang area cultural icon meaning plentiful rainfall and plenty to eat.

China has these everywhere.  Now they just need to tell the Chinese what they are used for so they stop throwing trash down on the ground within a few feet of these.  But then they would also have to empty these if people put the trash in them.  Now if they could work on spitting in public, or rather refraining from spitting in public.