DATELINE: Dali, China
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Author: Lauren Cohen
Dear Mom and Dad, I'm sorry for the hours of worry I caused you if you happened to google the Dali Torch Festival after reading my last blog. Yes, I threw fire and had fire thrown at me; but because I was dressed like a commando I emerged from the fray unscathed. On the bus to Kunming now, and feeling quite sad to leave this special place. I did see lots of job postings for English teachers here, though. Hmm...
DATELINE: Dali, China
(Click map for more useful detail)
Author: Lauren Cohen
The food in Yunnan is some of the best I've had in China. Last night I went for dinner with another new associate, a Swiss guy named Didier. He was ready to eat ordinary Chinese food, but I found a restaurant with a separate menu of local Bai specialties (the Bai are the predominant ethnic group in Dali). After telling him some of what I know about Yunnan cuisine, and showing him some of the dishes described in my China Menu iPhone app, he deferred to my expertise and allowed me to order for the table. I asked the waitress for her recommendation and she said if we like spicy, we should try the spicy sauteed beef in Bai sauce. I ordered that, as well as a whole fried carp Dali style and a steamed Bai eggplant dish. The spicy beef never came, nor was it on our bill, but it turned out that the other two dishes were enough. There's something so indulgent about ordering a whole fish and picking it apart. The eggplant came in a complexly-spiced tomato sauce. After dinner we went back to a bar where we had spent some time the previous night, to meet up with another traveler named Gavin. Didier is really nice and respects my knowledge and interests (he said he was surprised, as a Swiss Francophone, that I know so much more than he does about French cuisine and film); Gavin, on the other hand, has me pegged as the ignorant American. He mocks my accent when I try to pronounce foreign words and thinks it's just hilarious that he speaks six languages and I only speak one (I didn't let on that I can read and understand a fair amount of French, because he would slip into French whenever he wanted to make a snide comment to Didier - I mean, obviously if 3 people are sitting around speaking English and suddenly 2 of them break into another language, it's meant to exclude person #3, so I figured I would let them play that game if they wanted to). I haven't written much about my experience being an American tourist in China, which has mostly come up vis a vis travelers from other Western countries (to Chinese, we're all the same kind of honky - for example at the Chairman Mao residence in Shanghai, the young Chinese guide asked my friend Michiel if I was his daughter, despite the fact that he's only ten years older than me and a blond Dutchman, an amusing reversal of the conception that Westerners think "all Asians look alike"). The only Americans I have come across have been one family from Philadelphia I met on the Great Wall. Travelers from Europe and Australia are surprised to see an American because the perception is that we don't travel to non-Western countries. For the most part, though, everyone has been respectful; if anything, they see it as a positive thing that I'm going against the stereotype. Gavin may try to belittle me, but I don't let it bother me, because, quite frankly, speaking multiple languages and living around the world is not the sole indicator of one's intelligence. Most of his comments in general, not just the ones directed at me, where inane and banal. The depth of my knowledge of the English language is likely about equivalent to the breadth of his knowledge of multiple ones. Still, I could only stand his company for a short while, so I left for the friendlier terrain of Bad Monkey. I made it an early night, though, because of course I had to wake up for the cormorant fishing excursion. I was the only one who had signed up for the trip from the hostel, so a taxi took me to the lake. We drove past some of the most beautiful landscape I've ever seen: lush green fields with grassy-yet-jagged mountains rising beyond them. I took lots of pictures, though I'm not sure how they turned out considering I was in a moving car. The cormorant fishing itself was a thoroughly touristified experience, but it was still a great one. I was the only Westerner in our group of three rowboats being commandered by a Bai woman yelling in Chinese through a megaphone. Our three boats surrounded the cormorant fisherman's boat, which had a row of birds on either side. We watched the fisherman release the birds into the water. They swam along next to the boat and dove under to bring up fish. When they brought back the large fish to the fisherman, they were rewarded with a small fish as a treat. After watching the birds catch some fish, our boats went to the lakeside for some snacks. They had skewers of while fried shrimp (little ones, whole and unpeeled) and skewers of small fish fried and also eaten whole. I pointed to one of each of the skewers and the Bai woman put it into the oil for a few minutes than sprinkled it with a spicy powder (she tried to hand me mine without the spices, but I corrected her). The tiny whole fish and crustaceans were strangely addictive, like any salty bar snack that one intends only to nibble on but ends up eating handfuls. Of course Chinese people were amused by the fact that a Westerner was there and eating their food and wanted to take pictures with me. I've grown accustomed to this phenomenon and now, whenever someone asks shyly in broken English, "you take picture with me?" I hand over my camera to the photographer as well. After the morning excursion, I've spent another day enjoying the heavenly weather and scenery here. Tonight is the Torch Festival, and (as per instructions from the Bad Monkey guys), I've bought myself a longsleeved shirt, gloves, and bandannas. Sounds ominous, but they promise me it will be an unforgettable experience.
