DATELINE: Lijiang, China
(Click map for more useful detail)
Author: Lauren Cohen
Once again I find myself in a lovely place nearly by accident. Lijiang, an ancient city in Northwestern Yunnan Province. It was named a UNESCO World Heritage site, but threatened with having that status revoked as it became "too touristy." The touristy-ness was one reason why I didn't make visiting here a priority; the other was that Tony came here and ate only slimy-looking vegetable dishes that even he didn't seem to enjoy. My next stop after Chengdu was to be Dali, about 3 hours by bus from here. There are no flights or trains directly from Chengdu to Dali, so my plan was to fly into Lijiang, take a quick jaunt through the old town, and get right on a bus to Dali. Well, once again my plans were thwarted as I was inexplicably bumped from my flight, despite having an email confirmation saying "Your trip is reserved." The lovely people at Air China in the Chengdu airport dealt expertly with my near panic-attacks and managed to get me a seat on the next flight that evening, even though they had initially said all flights were full until Wednesday. I had a lovely bulkhead seat next to an adorable little girl (perhaps 4 years old?) and her mom. She was restless and I played with her the whole time. She kept opening the armrest thing, and I opened it and pretended to recoil in horror at the scary thing inside. She imitated me and got her mom to do the same. That game lasted a few minutes. Then we played "throw the flight magazine into the lap of the person next to you and exclaim 'Pwah!'" When the flight crew announced we were preparing for landing, the girl was exasperating her mom by fussing about the seatbelt and opening the clasp. I invented a new game: touch the seatbelt and pretend it's extremely hot and painful to touch. I'll be a totally kickass mom someday. So anyway - I arrived late in Lijiang, well after the long-distance buses had stopped running. I hopped on the airport bus to the city, then took a cab to the old town, where I had read in Lonely Planet, "Throw a stick and you'll hit a charming Naxi guest house." (The Naxi are the ethnic minority indigenous to this area). I walked around the charming stone paths (no cars in old town) and found one with a room for a good price. I then set out to find something to eat. I walked into a noisy bar. The host looked at me nervously and said, "no English menu." I smiled and said the Mandarin word for "beer." He brought me a Pabst Blue Ribbon in a *bottle* which I've only ever seen once before, at a dive in Brookyn Heights. The bar was loud and raucous. There were wooden blocks on all the tables, and every few minutes the clientele would burst into song and bang the blocks on the table. I was the only Westerner in the bar and was treated like a celebrity, with people approaching me nonstop to clink bottles. I met a girl who spoke some English and she took me across the street to what seemed like the only food stall still open. I pointed to a chicken skewer, expecting it to be grilled as I had seen done before. Instead, the lady put it into a wok of hot oil that must have contained some chili oil because the cooked chicken had a red hue and a spicy flavor. She sprinkled sesame seeds on it. I saw stacks of flatbread - a local specialty called Baba. It's a greasy layered flatbread stuffed with a mash of fruit and nuts. It was a perfect way to round out the meal. After taking lots of pictures with my new drinking buddies, I went back to the guesthouse and settled in to sleep underneath a cozy comforter. (I forgot to mention that the first attribute of Lijiang that I really appreciated was the fact that I had to wear my shrug for the first time. The temperature here is so comfortable compared to the scorching heat I've been subjected to so far). It's morning now and I'm sitting in a charming cafe next to the stream eating local specialties of fried goat cheese and local potato pancake. The food here is great: sorry Tony, but your fixers really screwed the pooch here.
