… 6 o’clock it is. The sunrise defines the shapes of the terraces from our fantastic hotel point of view and reveals foggy pockets of landscape. One of the local mutts strategically lies down on a stone ledge and lets itself appear as if thoughtfully gazing at the horizon. What a camwhore!

6.15 am: poser dog does its staring move. The girls go crazy.

The way down is fast and soon we reach the bus and then the rafting place. How great is that, I join a Chinese tour and I get free rafting. Apparently they’re trialing the place, which will open in October for the national holiday. The toilets look quite aged already, though, but much more civilized than anything I’ve seen so far. They even have doors.

I still haven’t grasped how wet I will get. Rafting is a very wet and exhilarating business. Two hours of rapids, fast slides… I’m soaked, i’ve been sitting in water for hours and i’m sunburnt. It’s fantastic: the Chinese tourists love throwing water at the “laowai” (me), I spray back with gusto. The meal at the end of the morning is also one of the best I’ve had in the country and it pleases my “local friends” that I eat from all courses and I can chew chilies, even though I’m not supposed to eat them at all, dumb foreigner.

This was a great lunch. Always trust the locals, even when you can only say xie xie and smile making funny faces to show appreciation. Haochi!

More sweat awaits as we get to Guilin, I pack my backpack up from the hostel and lumber towards the bus station, fully loaded and looking forward to Yangshuo, Erica and CC. Once more, Moyar saves the day and gets us on the right bus – I would still be there waiting if it wasn’t for her… A Chinese couple from the Jinkeng trip follows as well. We can’t speak to each other, but we’re having a good time.

Off to Yangshuo!

I am the only white person on the bus on the way to the hotel in the Jinkeng rice terraces. I am in fact booked in as ‘the white guy’…
The bus plays a promo video full of happy Yao people singing and dancing, as minorities do when they don’t smile on posters, happily gazing at the bright future. Right.

We lumber through the ugly Guilin suburbs traffic in a strange scenery: right behind the half-finished houses and the damn cables (which prevent all nice pictures), karst peaks peek out of the fog. I’m looking forward to seeing more. And less cables, if possible. The video now playing is a comedy show. The audio booms, untamed. There is no way to get rid of it!

Once we get off the bus and start climbing up towards the hotel, I smile: it was worth all the hassle. As we pass lower villages crowded with buses and walk up the path to Dazhai, the first scenarios offer themselves to the eye: tiny clusters of wooden houses floating in the rice terraces, almost ready for harvesting. And that’s just a taster, as I will discover. Yao women with empty baskets offer to carry the bags up the steep hills (one is actually washing her hair like in the videos).
I am very lucky to meet a friendly Chinese girl, expat in Singapore. We’ll stick together for the rest of the day talking English. She’s a life saver with the food: there are some other white people (DUTCH AGAIN OH NOO), but the menu is very devoid of English words.

Bamboo chicken: you grow up the bird in the tube and one day you chuck it in the fire. I'm kidding.

I discover at this point that the hotel organizes the trip as a full package: we’ll walk around together with a guide and… go on a white water rafting tomorrow. All included in the cheap rent. I am pleased.

But I am holding back my impression of the terraces. As we toil upwards towards the hotel, which is the highest of the whole area, we often stop to take the scenery in. It is amazing. Every corner, every peak of the area is covered in terraces, which snake through the landscape like a dragon’s backbone (hence the name of the area), the odd house here and there breaks the sea of green and gold.

On the way up, villages are cradled in the rice. They've been there for centuries.

I take a ridiculous amount of pictures from the 3 main viewpoints, which boast names like ‘golden Buddha hill’. The sky opens up enough to allow some dramatic shots, where a patch of light travels through the landscape, defining shapes.
It is quite a trek as we end up walking in single file for almost 6 hours on flagstones and clay paths. The last 10 minutes we get rained upon, but it’s ok. I am really on vacation

I could have stared at the view for hours, trying to spot all the shiny details like this one

The evening meal is great, thanks to my friend Moyar’s choices.
Lights go off at 10: tomorrow morning we’ll wake up at 6 to catch the sunrise!

I wonder how this will look tomorrow morning. I'm on top of the world!

Kunming è un aeroporto simpatico, ci sono giovani con vestiti tradizionali che si offrono per trasporto bagagli, numerosi fruttivendoli (dentro l’aeroporto) e la pubblicità delle misteriose pastiglie per la gola che mio padre portava dalla cina per un po’, testimonial kaka’.
È anche pieno di white people e mi ritrovo una comitiva di olandesi in aereo. L’orticaria si scatena velocemente al suono della lingua più brutta d’europa.
La destinazione, Guilin, soffre dello strascico di un tifone che ha colpito la costa: afa insopportabile, peggio che a PD, estate 2003. La ragazza dell’ostello però è contenta, perché non pioveva da un po’ e non deve bagnare i bambù.
L’ostello ha infatti come tema il bambù ed è una piacevole oasi nella parte moderna della città, orribile come tutte le città cinesi in veloce sviluppo.
Cammino in cerca di bancomat e cibo, lungo viali enormi in piena costruzione. Traffico, poca luce, edifici incombenti su questo povero ometto di provincia veneta che, diciamolo, si è perso. Mi sento un po’ come quand’ero arrivato a Memphis, unico bianco nella notte umida di una brutta periferia.
La differenza è che qui, a pensarci, non è per niente ostile. Quasi quasi torno all’ostello senza cena, ma mi faccio coraggio e punto un posticino in una laterale: c’è gente seduta e questo basta, stando alle guide.

Ce l’ho fatta! Mi sto nutrendo! Gli omini davanti a me discutono e mangino una montagna di roba.

Complice l’istinto materno della padrona, il dizionarietto e il fatto che, dopotutto, mica era un posto losco, mi sfamo con un euro, inclusa birra grande, molto apprezzata. Duoshao? shi (dita a croce a indicare 10), xie xie. Avanti così e compro una macchina, o una casa

Basta così per oggi, la mia comfort zone è stata tirata abbastanza. Domani si va alle risaie terrazzate: organizzare la tappa è stato un bel casino, spero ne valesse la pena.

With people day behind us, we start off for trekking & temples day. Dali sits at the base of 3000+ m mountains, so there are chances for challenging walks even though Jolie keeps of course rapping about Tibet, where she has just been.

After the usual crowded minibus ride, we stop in front of Guanyin Tang. This is a rich, complex temple where people worship mainly Avalokiteshvara and the local goddess Guanyin, the one I mentioned earlier, who appeared as an old woman carrying a huge boulder to scare enemies away (boulder size varies per image). There’s a lot of detail to take in here, much more than in Shaxi: the guardians, the Buddhas, several courtyards, all richly decorated and packed with writing. Jolie and I get a bit mystical. It becomes a sort of ‘Buddhism and Christianity 101′.

Guanyin Tang. I’m sure it looks more cheerful on a sunny day.

I particularly like the second courtyard, where the small shrine sits in the middle of a pool full of goldfish and carp, to symbolize the reincarnation cycle. This is also the bit of the temple related to another local legend: a demon was outsmarted by a Buddha (er, it might have been a Bodhisattva…)  and was stuck to live in a cave, on top of which the temple was built. It can only get out if one day nobody comes to the market. Twat demon .

The fish swim and swim around the shrine

We hitch a ride up the hill to reach Gantong Si, another popular temple, this time a Zen one. It used to be much larger, now all is left is a very cosy courtyard filled with trees and flowers, where we wait for lunch to be prepared for the caretaker and the monks.

Zen, man. In big letters

We enjoyed the vegetarian banquet, now it’s sweat time: we hike up a stream for 3-4 hours, getting lost a couple of times in the process. This whole area features 18 scenic streams, of which this is supposedly the best. As we climb higher, the Erhai lake becomes more visible behind us, far away.

Competing brands make peace in this tourist’s outfit, including the silly cowboy hat. Jolie did not grasp the concept of ‘force the flash’

It’s a steep climb, but all that healthy Nike life proves useful and I feel great. We sneak past the ticket booth at the end of the path, right before the scenic area. It was empty anyway.

Here is a giant Go board, set in an amazing location at the foot of a canyon, where the Qing Bi flows to the lake. The canyon itself is decorated by a couple of very buddhist features: the mandatory Avalokiteshvara statue in the middle of a quiet pool and a giant calligraphy sample painted on a naked rock – I forgot what it says.

Ancient words of wisdom and modern words of Chinglish.

I leave Jolie to rest and start off on my own up the canyon, in search of more pools like the first one. I walk and walk craving some picture material: after 30 minutes of canyon, going up and down on the narrow path and a hell of a lot of bamboo, nothing. Not a human within earshot. At this point a get my mini pseudo enlightenment and realize my desire is empty and I’m content with the sensations of energy the walk has given me OMMM. Also, my paranoia side dryly points out that I’m on my own on a narrow path up a mountain in remote China – Shut up, I’m on vacation

I literally run back to the meeting point, covering the distance in 15 minutes, feeling like a million bucks. We treat ourselves on the way back and take the cable car: there is a bird’s eye view over the stream we hiked and we mock the losers who took the cable car on the way up as well. Good job!

Damn, I’m leaving Dali tomorrow.

Even more than in the rest of the world, hostels in China work as a mini travel agency too and the Jade Emu is no exception. Trips, bikes, telephone cards (wait, i needed one x( )… I book a very convenient express bus to Kunming, 4.5 hours for 85 rmb. Express seem to mean it looks like a bus as we know it and it won’t stop to pick random pedestrians up. It delivers, but…
Somewhere 100 km or so from the goal, we are forced out of the expressway by a roadblock, the purpose of which is unknown. There is a pileup at the exit, but on a side road, so why the fuss? Buses, trucks and the odd car cram themselves in the country road, apparently without logic to my western mind. There is very little honking compared to the usual routine, strangely enough. Must be those policemen.
3 days in spiritual lands must have worked their magic on my tiny hippie side and I’m not freaking out: I need to catch a flight in the late afternoon and I might miss it, but I’m not even looking at my watch (it takes effort, admittedly). Instead I eat a tangerine and sort of contemplate my navel, Buddha-style. I reach some form of enlightenment when my very cute seat neighbour gestures that i can throw the fruit peels out of the window, which she promptly does. Sexy?
The roadblock dissolves as it had started, not without some crazy antics by truck drivers who try to weasel out of the gridlock; now we’re speeding towards Kunming, let’s hope I can make it to the airport on time. Are we tailgating a truck at 120 per hour?

The road to Kunming bus station is uber-Chinese: buses need to double back and cross a construction area to reach the station. Taxis cut our path many times, no signage is visible, but I make it, on time, worrying was useless. Ommm…

I try to catch a cab using Chinese: my first full “sentence” on my own! dao feiji qiang – they laugh at me but I have a taxi. Racist thoughts briefly cross my mind, but only briefly. I’m almost in Guilin now, closer to the rice terraces, Yangshuo and eventually Erica and CC.

While strolling around Shaping, i comment about the huge loads women carry on their backs. Jolie them tells me of a local goddess, who embodies the quintessential Yunnan woman: at the time of the Nanzhao kingdom (let’s say 1000 ago, during the Tang dinasty), she appeared to the invading eastern army as an old lady carrying a huge boulder. That scared the soldiers enough, as if an old lady could be that strong, what of the men?
Yunnan women do carry huge weights, hence the legend. The men’s occupation seems mostly to smoke, drive and squat around waiting. I’m told they bring the bread home, so they must be working at some point.

I can't help wondering what would happen if they got angry...

The market is as expected: women in local Bai minority costumes, mysterious food, tea, chili, skin baked by the mountain sun. I drink some minty jelly with white gizmos floating in it and i immediately receive a star wars-style message from my father “young man, do not eat from street markets, do not have anything with ice…” i dismiss it and give my drink to Jolie just in case. Everything will be fine at the end of the day, despite a day of street market eating. Take that, family paranoia!

Later in the day, we stop in Zoucheng. The market here takes place  under two giant trees, which shield the people from the blazing sun. I’m kind of pushed gently towards the tie-and-dye workshop of a friend of Jolie’s and it’s ok. People making stuff always interest me and the scenery of bright yellow corn drying and indigo blue vats is a great memory and it’s ok to buy two slightly tacky indigo blue pieces of tie-and-dye. It looks better than the crap ones the hippies sold in Berkeley, a long way from here…

As we get back to the bikes, I notice some murals for kids, teaching them about the basic dangers electrical appliances can be.

Jolie also explains that everyone thinks we’re poor since we biked here instead of taking the bus. That is funny on many levels.

Corn drying is a common sight in the courtyard of Yunnan houses, or even on the street of the village.

It’s time to go back to Dali: we try the smaller road, supposedly a nice ride as opposed to the crowded highway. After a while though, we must leave it. It’s continuous roadworks, lots of dust, after one hour of it I truly hate the place. I bike in front of a school and get the usual HALLOO routine from the kids, but i’m such a bad mood I wish them a life of struggle and lack of civil liberties. It’s not cute anymore little f.ers, don’t you have a television?
I stop after the school and for the first time in two hours I realise I am covered in dust, sunglasses included. And I still wear a cowboy hat, mind you. No wonder the kids were laughing… I feel quite silly. The kids were still annoying, though.

Today is “people day”: we will visit markets and villages by bike. We will end up biking for 60 km…

The road is busy and noisy with the trademark honking and one-cylinder roar of mini vans. It rolls by rice paddies and further away, Erhai Hu, the lake.

Rice is ready to be harvested in Yunnan. Behind this, coughing exhausts and honking.

First stop, Xizhou: surrounded by a wall in the Bai style, whitewashed with painted panels on the walls. Very different from Lijiang, it’s a bit run down. We are here to taste the best “baba” bread around Dali. Xizhou delivers: the filled bread is delicious, both in the sweet and savoury versions! I would not stop for a second to buy something from those guys sweating over the crude ovens on the square. One more point for Jolie

Baba bread is cooked by stacking two trays full of embers on top of each other.

The Qing era house is also interesting: it is a huge wooden mansion, formerly owned by a merchant with an interest for the West. At the back of it we find in fact a little palace, whose 19-century style stone walls and mini-garden feel awkward as they sit right by a wooden two-storey house with open terraces.

We try to get Chinese tourists to pay money to take pictures with the foreigner (me), but they don’t buy it. Dammit! On to the next village.

I follow Jolie’s advice and we leave Lijiang on the old road, going to Shaxi. The minibus huffs and puffs through the suburbs, as the city wakes up, then briefly uphill.

Passenger number 1 is a charming cigar-smoking old man who wears the same cheap tacky cowboy hat I wear. The hat is a bit of a long story, let it be known that it features a bull’s head fantastically similar to the ball team’s logo. I will learn to hate it with passion as it’s very impractical to carry around. Anyway, the old man is very polite and only spits in the street, not inside.

We’re going to see old stuff, which makes me happy.

Is that... gas? It's water, you idiot tourist.

Part 1

Going to Shaxi was indeed a great idea. The center of this former tea caravan station is picture perfect, the guesthouse we stop in as well (owner was an interior designer), the mixed Buddhist temple a wonderful sight. It’s a pity that frescoes and statues were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. The temple offers itself as a series of cool, quiet courtyards, painted red. See further why I call it “mixed Buddhist”.

Let me now introduce Herr Wolf, backpacker extraordinaire: 66-year old, German, 50th time in China, a true lone wolf. We hire a tuc tuc up to Shibaoshan together, another hour on a bumpy road in a vehicle of questionable safety, but completely worth the hassle.

The locals turn around when Herr Wolf passes by, not only because of his slight B.O.; Jolie tries to get business tips from the seasoned guide.

What we find is a 1000-year or so old complex of carved buddhist statues. Apparently it survived the fate of the temple because Chairman Mao knew about it and sent a bunch of renowned scientist there “so that they could understand the origin of man”. Read further, there was probably humour in his request.

Jolie knows a lot about Buddhism and explains to me how peculiar Yunnan is in this respect: we are looking at types of Buddha and related divinities (the Eight Kings) which are typical of Tibet Buddhism, along with other groups that feature “normal Chinese” Buddhism. The largest group of statues is incredible and still keeps some ancient paint.

The peak of the experience is… a vulva. A 1000-year-old carving of a giant vulva which you can worship – but no pictures: what goes on in there stays in there, like Las Vegas. I clumsily, but respectfully bow to the origin of man and we leave. I resist and take no pictures of the statues. I feel a mix of reverence and surveillance cameras over me.

Even the rocks around Shibaoshan are special.

Part 2
It’s 6 pm and my butt has spent most of the day on buses big and small and a bumpy tuc tuc ride. The trip back home starts when we realize the tuc tuc to the remote statue sanctuary was too slow and we might miss the bus to Dali. Bus=anything on wheels capable of carrying people, mind you. No clear signs of what goes where.
The Chinese countryside solution is: flag anything that moves, discuss with the random driver, raise voice, exchange cell numbers just in case, rush to the bus town on yet another dodgy minibus, pay. We’re probably a high point in the driver’s day: two “waiguoren” and a crazy chick with a cowboy hat.
I realize that, behind the harsh, cheerless-sounding, loud tones of people’s conversations, everyone is being very helpful. Drivers stand by until we catch another bus (ok, I haven’t paid them yet), random bystanders chime in to tell us what bus goes where… It’s cool.

We have managed to catch the bus as I type this on my phone. It is a fantastic ride, continuous honking, horribly dangerous passes… But more important, it’s packed with old Bai ethnic granmas and their chests. We only miss chicken, but there’s a guy with a chest full of mushrooms. We have  just passed a goat herd – more honking.

Two more hours of switchbacks, an unexpected change of bus (thank god there’s Jolie) and we’re home in Dali.

The Yunnan sun must have some magic properties, since I’ve been walking a lot, sleeping too little and eating one big meal a day. Tomorrow promises to be less hectic. It will turn out that I was mistaken

Airport announcement: Tsinghua. The 1st tone up, the 2nd down. Dribble dribble numbers… I love you lonely planet, i understand the numbers, sort of.

When I try to say something I understand how odd it feels to locals, since they make the same faces as me in Italy when the first Chinese immigrants tried with Italian. When they know a smattering of English, they’re very friendly, as I wrote last time.

There is a lot of Chinglish in airports and that makes the simple act of traveling a lot of fun. Any sign, ad, warning, becomes comedy material as Chinese is literally translated into English. The two languages could hardly be more different: on one side a pictorial, musical language where more is better and signs are widely used, on the other a fast, business-like language where ‘keep it simple, stupid’ is a good rule.

Don't miss the fun, do the slip thing!

On the flight to Lijiang, in the heart of Yunnan, I watch an educational video about flu prevention – you can’t avoid it, it plays on the mini screens and the sound cannot be muted. The happy song, the Chinglish subtitles, the bewildered pig main character are good entertainment. Around me, many people cover their mouths with masks. The pig is happy at the end.

Good mood and a surgical mask. Good pig. You'll go places.

Every now and then, the noise of *HGNHKKK” spit preparation breaks the engine hum. I don’t want to know how it ends… not in the plane!

Two hours later, I’m in Lijiang, more than 2000 metres above sea level and officially on vacation.

Part 1
The arrival in HK is hot and unbelievably humid. I will go to Shenzhen immediately to catch an early morning internal flight.

On my way to the mainland, I just see big apartment towers, shining coldly (A’dam and Utrecht glow softly) in the sub tropical evening and a posh mall (Elements) that could be in any European capital. A quick observation of HK girls hints that they are RAWR, by the way.

I am not as conspicuous as i feared, although profusely sweating and jet jagged. Am I the only white guy on board? Ok, no, but only just The bus which takes me across the border to Shenzhen boasts the coldest air conditioning, I hope I won’t catch anything…

Part 2
I have crossed the border within China and am on the Shenzhen side. The emigration / immigration procedure is a bit frightening, what with the flu scare (papers papers papers) and the throng of humanity. The building is magical: I exit on the same side i came in from, but I am now cleansed of the transit status and i am entitled to stay in mainland China. Magic.  (Update: it wasn’t actually true: you do cross the building, but the two sides look the same)
Welcome, “waiguoren”! I’ve been transferring and queueing for 3 hours by now: It’s 8.30 pm and I’m starving, but still in high spirits.
Now i hope the bus is going the right way :/

Part 3

The first meal in China comes with a smile and a lot of chicken bones in the soup. I am in the airport and I can see the hotel on the other side of the highway. Here I get the first bit of Chinese friendliness, as a waitress eager to practice her English helps me getting to my destination. It’s great that she offers to walk together to the hotel, it’s not great that we have to CROSS A FOUR LANE CHINESE HIGHWAY IN THE DARK to do so. It works – I’m still here: Chinese drivers seemed used to this kind of events.

I’m in China.