Winter Trip--Lijiang

We flew from Kumnimg to Lijiang. This put us in southwestern China, near the mountains dividing China from Tibet. That meant the weather was dry, the sun was shining, the air was clear and cool. It was beautiful and was a nice change from the humidity--sort of felt like weather at home.
This is where many of the ethnic minorities in China live. We were take to some villages and were pleased to see that many of the people actually wear their ethnic clothes every day. We visited several villages. Here are some of the sights.






Often on the streets we found people selling sweet potatoes. However, here we saw a vendor selling regular potatoes. She roasted them over the coals, sprinkled them with some sort of spice and gave them to his customers wrapped in a napkin. We tried some--ok tasting, but a little dry for our taste.














Everywhere we go, we love looking at the children. Lijiang and the ethnic villages were no exception. This little guy's grandfather had purchased something for him to eat. He was really enjoying it. Note the little apron he was wearing.













All through the village we saw Yak Yoghurt. We were going to try some later, but as usual when you put something off--later never came so we didn't taste any. Too bad.











All through the village water was funneled down streams. The people put their food in bags in the water to keep it cool. They also had fish there too. It reminded me of cooling watermelon or soda in streams when we went camping. Only this was every day.

We found this man wandering along in his costume. For a small fee, he would let us take his picture. It is hard to tell, but he is actually holding a long stemmed pipe. The bowl of the pipe was almost on the ground and I missed getting it in the picture.















One of the shops was selling local costumes. I was not interested in buying any, but thought it was worth a picture.

















We wandered up one of the little side streets. This is an area where people from other parts of China come for a vacation, so there were lots of small hotels and hostels in areas like this.













Along the way there was an area with three pools. The top pool was for drinking, the middle pool was for washing food, and the bottom pool was for washing clothes. These women are cleaning their vegetables. You can see the garden behind them. The area had many gardens. It was fun to watch the people water by hand, dig up small areas to plant, and harvest their crops. Although the altitude here is high, the latitude is low so even in January, vegetables were growing outside with no worry about frost.






A chef from a restaurant came out with a live fish that someone had picked from his tank. He went down to the pools, killed and gutted the fish and then took it back to his restaurant to cook. Brings a whole new meaning to the term "fresh fish."













After we left the villages we went to Black Dragon Lake. It was beautiful and we saw several Naxi Minority women in their local costumes.














The view across the lake. Note the high mountains in the back. This area was a crossroads in ancient times--with goods from Burma and Thailand coming north, and goods going back and forth from China to Tibet and west on the southern branch of the Silk Road. If you cross the mountain ranges here, you will eventually end up in Tibet.

Naxi women carry their goods in baskets on their backs. We saw every kind of goods in them, even a child or two.

In the main part of town, we saw the firemen spraying down the streets. We wondered why.

Then we saw this woman sweeping in front of her shop after the firemen had gone by. Obviously, she was cleaning the street. Then we realized that Chinese New Year's was coming in a few days and they were cleaning up everything to get ready for the celebration.

In Lijiang we stayed in delightful little villas--or they would have been if it had been warmer. There were 4 bedrooms for each villa so 4 couples stayed there. Each villa had its own cook/hellper. She met us at the door and took us upstairs to our rooms. They were small, but did have heat. The main floor of the villa had a large living room, dining area, and kitchen. Our girl kept everything nice and clean and cooked our breakfast. It was a huge breakfast--both western and Chinese foods. Unfortunately, the only place that had heat was the bedrooms so we ate cold fried eggs, bacon, vegetables, etc. with our coats on. Like I said--too bad it wasn't warmer. It would have been delightful!


Here is our helper. I took my coat off for the picture, but put it right back on after the shot. I don't know how she survived in the cold, but the evening before as we got home, she was just sitting in the cold living room watching TV. Brrrrrr!

We have one more stop before we head south hoping for some warmer weather.