Dali

Hello all and apologies for this long silence : the dodgy internet connection in Dali is to blame.
So we left our little corner of paradise (well rested and even a little bit tanned) last thursday. After an ok hard sleeper journey to Kunming (Yunnan province, South West China) we spent the day in this large and uninteresting town (except for its park where the old people meet to play music, sing and dance) before hopping on another overnight train to the pretty old town of Dali, tucked between a lake and some mountains. The town itself has lost most of its ancient charm to tourist shops and tour groups but the surrounding countryside and mountains are well worth the trip. On monday we took a chairlift up to a temple 2500m high, then followed a deserted path up to some amazing waterfalls forming pools so clear they appeared turquoise blue.
The last two days in Yangshuo and again in Dali we rented bikes to explore the countryside, and these have been by far the most interesting trips to date. Outside of the cities you can really see what life in the Chinese countryside is like, and appreciate the hard labour of the farmers. The plots are very small and everything is done by hand. We saw many men and women wearing straw hats crouching amongst the greenery weeding by hand or raking the earth with old hand made tools. The buffalo seemed to mostly be grazing peacefully, although we did see them pulling the plough at times. On the other hand the little carts filled with dry grass are always pulled by elderly men and women with hunched backs and arched legs from decades of hard physical work. We saw young women with their babies tied onto their back bringing water up from wells, or washing clothes in the river. Life in the countryside appears to be hard, but everyone we met there had a happy smile on their face and there was a clear sense of community, everyone eating together and working together to maintain their village.
I noticed that little children wear padded clothes and are carried around on their mother or their grandmother's back even up to the age of two or so. Yesterday on the bus there was a lady sitting with her son on her back, tucked between her back and the back of the seat. The mother passes bits of food to her child over her shoulder, and the child will have its afternoon nap rocked to sleep by the movements of his mum.
The urban way of life and that of the contryside appear to be in total contrast, but it seems that the wish of the Chinese government is to level this out by emptying the rural areas to fill the cities up. During one of our bike rides we came across a motorway being built straight across a pretty little valley and its satsuma groves... the building site came to an abrupt end as it reached the edge of a village, maybe waiting to have convinced the villagers to leave before flattening their houses... In Shanghai we looked for the old town but never found it : in its place were a massive demolition site and a few blocks that looked recently built in an ancient style, and housing a number of souvenir shops...
China on the whole seems to have suffered a lot from tourism ; charming old villages emptied of their inhabitants to make place for urban Chinese and their souvenir shops, for the enjoyment of many tour groups sporting red caps. In Dali their are traditionally several ethnic groups cohabiting, each with their own customs and traditional dress. So now you get your "minority tour" led by guides dressed in fake traditional costumes, and it is a bit sad...
Of course i realise that as tourists ourselves we contribute to this system and have our share of responsability in the way things are evolving. We are quite happy to find comfortable hostels and helpful travel agents but we would want to be on our own everywhere... food for thought...how to impact as little as possible, how to treat the places we visit and their inhabitants with respect, how to be a responsible tourist? I am awaiting your comments and suggestions.
Otherwise Pete carried on his culinary experiments in dali with his salty Yak butter tea. It tasted a bit like melted rancid processed cheese...not my cup of tea!