Day 7 – “I really hate that song.”

In order to avoid hearing “Dida” for 12 straight hours, I ventured out of the Old Town for a good part of the day.  If you walk straight north of the Old Town you run into Black Dragon Pond. (What is it with these people and their dragons and other mythical creatures?)  Black Dragon Pond was basically a large park that costs a ridiculous amount of money–unless you know how to bypass that.  Which I tried to do.  I got some advice from some other hostellers about how to do it.  Clearly, their advice was not good.  I ended up paying the price.  But, I did get to see this:

This is a view from the bridge that goes across the pool. Do you see those mountains in the distance? That's Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. I was on the other side of that while I was hiking the gorge! 🙂

The water in Lijiang is amazingly clean!  Rivers, Lakes, you name it.  Clean.  This was a pretty park.  I wandered around here for a LONG time (because I wanted to get my money’s worth). 

Another view from further across the lake.

I decided to have a little fun with my camera. 🙂

This is a shot into the river. The water was clear. The moss (or whatever it is) was green.

While I was walking through the park, I met an artist.  He was working in his little shop painting a peacock.  I tried to practice my Chinese with him but, sadly, I don’t know many ‘art’ words.  (or music  for that matter….hmmm……sad)  I answered the typical questions, “where are you from?” “oh, you teach in Beijing? where?” “Tsinghua!?!” (shouts to the back room to get his daughter to come translate…)  So, we continued our conversation (through his daughter) about how he’s this famous artist and sells paintings for a lot of money.  (he sold one for over 100,000元。They were pretty, but I didn’t want to pay 900元 for one painting.  (around $140)  After we exhausted conversation topics, I was on my way.  I enjoyed looking in the little shops and trying to converse with the locals.  (for some reason I didn’t have a confidence problem when I got out of Beijing–I don’t know why.  Maybe because of the fact that out of most of the foreigners that I met, my Chinese was the best.  It was kind of fun to be relied on…also a bit stressful at times.)  But, seriously, one of the best parts of visiting the park was avoiding “Dida”! 🙂

Here is the 'famous' artist. He was painting a peacock. It was actually pretty cool.

I decided to have dinner on the hill that overlooked Lijiang so I could try to get a sunset picture of the city.  Silly me–the hill blocks the sun. 🙂  Oh well.  It was here that I met my friend Nastia.  She was from Belarus and super friendly.  We ate dinner tonight and she came back to the hostel to hang out with us.  It was at the hostel where the owner had a “tea party” for us.  (not like Alice in Wonderland)  He did this whole tea ceremony for a group of four of us.  He made us two different types of tea and attempted to explain the significance and the difference between the leaves.  The tea was delicious. 

Here is the "tea party" crew. From L-R. Nastia-from Belarus, speaks Russian, very friendly. Yours truly. Simon-from UK, lives in Korea, photographer (awesome one!), possibly married to the woman on his left? Jayoung-Korean, follows Simon around, doesn't say much, again--may or may not be married to Simon? Yang Zijiang-Chinese, hostel manager, tea connoisseur, claims that his name is actually "Yangtze River" (which, if you look at it like a play on words, it is... Yang Zi Jiang--jiang=river in Chinese 😉 We just ended up calling him "River"--His English name.)

Another lovely day in Yunnan Province. 🙂

Day 8 – “Come on ride the train”

I finally reached the day that I would leave Lijiang.  I was ready.  If I hadn’t bought my train tickets so far in advance I might have left a day earlier.  This is one thing that I never want while traveling–to be ready to leave a city.  Well, you live and learn…  I spent the day wandering around, bargaining with the locals, meeting a friend (who I met on the hike) for coffee, Mama Naxi’s one more time for supper and then back to the hostel to share a cab with Simon (above) and his maybe-wife to the train station.  They were on the same train as me to Kunming. 

It took a whole week, but I finally added “train” to my list of ‘modes of transportation’.  🙂 

The train was pretty empty…not surprising, considering it was the day before the Spring Festival.  Most Chinese people were in their ‘hometowns’ for the celebrations.  There was one Chinese girl who was not.  She happened to be in the same train car as me.  And boy did she want to chat.  I wanted to sleep.  My train ride was only nine hours. I had planned to take advantage of those nine hours and sleep for 8.82 of them. She did not have the same plan.  I had a lower (which on a Chinese train means ‘bench for the people in the middles and uppers.’  How do I tell this girl that I want to sleep without actually saying it? (wow! how Chinese have I become?)  So, I started to stretch out a bit…didn’t take it.  I stretched out almost the whole way…she was still sitting there.  I finally had to ask her if I could use my bed.  She moved to the other bed to chat with the woman on that one! 🙂  I put in my headphones. 

I slept until about 20 minutes before the train arrived!