yunnan!

Dan and I are back in Beijing from our trip in Yunnan. We had a great time seeing an area of China completely different from the one we live in. For a quick recap, we flew into Kunming, the capital,and then spent a day in the surrounding area. We then took a night train to Dali, several 100 km north in the foothills of some mountains (which I think of as the Himalayas, but which are technically probably not.) We spent 2 and a half days here,and then took a bus to Lijiang, about 3 hours north, and also up in the mountains. From Lijiang, we flew to Kunming and then from Kunming back to Qingdao. We spent a total of 8 days there, though two were travel days. Ultimately, 6 days was not enough time to spend in this amazing region, in the future I would like to go back and spend a month or so bumming around the province. Yunnan, for those who don't know, is in SW China and borders a bunch of countries including Laos, Myanmar, Thailand (I think) as well as Tibet (which to be clear, I am not listing as a separate country). Southern Yunnan, where we didn't go, is very much like SE Asia (or so I've been told), with lots of SE Asian ethnic minorities. Northern Yunnan is much more Tibetan culturally, and there are many Tibetan-related minority groups living there, including the Bai and the Naxi (pronounced Na-shee in Chinese and Na-hee in Naxi, with a gutteral h).
Dali, the 2nd city (or town) we went to, is a Bai minority town, though in truth it is probably more culturally hippie, as it is jam packed full of small shops selling hemp draw string pants, tie-dyed jackets and bongs. Also, the number of dreadlocked/crunchy/hiking booted backpackers almost equaled the number of Chinese inhabitants of the city. Although slightly irritating (it felt like a Tibetan-themed Oregon State Fair), it did mean that we could indulge in guilty pleasures like the "Dali Lama's grand slam breakfast" of pancakes, eggs, and yak bacon, or muesli and yogurt, and of course, cheap fruit smoothies and coffee. While in Dali we went on a boat cruise and saw a temple and an incredibly touristy Bai village, where we were served "the Bai traditional three tea service," one tea being a bean tea with bits of Cheese floating on top, which does actually taste better than it sounds. The highlight of our time there was a hike we took up a mountain to this Buddhist temple. The hike was a steep hour-long scramble through old cemeteries and a beautiful forest, which reminded me a little bit of the Pacific NW with evergreen trees and wild flowers.
Lijiang is the largest city of the Naxi people, who unlike the Bai have retained much more of their cultural distinctiveness from Han chinese people, including their own written language and religion. As such, their tourist racket was also more highly organized, and the entire traditional city of Lijiang felt like some place in the Epcot center run by a cartel of grandmothers (the Naxi are matriarchal). Tourists in Lijiang tended to be Chinese, which is probably worse in my mind than hippies, because it meant the entire town was full of cheap trinkets and people in costumes harrassing you on the street trying to get you to buy something/ride a yak/take a picture with them, all things that Chinese tourists seem to enjoy but hippies tend to shy away from. Interestingly, most of the non-Chinese tourists seemed to be older Westerners or Japanese back-packers.
In Lijiang, the highlight of the trip was definitely meeting our shaman friend, who offered us an apprenticeship. Switching into anthropological mode,I asked him all about the Naxi religion, which is called Dongba (the word also means shaman, as in our friend is a Dongba). I am not totally clear, but basically the Naxi worship nature, and believe that everyone has a totem, which is determined based on astrological signs. There are deities, but they exist more as spirits than as omnipitent gods. Becoming a shaman is hereditary, our friend is a 18th generation shaman, but also depends on your own astrology, for example, out of all his brothers and sisters, he was the only one trained as a shaman because he was the one with the gift. As a shaman, you must master five fields of learning: astronomy, geography, art, law, and philosophy, as well as writing. Naxi is the last hieroglyphic language in use, and it was interesting to meet someone for whom it was their only written language. The dongba was illiterate in Chinese, so he would write things either in Naxi or using hieroglyphs as a phonetic transliteration of Chinese sounds. After training, a dongba must build up a following of people who want him to perform religious ceremonies for them, and as such, along with taking us around,our dongba spent much of the time we were with him networking with the random locals we met along the way (though most already seemed to know him). He would always introduce us as his apprentices, and then offer us and any various other people around, usually waitstaff or an idle tourguide, a lesson on reading Naxi. Most Naxi are illiterate in their own language, writing the hieroglyphs is a sign of prestige and high learning. It was interesting to see the combination of incredibly traditional (a shaman chanting hieroglyphs to uneducated laymen) and modern (the dongba was constantly on his cell phone, and collecting numbers, which he wrote in hieroglyphs in his little note book.) He made me teach him how to say, "I'd like some wine please" in English, and then transliterated it into Naxi. Besides teaching Naxi, copying ceremonial texts and performing ceremonies, his other source of income is from artwork, which he makes himself and sells. His ultimate goal is to start a school where Naxi traditional culture is passed on to the younger generation. He sells paintings on which he carves/paints traditional images and hieroglyphs for 180 yuan, or about $23. (I agreed to be his agent in Qingdao and America. If anyone is interested, e-mail me at ingebretson@gmail.com or dongba18@hotmail.com)

Besides befriending a shaman, we also went on another hike, this objectively one less strenuous, although the altitude, above 12,000 feet (4050 m) above sea level, made even a simple walk quite difficult. We went to Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, a mountain of about 17,000 feet (it's 5500 meters) above sea level. We took a chairlift to a meadow, with stunning views of snow capped peaks clouded in mist, although the experience was considerably marred by people in native costumes hawking photos, horse rides, trinkets, etc. There was a wooden board trail meant in a loop where we were supposed to 'hike,' although we stepped off for a picnic lunch and also as a little detour, where we found an amazing trail with utterly stunning views. Unfortunately with the altitude began to do us in, and we were so tired and lightheaded we weren't able to do much more than just walk around the board.
On the whole, Yunnan was a gorgeous place, I can't wait to go back and do more serious hiking, as well as see more of the SE area.