This is part 4 of my series Christmas in China
Smoke fills the room from the wood-burning stove in the centre. Mama says the chimney is cracked and needs repairing but I enjoy the smell of the wood-smoke. The stove has a large flat metal top that acts as a table. Around it are old comfortable sofas. Currently they are filled mostly by a family of Malaysians. They pass me a beer and ask me about my travels.
We are in Mama Naxi’s Guest house, just outside Lijiang‘s ancient city centre. Mama means mother in Mandarin but these people here are Naxi people who speak their own language. I learned a lot about the Naxi people by visiting the deserted museum on the outskirts of Lijiang, just passed the giant statue of Chairman Mao Zedong. I never did figure out however if Mama was her name or a title; everyone just called her Mama.
There was also an old man in the house who spoke scant English but we could talk well in Mandarin; his Mandarin was also bad which meant he understood me easily! He also had an air of peaceful serenity and was almost always offering me corn on the cob which he grilled on the stovetop all through the day. He was also in charge of keeping the water topped up. Water in china shouldn’t be drank straight from the top so all day he was boiling it on the stovetop and topping up large metal flasks with cork stoppers.
It was the night of December 31st and I asked Mama if there would be any fireworks. She said there would not be as the Chinese celebrate new year by the lunar calendar. Come midnight and there was a deafening sound of fireworks from all around. From the house we didn’t get a good view.
Lijiang is another city on the tea horse road. It has a sprawling ancient town, but unlike Dali where the ancient town is a few miles from the modern city; Lijiang’s ancient town sits in the middle of the new town. The ancient town is so big and the roads twist all over the place, I got lost every day. I found that the best food came from the local marked that sat just outside the ancient town. They had many fried delights for a much more reasonable price than the inflated prices of the food within the ancient town, which attracts a lot of tourists from all over china as well as Malaysia and Thailand.
I had a few nice trips out while in Lijiang, I couldn’t leave this tea horse road town without having some tea. I went out to look for a chaguan (teahouse). I didn’t find one but I did see people drinking tea in the shops selling tea so thought I’d try my luck and walked into one with no customers and asked. The lady not only served me tea but also gave me a lesson in serving her tea! I bought two circular bricks of tea to bring home. When the shop closed, she took me on a quick tour of the city and then we joined the folk dancing in the square. I couldn’t get the hang of the steps but everyone went around in a circle with their arms around the people either side. I found an example on Youtube.
From Lijiang I took the bus to my final stop on my Christmas adventure; Shangrila!
Eastward Ho! 