The call to arms was answered by Faiz & Chang. We have also applied succesfully for a Joint Exercise with our Taiwanese alliance ably led by the XMan & YP (new recruit). Due to limited time, we have decided to limit our exercise to Lijiang, Dali & Kunming; skipping Shangri-la & Xishuangbanna

We had to fly from Singapore to Kunming before catching a connecting flight to Lijiang. However, due to the tardy arrival of the MU flight from Kunming to Singapore (which is normal), we missed our connection in Kunming for Lijiang and had to lay over in Kunming for more than 5 hours as we wait the next flight. How else to spend the time at the airport other than to indulge in Yunnan's most famous product : Pu'er tea.

Yunnan is a major part of the other Silk Route in China : The Chama Old Road (or Tea & Horse Old Road). This is the Tea Route ( 7th to 9th Century) from Pu'er passing by Dali, Lijiang all the way through Tibet into India.

So we finally landed in Lijiang around noon. We were picked up by Mr. He, our contact's husband. Ms He has recently given birth & cannot take us around. The Hes are Naxis, the tribal group in Lijiang. Naxis are built like Nepalis, short, tanned but with sharp noses & Chinese eyes.

The culture has been in existence since the Han Dynasty. They are the only people in the world today that still use a hieroglyphic script for writing. The Dongba script was originally written on tree bark & these collection of tree barks now tells us the history of the Naxi people. You can distinguish them easily with their colourful costume with 2 white sash tied across the body. The white sash is made from goat leather.

During the Song Dynasty the Naxis aligned themselves to then Chinese courts. The Chinese then gave the surname Mu (Wood) to the chieftains of the Naxi tribes & all other Naxi people were surnamed He (Peace) by the Chinese. Until today, all Naxis have only 2 surnames. Inorder to distinguish our driver from the rest of the Hes, he is He Maocai or MC He.

So back to the airport, Mr He drives a roti car (Chinese minivan) & the first thing I did when we met was to crash my camera bag through the plastic sun shield of the front passenger seat; breaking it. The start of a beautiful relationship.

There are 3 old cities in Lijiang : THE Lijiang Old City, Suhe Old City & Baisha Old City. Our hotel is the Conifer in Suhe Old City. It is about 8 km away from the action packed Lijiang Old Town. The Conifer is a very comfortable 5 star hotel with buildings not more than 3 floors high located in blocks ala Sheares Hall.

After dropping off the stuff, we were famished & headed out to the Suhe Old City for lunch at 3 pm. There's a food alley where we can find lots of local snacks like : baba (crispy pan cake stuffed with peanuts that is either sweet or salty), lots & lots of mushrooms, yak meat and chicken all washed down with Dali beer (yucks). Of course there are shops selling food from other part of China as well but that would not be part of the Yunnan experience, would it ?

If that was the first taste of Lijiang, we were raring to go for the second bite : the walking tour of Suhe Old Town. Suhe old town is all cobble stone (actually it is just slabs of stone) with Naxi style housing. There are several small stream like canals that run through the city with a larger one at the center where the pub area is. The stream comes from water dammed & diverted into the city. This provides the city with water as well as helping to cool it down. Most of the pubs / restaurants uses the streams as fridges & store their beers & drinks in there. This explains why there are no fridge magnets for sale in Yunnan.

The main form of transport for tourist is horses. The streams, horses, Naxi houses, willow trees & cobble stone street gives the whole city a rustic & pleasant feel. It is not unlike Suzhou but a lot more beautiful as it is less polluted & it is more uniform in it's touristic appeal. The main reason is because almost all the houses in the Old City has been leased out to outsiders who then continue to turn it into bars, restaurants and shops for tourist. It is one big shopping center.

Our Taiwanese buddies arrived in the evening just in time for dinner at a spicy pork rib claypot place. For the record, Yunnan cuisine uses a lot of the little bastards from our Chongqing trip.

After dinner, we decided to hit the real Lijiang Old Town. After seeing Suhe, we were not prepared for what greeted us. We headed straight for the Pub Street & it is a mess of red lights, booming disco music and lots of local tourist. The UNESCO Heritage Site is actually one big disco ! We hung out at a chill out bar & decided to truly investigate the place at a later date.

4:30 am in the morning & I was awoken by the emergency lights going on. It had nothing to do with the Seventh Month but everything to do with the rain the night before that knocked out the local power station. This means that there was no power & water in the morning. Brushing teeth with mineral water wasn't XMan's cup of tea & he decided to skip the day's activities.

We first had MC tapow some babas for us to eat on the way & we headed straight for the First Bend of the Yangzi River. The Yangzi River actually starts in the highlands of Qinghai (near Tibet) heads south before making a turn in Lijiang & flows towards Sichuan. It starts it's lilfe as the Tongtian He (The River to Heaven) & in Yunnan, it is known as the Jingsha Jiang (Golden Sands River).

The Jingsha Jiang is the site of the famous Long March crossing by the Communist where a big battle was fought with the KMT forces. Of course, the Communists prevailed & went on march onwards to Hunan & later took over the country. However, several historians have come out recently to refute this evidence that the battle never happened but were all actually part of Mao's propaganda.

Anyway, we felt that the First Bend of The Yangzi River was a big letdown cos all we saw was the river, a bend & some hills at the side. The scenery was peaceful & nice but was there something else we were suppose to see ? There was only 1 ramshackled stall selling souvenirs & no fridge magnets; of course.

We then went to the Tiger Leaping Gorge. The Tiger Leaping Gorge is the place where the Jingsha River passes between the 2 mountains : Jade Dragon Snow Mountain & the Haba Mountain. It is a series of rapids culminating in one big climax.

We had lunch at a restaurant in the Gorge. Although the food was a tad expensive, it was pretty good. We had flowers, fish from the river, the usual kampong chicken & the vegetable that Chang doesn't like (I must remember that). The table next to us weren't very happy though. They complained that their fish casserole had too much head & tail & no body.

The Tiger Leaping Gorge has 3 sections. You can actually spend up to 3 days hiking the whole gorge. We of course, chose the route most travelled or in other words known as the Chinese Tourist Route & did only the lower section of the Gorge. It is more of a walk than a hike, mind you but it gets you to the Tiger Leaping Rock all the same.

The trail hugs the gorge and leads to the Tiger Leaping Rock where legend says that a tiger actually jumped across the gorge using a huge rock in the middle of the river to escape its pursuers. And that is how the place got its name.

There was always danger of falling rocks & they have posted guards with megaphones along the trail to remind people to walk close to the rock surface. There were some fallen rocks from a previous lanslide along the way & some of them were huge, about the size of the Chery car. There were also people providing rickshaw (human type not bicycle type) service for tired visitors.

The walk was pleasant with some interesting rock formation like the Life Saving Buddha that can be seen across the Gorge & the Tiger's Mouth. There were also 2 very long tunnels that provided a change in the landscape. All along the way, the river was very active with lots of rapids. Things started getting exciting as we neared the Tiger Leaping Rock. The rapids were rushing towards a crescendo. And what an climax it was ! The waves were thunderous covering most of the Rock which is of a reasonably large size in the middle of the river. The crashing waters rose above the our heads from the river below. This is the full force of nature. It was glorious & fearsome at the same time.

A quick look at the river after the Rock shows a picture of serenity. A lazy Sunday afternoon with the river slowly meandering its way downstream as if the bombastic show of nature was all but a figment of our imagination.

We left the place totally humiliated & with a definite higher regard for nature.

On the drive back to the hotel, we were finally blessed by a sighting of the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain amongst fields of corn & sunflowers. It was very beautiful but was to be our only clear sighting of the mountain throughout our stay in Lijiang.

It was then that our driver MC asked whether we want to visit his house & say hello to his wife & newborn. We readily accepted. The Hes have a 7 year old son & a new born daughter. They are allowed to have more than one child because they belong to a minority group.

They live 5 minutes from the hotel in a Naxi village. They grow their own vegetables & rear chickens. Ms He is the astute business person here & she hopes to turn her house into a bed & breakfast place. When we visited, they were building a new outhouse in the compound. They have a large compound of around 6,000 sq ft (not including the farm) with 2 two storey buildings. The main building has the hall downstairs & they stay upstairs. In the other building, the rooms are downstairs with the granary upstairs. The granary stores grains & is also used to cured meats. The meats (ham) are cured for a minimum period of 1 year. They also have Ms He's father's ancestral tablet there as well. This is a typical set up for a Naxi house.

Over tea & sunflower seeds, Ms. He told us about her plans to expand her tour business. She also lamented that drugs, drinks, tobacco & gambling is a major problem with Naxi men. Despite the monies flowing in from UNESCO to Lijiang, the local Naxis doesn't see much of it. They live in a constant state of limbo; neither progressing nor starving.

Ms He then asked us to give a nickname to little Yun Jia. They will announced the nickname to all friends & relatives during the 1 month baby shower and it will be the name they will use for Yun Jia on a daily basis. The task was somehow directed to me & I took the lazy way out (or the illiterate way out) & named her Jia Ying after my daughter. This is how we all became godfathers to little Yun Jia. the godfathers were then invited to stay for dinner. The Hes were going to bring out their home brewed liquor & to slaughter a chicken for us. But we politely rejected giving the excuse that the XMan is waiting for us at the hotel.

Our friend, the XMan, spent a whole afternoon horse riding in the Lijiang Old Town.

So no home cooked meal that night. We hung out in town & had tulang hotpot instead. Poor Faizel got voted out & had fried rice while staring at the heap of pig thigh bones.

After dinner we again had drinks at the UNESCO disco that is the Lijiang Old Town. We sat upstairs in a tiny ktv bar and were serenaded by 2 Mosuo ladies who actually wanted to sell us flowers. The Musuo comes from the Lugu Lake District. The Musuo are a matriarchal society. They trace their lineage from the females. There are no fathers in the families only uncles......this means that the women have several relationships through walking marriages. We would have made a bee line for Lugu Lake if it wasn't 4 hours away by car.

Music stops at 11 pm in Lijiang. But what continues after that is reminiscent of hostel days song fights with pub patrons forming 2 groups and getting into a song challenge. One group will sing a part of a song & then challenge the other group to sing a different song. It goes back and forth until one group run out of songs, & they'll have to drink.

All this stops at around 12:30 & the whole old city goes to sleep. So did we. But little did we know that the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain beckons & it will exert a strong influence that will change the whole experience of our trip & future PLA expeditions as well.