Chengdu is a mess.  Roads are being torn up everywhere, smog blankets the city and sits between buildings so you can’t see the skyscraper one block over, and as usual – the traffic.  Here at least the crossing guards wave their arms and shout things – in Zoaquan they just stood there like the guards at Buckingham Palace – but still, no one listens.  The whole city is positively choking – on the smog, the construction dust, the traffic.

A view of construction in Chengdu from the Panda Breeding Research base.

Just stopped at a cute little tea shop where I was alone for the first time with non-English-speaking Chinese.  I sign-languaged my way through the purchase of a beautiful tea set for Peter.  This transaction came at the end of a long walk after lunch that took us from a typical Chinese park to a typical fat American stop at our first Chinese McDonald’s – I’d rate it better than America, but worse than Germany.  Grandpa tells us that at first the Chinese were wary of McDonald’s because of the menu.  KFC was the first real big fast-food hit in China, because the Chinese understand chicken, but McDonald’s took longer to catch on.  Now, of course, with the Chinese straining to copy everything they see in the American media, the places are packed.

The public park was extremely interesting, because it was FULL of people.  My Lonely Planet had described the park as a free park in Chengdu, built for the people.  Since then, they’ve started charging money at the entrance, but that has not dissuaded hundreds of people from flooding into the park for their daily exercise – playing badminton, doing Tai Chi, square-dancing, ballroom dancing, step-aerobics, clacking games of Mah-jong, and examining flowers.  Most of these activities involved blaring techno-fied Chinese music set loud enough to drown out the dance class taking place across the path.

We found a somewhat quiet area in an orchid garden and bonsai display area, but most of the areas were absolutely throbbing with elderly Chinese skipping, twirling and kicking to the beat without shame.  I guess if you’ve been pooping in squalid, doorless toilets your whole life, you’d be ready to bare all too.

But seriously, the Chinese do love their aerobic exercise.  We’ve run by several hair salons and restaurants in the opening hours, just as the staff sets out for their warm-up jog or pumps out kung-fu moves to a techno pop song.  Character and team-building activities, I suppose.  Not to mention good way to limber up before standing on your feet for hours at a time.

But most importantly: This morning we saw pandas!!!

Juvenille pandas play at the Chengdu Panda Breeding Research base.

Finally.  The Chengdu Panda Breeding Research Base was a stop that I had been anticipating the whole trip.  The center was very well-designed and we got there at the perfect time to see the cubs eating and bumbling around their bamboo jungle gyms.

A panda cub rolls off his fort. Very slowly.

Unharmed, but he needs a breather before tackling the next level. Bamboo isn't really nutritious enough to give Pandas any energy, as their bodies were genetically built to be carnivores. They turned to bamboo only because it was plentiful.

I just couldn't take my finger off the shutter, they were so adorable!

I gathered everyone’s money to donate the equivalent of $160 to the research base and win the opportunity to hold a one-year-old cub!

So happy to be holding a real panda! The keepers kept feeding him apple slices to keep him occupied and complacent on my lap.

While trying to find the adult panda exhibits, we walked through a surreal area of the base.

A walkway in the Panda base in Chengdu

A long pathway to another section of the park was lined with obviously dying trees that were hooked up to IVs.

IV bags hooked up to a dying tree.

The bags were hung in a way that suggested that the trees were being fed a sugary substance – perhaps to promote growth?  It seemed an odd attempt to save these trees that were certainly not going to make it – even being force fed nutrients and tied up to supports.

The set-up looked like a backwards sap-tapping production.

I took a bunch of panda pictures and we loaded up on panda kitsch – altogether a successful trip.

The base also had a good amount of red panda exhibits. They were also a blast to watch - they reminded us of our cats back home!

Tonight is the last night in Chengdu and the others went over to a jazz club while I pack up and organize some pictures.  Tomorrow: Beijing Round Two.

Never before have I needed to pee so intensely that I thought I might wet myself, but tonight I had the opportunity to experience this thrill.  After a dinner of way too many Jaozi and many glasses of pijou from a yummy noodle place – found with my trusty Lonely Planet and expert alley-navigating skills – the walk back to the hotel from the Tibetan district of Chengdu quickly escalated from a leisurely walk to a frenzied, cramped, shuffling sprint.  I left Mom loitering and chatting on the elevator to charge in a fist-clenched waddle to shove my keycard into the door.  Of course, I put it in the wrong way (each hotel lock is very specific, but somehow they never agree on the card orientation) and this door has a super-intense security system, meaning the little red light blinks for a full 60 seconds before letting me try again (is this really helpful?).  Thank God I took the time to check the card for instruction and made it into the bathroom in time.

The bathroom in this “luxury” hotel is another story altogether.  The shower is surrounded by clear glass – not fogged – and involves a seat fitted with ten jets for, I assume, back massage.  The real kicker is – the bathroom walls are glass. The wall that usually keeps the one bed from seeing the room door and is usually full of suggestive stains is not really a wall at all, but rather a huge plate of glass.  This offers a full view of the entire bathroom.

Maybe this is sexy when you’re traveling with your boyfriend, but not with your mother.  Luckily there is a flimsy sheer curtain that can be pulled across the glass to cover about 3/4 of the “wall” at most, but for good measure we’ve taken to shouting out warnings not to look when we enter the bathroom.  Yet another example of China’s total disregard for personal space (or perhaps America’s obsession with it?).

The plane ride to Chengdu today was another fun-filled foray into Chinese culture.  Good thing we had a good crash course on our first flight from Taiyuan to Kunming, where mom was blessed with a restless tourist behind her who must have taken upwards of five potty breaks in the two hour flight – yanking her seat back every time to hoist himself up into the aisle.  Best not to disturb his neighbor’s armrest, I guess.  The other passenger who made us wide-eyed in hilarious disbelief was an obvious first-time or inexperienced flier, who was cursed with an aisle seat in a 3&3 configuration when all he wanted was to look out the window.  He insisted on smushing his face up against the window anytime he thought the scenery might have changed.  I assume those were his friends on top of whom he was crawling and perching, but with this Chinese touchy-feely-ness – there’s no telling.  The stewardess tried to get him seatbelted during the turbulence and descent, but to no avail.  He would catch a glimpse of that mountain peak poking out of the expansive blanket of cloud or die trying.  Such is the Chinese determination.

We were sad to say goodbye to Hope and our driver at the Lijiang airport – They were such a blessing to us.

Slept in late today, as Mom was gone on a walk with Grandpa, so I had to rush to breakfast when Joe knocked.  Wasn’t hungry at breakfast – have had kind of an upset stomach.  Trying not to think about what kind of disease I could have caught from the restaurant yesterday with the “slippery slope” bathrooms, as Joe calls them.  I’m sticking to granola bars from now on – the traditional greasy food is making me sick.

Day got worse as I was hustled into the car (only semi-drugged) and forced to stay crouched in a ball as the van rumbled over riverbed roads and construction zones for two hours.  At one point, we waited on the edge of a gorge while a backhoe turned itself around and shuffled off to the side of the road – pretty cool actually.  Our destination was a hot spring, but I didn’t brave entrance into the tiny wooden shack that was built over the supposed spring.  I was in a pretty rough mood and opted to stay in the van for a bit while the driver and his wife entered the “spa” instead of risking a total meltdown.  After the couple, along with Hope and Joe, walked into the dark unknown of the shabby cabin to take their healing bath, Mom, Grandpa and I walked up a little bluff overlooking the cornfields, pigs and happy picnickers.  The family picnicking by the stream spent little time eating and most of the time chasing off the pigs with stones and stamping of feet.  I stewed off the rest of my anger in the beautiful sunshine while the others checked out birds and flowers.

Mom and Grandpa look for birds at our little stop off in the wilderness 30 km from Lugu Lake.

The hilarity of ruined picnics along with the fresh air lifted my spirits significantly, and I sat and watched the ginormous grasshoppers bounce all around me and probably collected a fair amount of ticks.

Mom and Grandpa started down the hill again and I shouted that I’d be down in a minute, but I’d spotted the perfect bush to pee behind.  This is what Chinese toilets have driven me to – a little dip in the ground, guarded by a bush looks too inviting to pass up.  For once I felt like I could take my time instead of timing my bathroom visit by how long I could hold my breath.  My manic chugging of water in the van, trying to distract my body from its other discomforts, had finally caught up with me.

Back in the van, the return trip was much more enjoyable.  Now that I knew 30 km meant two hours in the car, I could just sit back and enjoy the passing wildlife.  Admittedly, the area was beautiful, and once my vision adjusted to the bumps and vibrations, I marveled at the women in the fields and the clouds casting wonderful shadowy shapes on the glowing green mountains.  The Tibetan Buddhist influence is very strong here, and we saw several yellow order monks walking along the road toward a temple on the hill.  The prayer flags are tied to anything that will hold them.  Often you’ll see simple scraps of silk cloth knotted onto string, hanging like a miniature clothesline between trees and buildings.

Homemade makeshift prayer flags hang near a temple at Lugu Lake.

Back at the hotel, we had to put our collective foot down with our hosts.  We had been “at the lake” for almost 24 hours at this point and not yet ventured to its bank or outside the safety net of the hotel compound or van.  They wanted to eat another meal inside the stuffy, smokey cabin, but the weather and scenery were so beautiful we just couldn’t do it.  We excused ourselves and apologized profusely, claiming lack of hunger and headed down to a hostel/cafe on the lake with outdoor seating.  I ate a granola bar and french fries for lunch, along with a Chrysanthemum tea.  We checked e-mail and enjoyed the cool breezes off the lake, in the company of various stray dogs and cats, who came to beg at our table.

The hostel/cafe on the lake where we had our lunch. Touristy with western slant, but a nice break from the home cooking. Never thought I'd want a break from home-cooked meals!

Hope phoned to ask if we still wanted to take a boat ride out to the island in the middle of the lake, and we set a time to meet.

As we approached the docks where the boats were stowed, every man who was sitting, playing cards or picking his nose, and every woman who was mending a shoe or chatting, leaped to their feet and rushed to jabber incomprehensibly to us about the merits of their boats.  None of these boats looked incredibly seaworthy.  The boats were long, trough-like canoes, most cradling a significant amount of stagnant water.  We chose a rower in a fantastic canary-yellow blouse and camouflage high-top sneakers.

Our flashily-clad captain with super strong arm muscles.

Our rower jumped deftly between boats to guide his off the shore.

He beckoned his female companion, who would do the steering and singing in the back of the boat. (To view the boat ride soundtrack, follow this link: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=2720078&ref=profile#/video/video.php?v=762131405418)

The man had an impressive stroke, his dark fists pulled the oar back in an effortless rhythm.  We made it to the island in under 20 minutes and he took us around the back, where we glided into Sichuan province and looked clear to the stony bottom of the lake.  The water was so fantastically blue, I kept having to remind myself that I was not in a painting.

Another boatload of tourists passes us on our way to the island.

I was so in awe of the fact that I was finally somewhere in China where plastic bags weren’t crammed into every crevice.  We tied up the boat on the other side of the island and walked up the steps to yet another temple.

The boat dock where the rowers and steerers chatted and waited for us to do our touristy thing.

Mom and Hope hike up the steps on the island to the temple area.

We walked around the nice wooded area around the temple complex, spinning prayer wheels and following all the lines of flags along the paths.

Uncle Joe waits for us slowpokes to catch up on the descent.

Through Hope, we learned that two families share the boat-rowing business in Lugu and alternate days.  On your family’s day, you would take turns rowing out to the island and then split profits equally between your siblings at the end of the day.

Our boat waits for us to return from the island temple.

After our boat ride, we visited the Yak hanging out at the shore, and then took a short break in the hotel room before our evening of traditional dance.

A couple kids check out the touristy Yak pictures, while the prop himself stands, bored, tied to the edge of the lake.

After dark, we walked over to an open-air lodge, where men and women in traditional Mosou costume performed a hoe-down sort of dance.  We all commented on how similar the costumes seemed to Latin American dress and the ceremony was reminiscent of American Indians’ pow-wows.

Men at the front of the line start the movements that are then copied all the way to the end of the line like a game of telephone.

The women's dresses were fun to watch as they swirled with the music.

The men at the end of the line added some extra flair to their moves.

Musou men's colorful costumes blur around the campfire to the tune of a sole man playing a pipe.

At the end of the dance, the MC invited the audience to join in and eventually sing some karaoke.  We snuck out the door before someone had the chance to pull us on stage.

I finally realized that Chinese drivers are not laying on their horns out of spite or aggravation as we Americans would, but rather out of necessity.  They use it as a kind of warning to other drivers, since a turn signal isn’t enough of an indication of intent in their chaotic traffic patterns.  The horn can be saying, “Hey, I’m behind you in your blind spot and if you try to change lanes, I will take off the whole side of your truck and cause you to spill that teetering collection of rocks you’re carrying.”  Or maybe it’s saying, “Hey there are some farm animals/workers/crashed motorbikes in my lane, so I’m going to drive into oncoming traffic for a bit.”  Today, it mostly meant, “I’m barreling around this mountain switchback and can’t see around this corner, but I really want to pass this coal truck, so WATCH OUT.”

A man on a motorbike-turned truck carries a load of hay down the shoulder of the highway.

One of the more tame and well-kept roads on our trek to Lugu Lake.

This happened constantly as we rumbled up and down mountains over severely under-serviced roads and boomeranged around mountain passes on our way to Lugu Lake.  The scenery was fantastic, and I was trying to hang out the window to take pictures the whole way, but I think I may end up with some whiplash and severe bruising tomorrow morning.

The Yangtze River

Little houses hug the mountainside right off the road. This area was not settled the same way we had seen in Shanxi, where an entire village would be crammed on top of each other while the farmland fanned out from all sides. In Yunnan, a couple houses would be clustered near the road and farmland would expand between them.

Rice fields on the way to Lugu Lake.

Our driver was very patient as we hollered every 15 minutes or so for yet another Kodak moment stop.  He would expertly pull off the road and grin while we turned in circles, clicking away.

Chilis hang to dry in an open wooden structure near some houses.

The houses in this area of China are made with wooden slat roofs, which have a hard time staying on the house in the gusty valley winds. So the locals solve that problem by laying a rock over each wooden slat to keep it in place.

Hope tried to explain the various local costumes and what signified a married woman as opposed to a single woman as opposed to a widow, but I couldn’t manage to take it all in.  We did enjoy the colorful dress and noticed that the women were doing most of the working, while the men lounged around.

A woman carries grain back to town from her fields.

A Yi woman walks past corn drying on a house.

Men play and afternoon game of pool on the side of the road.

For lunch, we stopped at a “resort” (really just one-room cabins on a tiny fish-farm pond accompanied by a restaurant) near Hope’s hometown of Ninglang.  Here I experienced my first doorless, paperless, seatless slit in the floor bathroom.  Now at this point, I’ve been in China a good two weeks and have experienced my fair share of “squat” toilets, but this one took the cake.  At least most of the previous ones either flushed or emptied into a dark hole in which the contents were concealed if I didn’t look too closely.  This facility was a slap in the face from the time I rounded the corner.  The smell – as always – came first.  No surprise there.  The second sensational shock was the sight of a squatting girl as I walked in – her converse high-tops still shiny black and white against the muck.  She seemed to be fixing her hair all nonchalant as she perched over the precarious pit – typical high school girl’s bathroom behavior.  I timidly glanced to the “stall,” where I did a double take at the contents tumbline down the concrete slope (much like a coal chute) into the bright sunshine behind the restaurant.  There were a lot of colors to take in.  As hard as I tried not to look, I was more afraid of slipping and falling on something unseen than having the image of bloody paper and excrement permanently burned into my mind.  I choked back my hesitation along with something more substantial, remembered the five hours of non-stop driving ahead of us, dropped my pants, and squatted.

My stall neighbor seemed to be taking her sweet time, but I shuffled my pants back on as quickly as possible and made a mad dash to the sink on the other side of the wall – luckily equipped with soap.  I nodded cordially to the caged chickens guarding the bathroom, tried not to think about the fact that they would be in our soup soon, and hurried back to the table.

The food was not overly impressive, but was edible (I passed on the hacked chicken soup) and I was content to concentrate on rice after my scarring encounter with the bathroom.  After the plates were sufficiently picked over, we hopped back in the van and rumbled over the mountain to Lugu Lake.

Tibetan prayer flags at the entrance to Lugu Lake. The lake is near enough to Tibet, that the Tibetan script can be seen on monuments and temples, and the locals drink Yak butter tea.

Our first glimpse of Lugu Lake. The colors were just astonishing.

After eight long hours, we arrived at our Lugu Lake hotel and were escorted into a modest room with a nice view of the inn courtyard.  The walls are a bit grimy (Chinese really don’t seem to care about cleaning walls – floors will be spotless, but the walls are full of all kinds of unidentifiable stains), but the room is comfortable enough.

For dinner, we were invited into the hotel owner’s cabin, where we had a traditional dinner (including the ever-appetizing Yak butter tea – it is what the name implies – melted Yak butter and black tea, served either salty or sweet) around a sturdy, low wood table.

Dinner in the Lugu hostess's cabin.

I perched on a low knit-covered stool while Mom, Joe and Grandpa sat on the benches lining the corner walls.  We were served by the owner and hostess, with no sign of a male figure anywhere.  The Lugu Lake locals are another matriarchal society called Mosou, and the families are built around a “walking marriage” concept.  This means that a woman never moves in with her husband or family, but rather stays with her mother and grandmother and relies on them and her brothers to help raise the kids when the husband’s visits inevitably result in pregnancy.  We did meet the old grandmother as well as some younger women with babies strapped on their backs, all eager to serve us rice or stoke the fire.

The group gathered around the floor fire pit for after-dinner conversation and snacks. Clockwise from bottom left: Hope, Uncle Joe, Driver's wife, Our beloved driver, Grandpa, Mom.

We were all feeling kind of blase’ by the end of dinner, thinking 7:30 was a little too early to go to bed, but having no desire to go out for any length of time.  Luckily, Hope saved us by inviting us to pull our chairs around the fire in the floor.  We sat around telling stories and chewing on sunflower seeds, dried beans and some jelly beans that Grandpa had brought.  Hope graciously peeled some huge delicious pears for us to eat as well.  I loved hearing Grandpa and Joe talk about Old China, and Hope also seemed very interested, chiming in with her own childhood memories.  The conversation came to a comfortable lull and we all bade each other “Wan An” and headed to bed.

Tomorrow morning we will have breakfast again in the same traditional Mosou dwelling and then explore the lake by boat and foot.

Didn’t have time to write about last night last night, so I’ll write about last night this morning before breakfast, which is in twenty minutes.

We arrived safely at Lijiang airport around sunset, and were picked up by a woman a little older than me named Hope.  Hope works as an English teacher in Lijiang and her English is fantastic.  She and the driver guided us through a dreamy 30-minute ride into town, as we peered out the windows, watching mountains change from glistening, lush green to red and blue and black as the sun set behind them.  The harvested rice paddies would have been brown in the noon sun, but as the sun took shelter behind the mountains, the residual water caught up the last few rays and was turned the color of the dimming sky.

We went straight from the airport to dinner, which took us through both the old and new parts of Lijiang, the tree-lined streets crossing over canals backed up to intricately carved wooden buildings built in the old style.  The new town was much like any other city, but immaculate and tastefully done.

We ate at a fantastic courtyard restaurant – our dining room even had couches and a coffee table in it, presumably for an after-dinner cigar and scotch.

Our dinner table for our first night in Lijiang.

We had tons of wonderfully spicy traditional Yunnan dishes, my favorite being the Yak beef, which was crunchy and spicy like a delicate beef jerky.  There were also delicious sweet potato pastries, which were soft and flaky with a creamy sweet filling.  It was so nice to have a change from greasy soups, noodles and dumplings – as great as they are.

The courtyard of the restaurant.

Stuffed, we climbed back into the van to turn in early at the hotel, which turned out to not be a hotel at all, but a cozy little villa, which was to be paid for by the Lijiang government, would be hosting us throughout our visit – all expenses paid.  I cheerily found my room and headed off to bed.

My room in our "villa" for our nights in Lijiang. Mom and Grandpa missed their roommates, but Joe and I were glad to have our own space back!

Evening:

Lijiang is absolutely gorgeous.  Being in this green and colorful city has lifted my spirits and my feelings about China.  I feel a little guilty about being sucked into the touristy glitz of it all, but I can’t help but enjoy the cobbled streets and cute wooden shop stalls snuggled along the watery canals.

A canal in the middle of "old town" Lijiang. Mom commented on the resemblance to Swiss villages, with the cascading flowers and chilly mountain stream canals. Indeed, Lijiang is a very cosmopolitan city and has a huge ex-pat population.

We awoke to an awesome sunrise.  I woke up early and saw the sun creeping up behind the purple mountains.

The view outside my bedroom window at about 5 in the morning.

There was an especially impressive view of Snow Mountain from outside our front door.

The majestic Snow Mountain - home to a glacier and many folk tales.

Mom and the guys took an early morning walk while I showered to explore the grounds to make sure we could find our little villa if we happened to venture out on our own.  The number eight is lucky to the Chinese, and all the residences had as many eights in them as possible, making our address a bit hard to memorize, especially when all the cul-de-sacs looked the same.

Mom walks back to the villa after a morning walk. We were driven the three short blocks to breakfast at the main lobby.

As we were all up around sunrise, watching the colors change, we had a couple hours before breakfast to do some laundry and enjoy our new digs.

Mom was blessed with the nicest room, complete with balcony and wicker swing. She used the fresh air to hang out some laundry before breakfast.

After a huge buffet-style breakfast, we drove out to the old airport home to the Flying Tigers.  We walked around taking in the view, picking wild flowers and watching small one-man planes fly around.

Uncle Joe and Grandpa walk along the runway where the Flying Tigers took off during WW2. Joe surmises that the long runway means they were planning to send off bigger bombers, should the need have arisen.

The group gathers around the van after arriving at the Flying Tigers airstrip.

After the airport, we drove to a small village outside Lijiang called Baisha – home to the indigenous Naxi people.  The Naxi are a matriarchal society, where the women farm and make decisions, while the men take care of the children and help out where they can – playing music and mah-jong.  Our tour guide, Hope, informed us that although the Naxi stick to traditional values and dress, they have prospered throughout the years because they adapt to new things and have always been environmentally conscientious and careful with their surroundings.  Part of their prosperity is due to their acceptance of tourists, and they have built up their villages to attract these tourists – selling trinkets on tables and charging admission to the village itself.

We started our tour of the village with a walk around a fresco museum and admired the intricate woodwork seen in the folding doors that make up the front of all their buildings.  As the weather is so pleasant in Lijiang, the rooms are very open, with just the carved wooden doors that fold back like fans to serve as a barrier.

Mom and I stand in front of one of the exhibition rooms at the Baisha Fresco Museum.

I enjoyed just walking around the courtyards and marveling at the flowers the grew freely in the warm climate.

The orchids around the courtyard were bright and prolific.

The plant-life that surrounded the buildings in Yunnan amazed us, after the grey smog and struggling trees we were already identifying with China.

We walked out the back of the museum into the village itself and did some shopping.  Behind one stall was an sign inviting tourists to come in and see a traditional Naxi house.  A woman showed us the traditional cape worn by the Naxi woman and explained its symbolism.

The dark and light portions of the cape (which is worn tied around a woman's neck) represent the hard work of the Naxi women who work from sun-up to sun-down. The shape itself is supposed to look like a frog, which the Naxi associate with fertility. The seven circles also somehow represent hard work.

Children played by themselves in the rooms behind the tables where their mothers and grandmothers were selling trinkets and “antique” boxes and combs made out of Yak bone.

A girl helps her little sister put on her shoes while her family members try to sell the paintings hanging in the background.

A little boy walks along the street in the ever-popular Mao hat.

A little boy chastises me for something. Possibly for not putting money in the bowl set out in front of the men playing music next to us.

While the women run the knick-knack stalls, the men play music on traditional instruments.

Everyone not involved with making or selling trinkets was playing mah-jong or occupied in some other leisure activity.

We picked up some souvenirs and walked to the edge of town to meet the van, which took us back to Lijiang through some nice fields and construction.

A woman guides her cow around her plot of land as her husband sits on the plow to weight it down.

New buildings are being thrown up everywhere from the Naxi prosperity, but they are done in a thoughtful and careful way.

New construction near Baisha emulates the old stlye with intricate wood carvings and careful attention to detail in the roof and walls.

An example of the carvings on windows and doors in the Lijiang area.

The Naxi people are still very connected to the land and their lifestyles will most likely never change from the slow-paced farming life, despite a success in the tourist industry.

A girl walks across the road as her family guides their herd of goats past our van. We had to stop in the road to let them pass, but we were glad to get out and see the procession!

We stopped for some more walking and shopping in a more built-up area and enjoyed the smells of food and sound of trickling water everywhere.

A woman sells fresh fried potato snacks with slices of bean curd.

Me in front of some of the shops that line the canals.

The area was overrun with fashion shoots and cameras of all kinds.  It was hard to tell the commercial from the personal, but we were able to see a bride in her red dress, a more traditional color than the previous ones we saw in white.  White is the traditional color to wear to funerals in China, so there has been much hesitation in moving to the western style.

We weren't sure if this was a real bride and groom having their wedding portraits done or an fashion shoot for commercial purposes.

A woman washes her clothes in a three-level pool of spring-fed water. The first and freshest pool is for drinking, the second pool fed by the first one is used for washing vegetables, and the third is for washing clothes.

We had lunch at a restaurant in downtown Lijiang and then wandered around the “old town” and did more shopping/browsing.  In the center of the old town is a double water wheel which is fed by the merging streams.  The trick to staying on track in the windy alleys of the crowded downtown is to follow to streams, as they all flow back to the center of town.

The water wheel at the edge of old town Lijiang

Peace signs abound in Lijiang.

A woman raises a young child up to ring the bells attached to wooden paddles under a trellis in downtown Lijiang. The paddles are inscribed with people's wishes, which are supposed to come true when rung.

We also toured the palace grounds of old royalty who ran the show when Lijiang was not a part of China.

A view out to the gardens from the library on the old palace grounds.

From the grounds, we hiked up a covered walkway to a pagoda to get a view of the city.  In true Chinese style, we had to pay to hike to the pagoda, on top of our fee to get into the palace.

A great view of the roofs of Lijiang.

We climbed down the hill by a back route and found a cozy teahouse, where we had a pleasant tea service with complete explanation from a very graceful Chinese girl.

The tea set used by our host to demonstrate the varying flavors and benefits of Chinese tea. The brown mass at the edge of the pouring area is a toad, which receives a cup of tea from every pot. The Chinese believe you have to keep the toad happy with drinks in order to encourage good luck, so they pour some tea over him while serving others.

We drank many cups of tea at varying strengths, and learned to discern the bad leaves, which were forced to grow through chemical fertilizers and growth hormones and savor the delicate taste of the old plants' natural leaves.

The view from the teahouse.

We finished our tour of the old town after purchasing some tea and ate dinner at a western restaurant, picked out by our driver after our search for a goat cheese restaurant failed.  We had some good laughs reading the translations of dishes and re-ordering when order after order of waffles and spaghetti and smoothies turned out to be unavailable.  I ended up having tuna spaghetti and a mint milkshake for dinner – different, but delicious.

We ate our fill and the drove back to our villa to climb into our delightfully comfy beds.

Day two of malaria meds and I have incurable motion sickness.  Motion sickness that kicks in whenever I stand up and start walking, turns my stomach when I see cars battling in the street, and made the drive to the airport almost unbearable.  I was squished in the back middle of the taxi, per usual, and tried very hard to keep my head clear and bore mental holes into the quickly approaching road signs whenever we miraculously happened to be driving in a straight line.  Otherwise, I planned a “puke-into-something-disposable” strategy for when the inevitable surge came.  Luckily, we pulled up to the futuristic terminal without incident.  Now, here we sit, checked in to a flight that leaves three hours later than we thought.  So, I’ll continue sipping on my Oolong tea in a glass and play a game of cards with Mom.

Later:

Today we’re flying Good Luck Airlines.  As in, “Good Luck getting there in time to make any connecting flights, because it’s one hour past scheduled take-off time and the plane just pulled in.”  In proper Chinese custom, the waiting area has already emptied into a mob scene outside the gate, pushing and shoving happily for that prized place right on top of the door where you can be the first one to spill into the hall propelled by the force of a thousand bodies and sprint to your seat.  Ours are assigned, but this lot must be used to the common practice of airplane free-for-all seating, where sharp elbows and swift, slapping limbs are required to get a window seat.

On the plane:

The Chinese can’t seem to wait for anything.  Can’t wait for someone to finish a sentence before shouting over them, can’t wait for the drink cart to come to their seat before hollering their requests up the aisle, can’t wait for the drink cart to return before waving their cups around and shouting over my seat-back and directly into my ear for a refill.  One especially impatient man, seated in an unfortunate back row, trotted up to the front to tap the stewardess on the shoulder and demand a coffee when he thought she wasn’t moving quickly enough.  I guess in a country of 1.2 billion pushers and shovers, you have to start sharpening your elbows and fine-tuning a voice that carries if you’re ever going to get noticed.  We slowpokes, expecting to be waited upon, just sit back and enjoy the show.

Sitting in Kunming Airport, awaiting our connecting flight to Lijiang:

The waiting room has a yellow glow, partly from the sandy faux-marble walls and the retro circa-my-grammy’s-house couches (a delightful brownish orange with a white floral pattern), but also from the pyramid-shaped light fixtures sprouting from the ceiling like the spikes in Bowser’s dungeon, ready to crush Mario unawares.

The baggage claim after our last flight was a surreal experience.  For the first time, I realized that the pushing and chattering mass really did expedite things.  As the blurred swarm dissipated, the belt was clear except for our hulking American bags chug-a-lugging around the carousel.  It was ike those old cartoons where the swarm of flies descends on a succulent roasted turkey and buzzes around, until, when the cloud lifts, only the bare bones remain.

China has been quite a shock to my traveler’s demeanor, steeped for years in German order and rules.  Germans may not have the expansive bubble of personal space touted by Americans like their fat bellies, but they do have a predictable set of rules about social expectation and courtesy – as well as strictly enforced traffic laws.  China has neither.  Upon first inspection, the Chinese seem careless – throwing their trash all over the place and hacking up the depths of their lungs coincidentally whenever they pass my ear and then spitting frighteningly near my shoe – but once you are invited into their homes, the scene changes dramatically.  Ok, so the hacking and nose-picking (for which the men grow out their pinky fingernails to a long point) may continue, but even the poorest of Chinese work hard to keep their living and entertaining space spotless and spare no expense when it comes to playing hostess to friends and family.  It’s all about connections.  When you show interest in them or their activities, they will more than likely bend over backwards to invite you into their home and pamper you like a king.

Never before have I been so excited to see a bath tub!  We are now in a nice, clean, odorless hotel in Taiyuan!  This morning, we took a taxi from Zuoquan to a nice hotel restaurant in Yisu, where we met Joe’s Christian friend and her two English teacher friends.  The restaurant was deep in wedding mode (by this point, we have learned that October is a very auspicious month for weddings and this is why we’ve been running into so many of them), and we had to maneuver through crowded, smoke-filled ballrooms to get to our little banquet nook in the back corner.  The one girl, whose name I never could understand, was also 22 and she sat next to me throughout dinner, chatting and asking questions.  She spoke the best English we have heard since Beijing, and we had a nice refreshing conversation while I tried to stuff down more delicious Chinese food into some hidden place in my belly, after already being stuffed from breakfast.

This morning we had another street-food banquet – today managing three Yotiao, one La Bing for me (translated: large pancake), and a huge bowl of La Mien for Mom.  I bought another yummy Milk Tea to enjoy after breakfast – a fantastic powdered drink that is mixed with hot water and some bean curdish strings, kind of like Bubble Tea.  It tastes totally synthetic, but it was much better than tea at scraping all the grease from my food down my throat and easing it through my stomach.

After lunch, we were pushed into cars by Joe’s friend and driven to old city Yisu – a nicely preserved old town center, plump with vendors displaying their various plastic junk pieces.  Then on to see her brand-new church.  It was interesting to see the Christian presence in China, knowing that my ancestors had some say in bringing it there.  Evidently, Communist China now allows each religion to have one place of worship per city, barely allowing Catholics and Protestants to separate.  It is doubtful that this law is strictly enforced, but it was refreshing to see some Christians actually excited about the opportunity to worship and creating a welcoming church.

A quick walk around and then we were back in the cars toward Taiyuan.  Mom and I – the two most ignorant of Chinese – were in a cab with with our lone English-inept driver.  He was very nice and smiley, but totally unintelligible past his courteous offer of some chewing gum to each of us.

A couple blocks before turning off onto the highway, we pulled over to pick up a vampy-looking woman in black tights and a black pleather mini-skirt.  If I didn’t know she was Chinese, I would have assumed her jet-black hair to be the result of a bad dye-job.  Here my cynical, hysterical side went into panic mode as I envisioned us being carted off to a dingy hutong, chained in a basement and framed for a crime we didn’t commit, like in some kind of Chinese espionage film.  Being sans cellphone will send a person into this worst-case scenario mindset.  I’m sure this woman has a very legitimate job and just happens to look like an evil movie villain, but the make-up and leather get-up had me questioning until we exited the highway toward Taiyuan.

Going on day four of not showering and the Chinese keep telling me I’m beautiful.  I think I’ll just keep my hair braided until it starts growing mold, as the Chinese think that’s working for me.  Hot water is out of the question in our room, but we do have an electric kettle (for tea and killing water-born diseases) so we’ve been filling the sink with boiling water to wash our faces or soaking a washcloth and taking a hobo-standing-in-the-bus-station-bathroom bath.  Hair isn’t an issue yet.

Didn’t sleep much after midnight last night, as I awoke to pee and soon after, someone decided to have a two-hour long fireworks display right outside our windows – complete with car alarms and shouting.  Soon we’ll try to coax Grandpa into going down to get fresh donuts from the street instead of yet another hotel breakfast.  Until then, I’m eating a tangerine and one of the infamous bananas.

Evening:

Today was an exciting and enlightening adventure into rural China.  We left the hotel amidst a wedding sendoff, the bride being carried to her car.

A bride is carried to her car in a western-style white dress. The traditional color for a bride's dress is red - the Chinese color for good luck.

Along the way to our destination of Qinshou, we got caught up in a traffic jam of a wedding procession.  With fireworks blasting all around us, we decided to pull over and enjoy the festivities.

A boy covers his ears as fireworks go off in the street around him to scare away demons in front of the wedding party.

A boy runs for cover after lighting a long row of firecrackers.

We watched the groom and groomsmen ride in on horseback, but most of the attention seemed to be poured into the pyrotechnics.  Officially, the fireworks are used to ward off evil spirits lurking in front of the wedding caravan, but it seems to me that it has turned into an activity to occupy the teenage boys who are forced to participate in a day’s worth of otherwise boring wedding antics.

An exploded firecracker lays in the street amid other wedding confetti and debris.

There must have been more than 20 young boys running around tossing fireworks willy-nilly or holding them in their hands until they shot off into the sky.

A motorcycle drives through the smoky street, unfazed by the explosions around him.

We snapped some fun shots and then climbed back into the van for the last leg of the trip.  We arrived in Qinshou – the city where Grandpa and Uncle Joe spent much of their China childhood – and had lunch at a hotel restaurant.  We then ventured down the bumpy dirt roads to the village near the old cave home where the Wampler family spend six weeks after their house was bombed by the Japanese.

A man and his cart stop along the dirt road to the cave to ask what we are doing out here in the fields.

On the way to the cave home, we wandered through some fields, trying to find the path, and spotted a funeral being held across the gorge.

Grandpa takes some tactful shots of the funeral on our way to the cave home.

It was so interesting to me to get these great peeks into the daily life of these Chinese, whose customs are so different from ours, but who carry on with the same hopes and fears as us, dealing with them in their own ways.  We watched the funeral for a while, as the mourners brought out big bright colorful wheels and burned paper, symbolic of sending the deceased possessions on into the afterlife with him or her.

The funeral attendees burn paper money and other items to send the deceased into the afterlife in style.

In contrast to black-clad mourners at American funerals, Chinese mourners wear white.

After some wandering, we finally found ourselves at the top of a hill where a walled in complex led to the cave home.

Chinese farmers use cows as compost machines. They tie the animal to a tree and pour scraps and corn husks under its feet, so that the cow grazes, poops and stomps the mess into a nice fertilizer!

Mom explores the courtyard of the cave home.

There is still an old couple living there, and the wife pulled out a picture Grandpa had given her some years before.  She offered us apples, which we tentatively peeled and ate, and also talked Joe into taking a bag of millet.

Uncle Joe explains the merits of millet to us along our way to the cave home. He was happy to accept a bag of millet from the woman at the cave home, saying he'll eat it for breakfast daily.

She kept kicking around this poor mangy dog, which looked near death, and Mom and I whimpered in return.

The current residents of the cave home discuss history and modern life with Grandpa and Joe.

Grandpa and Joe spent some time chatting with the couple and catching up.  Grandpa reminisced a bit, showing me parts of the room that were different, or what he remembered.

Grandpa compares the door flap of the cave home to a picture of him and Uncle Joe as children with their cook's children standing in front of the same door. The metal piece is the same in the picture.

We took the mandatory in-front-of-the-cave-home portraits and then hiked back to the taxi.

Joe, Mom, Grandpa and the cave couple in front of their home.

The ride back to the hotel was another hilarious highway adventure – dodging bikes, motorcycles, cars and coal trucks.  We stopped at a museum for the Red Army before heading back to town in time for Grandpa to get his bandages changed.

For dinner, we ate again with Wang Ning’s female relation, as well as her husband and the driver.  Present at the dinner was the most ingenious dish, which is evidently a local specialty.  Flat egg noodles stir-fried with potato chips, cilantro and hot peppers.  By the time I thought to take a picture after stuffing my face for several minutes, the plate had been completely devoured.  Sorry audience, you’ll have to use your imagination.

I’m realizing more and more how important China will be in the next few years.  The older people keep commenting on how quickly and drastically things are changing, but it’s taken a while for me to realize how true this is.  It’s hard to see immediately in these small towns, because the Chinese are still such a throw-away society – messy even – by our standards.  Buildings that look like they may have been built in the past ten years, and were once even fancy, are just neglected and dirty, while others are being thrown up everywhere – taller and shinier than their predecessors.

The people themselves, however, are eager and hardworking.  Because they are becoming more accepting of foreigners and foreign influence, they will soon be making huge strides in the world economy and society.  The one thing holding them back is the insufficiency of English teachers and English curricula.  We were just flabbergasted by the lack of English skills in the English teachers at the school we visited.  They could barely communicate with us.  The students, however, were very eager and careful with their English, and it was evident that with proper instruction, they could learn English incredibly well.  This, of course, would be a great reason for jaded American students to go to China and teach English to some very appreciative and eager small towns.  Many of the Chinese students seemed to have a strong interest in American and world affairs, and asked thought-provoking questions about politics, Obama, and the wars in which America is involved.  They were very curious about my advice for them on learning English.  I think they realize that there is a lot about the language that is just unavailable to them, because of the poor resources in the countryside to bring in educated English teachers.  Even they, at thirteen, realize this is a vital skill that is being kept from them

Yesterday turned out very pleasant.  When we left the room, there was a taxi driver waiting who would drive us around for the day for a bargain 300 yuan.  Turns out he had a very thick accent, and he and Joe had a very difficult time understanding each other.  They had to enlist the help of some Chinese businessmen to help translate and they ended up following us to the spring in a blue Audi – looking very much like the mafia.

Our taxi ride to the spring

The path leading up to the hiking trails and spring curves around a pond.

By the time we arrived at the spring – only about 30 minutes from our hotel over a poorly maintained factory road with more potholes than smooth pavement – the weather was fantastic.  Clear, sunny and just a slight chill in the shade.

Grandpa hikes up the steps to the cave temple after winding up mountain trails to get to the base.

First, we hiked up to a cave temple – a great excuse to torture one’s knees – and explored in the cave and around.  Grandpa had been here previously as a child and then on later return trips in the past 20 years.

Grandpa looks out at the scenery from the bell tower of the cave temple.

At the base of the steps into the temple, a friendly rural Chinese woman was cooking mysterious brown lunch for passersby and selling bottled water.  We declined the lunches and bought the water.  Upon our descent, she sang a farewell song and Joe convinced her to bring out some fans to dance us goodbye.

A local Shanxi woman sings and dances to bid us farewell upon our descent from the cave temple.

(for video of the song go here: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=2720078&ref=profile#/video/video.php?v=748957036958&ref=nf )

We visited the trickling spring and I tried to take some artsy motion-blurred shots before realizing my camera had been set at 800 ISO for the past couple days.  Aggravation.

Water from the spring empties down the mountain into a small pool, where it was previously collected by a factory. Now the water is protected by the park and stands shallow but natural.

We left the park, stopping at a roadside cave temple, to continue on to Ma Tian.

A coal truck drives by a roadside temple carved into the rock.

We ate another huge lunch and explored the town and local museum.

Our taxi driver enjoys a cigarette while waiting for the food to arrive at our lunch stop in Ma Tian.

Mom looks into a window of a reconstructed officer's room at the Ma Tian military base camp museum.

In Ma Tian, we talked with some museum officials with whom Uncle Joe had met before.  They showed us around the town and we stopped at a house where a woman offered us fresh pomegranates off the tree in her courtyard.

A gift of a pomegranate from a local Ma Tian woman. I have never tasted such a juicy pomegranate!

A very ripe pomegranate hangs on a tree in a courtyard in Ma Tian. The fruits were all so ripe and full of juicy seeds that they had burst open.

A dog walks through the village of Ma Tian.

Corn is left to dry in bundles on a rooftop.

We hiked through some farmland and a tiny village – stopping to chat with some local folk and steal their persimmons – before hopping back in the car toward home.

A little goat peers out from his pen between some houses in the little village outside Ma Tian.

Grandpa eats a freshly stolen persimmon on our walk down a mountain into farms.

Uncle Joe talks weather with a farmer in Ma Tian after we trampsed through his fields and ate his delicious, juicy persimmons.

A man gathers and bundles herbs in a small village.

I napped upon our return until it was time to meet Mr. Song for dinner – another hotpot.  He is a local schoolteacher in Zuoquan and we will visit him and his school today.

Later:

Had several brushes with death today – most recently is currently being dealt with in our hotel room.  We were walking pleasantly through a market on the main road in town and Grandpa was looking for a knife so we could peel apples and other skinned fruit to eat.  He found a rather large sheathed knife at a little table full of rusted metal scraps and bought it.  Mom simultaneously spotted a fruit stand and went over to investigate the bananas.  We decided to purchase a bunch, and Grandpa wielded his brand new purchase to slice off the appropriate amount.  One sawed hack through the bananas and the knife went straight into his left middle finger and took off a good flap of skin between the first and second knuckle.  We stood there in shock for  a bit while he clutched his hand and seeped blood.  We all hustled back to the hotel, trying to staunch the bleeding with our precious kleenex supply.  Mom attempted some repair in the room, but it looks like we’re headed off to the ER for some professional help.

Update:

We’re in what the Chinese call a hospital.  We might refer to it as an unlit, crumbling, abandoned building filled with smoking and spitting Chinese running in and out of a tiny concrete cell with an open window and peeling paint.  Most just want to shove their way in to gawk at the dumb American, but two are actually wearing white coats and working on cleaning and stitching up his wound.  I’m perched on the end of the table and a little too nauseated to look, but Mom seems to think they’re doing a fantastic job.  I’m kicking myself for not bringing my camera.  The light is perfect from a little side-lamp and the scenery is movie-like.  A metal barred window is open, letting in the noxious fumes of urban China, but also some awesome evening light.  The walls are shedding paint and Grandpa is facedown on the plastic-sheathed black leather table, trying not to faint.

I eventually sprinted back to the hotel to fetch my camera and caught the last of the sewing-up procedure in the ER.

The conditions may be crummy, but the service more than makes up for it.  As soon as we came in the back emergency door, two paramedics got a quick glance at Grandpa’s bloody tissue-wrapped finger and called a nurse over, who in turn ushered us all into an examining room.  She took one look at his finger, grimaced, and pronounced the wound stitch-worthy.  Then more nurses, on-lookers and finally a doctor sauntered in (I say finally, but this is all within a matter of 5 minutes – hellooooo efficient socialized healthcare), pulling on gloves and a mask, probably fresh off his smoke break.  They cleaned and prepped everything before the doctor set down to work.

The proud nurses and doctor who worked on the finger.

Back at the hotel:

More chaos ensued at the hospital, dealing with medication and tetanus boosters, but all is well.  We were met at the hospital by Wang Ning’s relative, who helped Joe swim through some of the red tape (turns out there isn’t much in China – at least for us rich-looking Americans with connections) and after the procedure was finished, we took her out to eat down the street.  We’re all in good spirits after a long day.  And now to recap…

We ate another mushy cold hotel breakfast with hot milk this morning and then walked over to Mr. Song’s school.  We were greeted at the gate by the groundskeeper, who insisted we take our temperatures (H1N1), each with our own individual stone-age mercury thermometers.  Temps were recorded (normal) and we were then guided into the principal’s office to meet Mr. Song.  He introduced us to his English teachers (who, incidentally, spoke very little English) and then informed us that we would be giving talks to three different classes.  Terrified, we went outside to watch the daily school-wide exercise routine before breaking up to give our talks.

Kids at the Zuoquan school line up in the courtyard for morning exercise.

The kids go through a sort of synchronised dance and stretch routine.

The speaking to students proved to be rather difficult, as most of the children understood almost no English.  We had some great questions from some of the more ambitious students, but most of them just stared and giggled.  It was fun to see their excitement at seeing us.  They were all crammed into each other’s seats – as many classes as possible joined into our rooms to see the funny big noses talk and make fools of themselves – and whispered to each other while sneaking glances and grins at us.

Two boys cram into one desk and wait to hear us come up with something interesting to say.

A girl peers out of her classroom window to watch us leave.

We met the principal and his daughter for lunch and I attempted my first whole fried fish (you’re supposed to put the whole thing in your mouth and just spit out the bones, but I just nibbled – wimp).  We got another hot teapot full of warmed Coca Cola syrup upon ordering some “Coke” and had some laughs explaining to the Chinese why this was so odd to us.  It had happened yesterday in Ma Tian as well, and there we were just plain perplexed.

We returned to the hotel to meet up for our trip to the pagoda on the hill at the edge of the city.  The taxi we ordered charged 50 yuan for a trip, which we first deemed highway robbery, but eventually conceded was an accurate price, if not a bargain.  The state of the roads on the way up required some expert pot-hole and crumbling cliff-side maneuvering.  On one occasion we had to exit the car so that he could spin his tires without our weight to get up a particularly steep point in the road.  In fact, calling it a road is an overstatement – the best we got was a gravel drive, at worst – a mud pit.  We spent most of our ascent hugging the edge of sheer drops, which were conveniently protecting us with an overgrowth of thin weeds.  Mostly a visual barrier, to keep you from envisioning your death before it happens.

The pagoda on a hill in Zuoquan

Finally at the summit, we met a nice old lady who has a farm there and watches over the pagoda.  The view from the pagoda was nice, but my favorite part of the visit was meeting her family and getting a tour of her house.

Three generation portrait of pagoda family. Grandmother (right), with her daughter and granddaughter, farms the land around the pagoda and handles the pagoda upkeep and tourists.

She wanted to give us samples of all her stockpiled produce for our return journey.  We passed on the live rabbit, but did accept three apples and some pumpkin seeds.

Scallions and corn dry outside the house.

The pagoda matron's husband came in from the fields as we were leaving, bringing in the day's corn harvest.

The journey down was easier, and we left the hotel again for the aforementioned fruit-buying, finger-cutting extravaganza.

Woke up this morning with several cricks in my neck from sleeping on a pillow filled with what felt like rice.  The room was otherwise warm and pleasant – better than the chilly cubicle with the lingering cigarette stench that we moved to before breakfast.  Showers are not an option unless you don’t to use the rest of the bathroom ever again – as it sprays everywhere from a nozzle located above the toilet and not contained by any sort of barrier.  Don’t even think about warm water.

This all sounds very negative, but in reality Mom and I are having a great time, doubling over with laughter at the sight of our toilet paper rations (probably about 15 sheets per day, wrapped around a tiny cardboard tube – Joe jokes that we have to make sure to use both sides of the paper), or terribly acrid complimentary tea, or our lack of communication skills that led me to receive a glass of steaming hot milk at breakfast instead of the hot tea I was craving so badly as I shivered off sleep.  We laugh at a lot of things.

Breakfast was hot and steamy (milk included) as it came out of the vats and onto our high-school cafeteria-esque metal trays, but the ten yards it takes to walk to the tables is enough to form a chilled film around everything.  And we laughed.

We struggled through some planning at breakfast and decided to go to Ma Tien today (a small village) and stop at a spring along the way.