Breakfast each day in Lijiang was at a cute Tibetan café across the street – eggs, toast, yogurt, fruit and coffee. A nice start to our busy days!
Impression Lijiang
Our first stop of the day was the show, “Impression Lijiang,” a spectacular extravaganza directed by Zhang Yi Mou, who also directed the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. With about 500 people from 10 ethnic groups, the show highlights the region’s traditional clothing, music and customs. The different numbers included women singing as they picked tea, men dancing through a drinking competition, small but sturdy steppe horses galloping around the open-air stage’s perimeter, powerful drumming and chanting, and the grand finale – the entire cast dressed in ceremonial costumes and holding hands as they zig-zagged down the hillside and turned to send a prayer to the mountain towering in the background.
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Snow Mountain and Yak Meadow
After the show, we took a public bus to Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, and then rode a gondola up to Yak Meadow at 3,800 meters. We had hoped to walk the full length of the trail around the meadow, but the altitude really slowed us down. We had to stop every few steps to catch our breath. So, instead of a long hike, we enjoyed lots of standing and soaking up the beauty. We looked out at jagged mountains and a meadow full of pink and yellow wildflowers, grazing yaks and cows, and a small Tibetan temple.
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Baisha Village
Back down the mountain, we drove to Baisha Village, the original settlement of the Naxi people 1,200 years ago. Cath and I sat by a big open window at a local restaurant and enjoyed a delicious lunch. One highlight was fried yak cheese that you dip in sugar. It tasted like cream-cheese frosting. Yum! In most parts of China, people don’t like dairy products, so this was a special treat. Looking out the restaurant window, we felt like Baisha Village was putting on a show for us. People were simply going about their daily lives, but they were thoroughly entertaining. Enter stage left: man pulling a towering cart of straw. Enter stage right: women in Naxi clothing with babies strapped on their backs in beautifully embroidered fabric. Enter stage left: man leading a cow pulling a huge cart with two giggling young boys in back. Enter stage right: Hunched over village elders with deep wrinkles of wisdom and beautiful smiles.
After our impromptu lunchtime show, we walked through the village to a temple, where we saw frescoes from the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).
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Tea Party
Feeling exhausted, we told Li Qiong that we’d like to take it easy for the afternoon. She recommended hanging out in a teahouse. I’ve seen the tourist version of a tea ceremony many times, but she assured us that it was just a nice place to chat and rest. Several hours later, after drinking gallons of tea, we had to agree. Our tea server, Zhu Wei Li, wore her hot-pink Naxi ceremonial costume and softly explained the fine points of drinking Puer Tea, the most famous tea produced in Yunnan Province.
Both of our Chinese hostesses talked about the tea with great reverence, lowering their voices and using metaphors from nature to describe its purity and benefits. They closed their eyes and breathed in the tea’s aroma with an almost spiritual calm. They instructed us to hold the tea on our tongues for a moment, then slowly swallow and inhale gently through our mouths. “It feels like a flower blooming,” Li Qiong said. “You can smell the freshness of spring.”
Zhu Wei Li served us two kinds of Puer Tea – one made from young raw tea called sheng and one made from cooked tea leaves called shu. The young leaves brewed a pale green tea with a floral scent, while the cooked leaves brewed up deep amber with a stronger flavor. The tea is compressed into round cakes the size of a dinner plate. You break off a little piece, drop it in the teapot, and add hot water. (The first pot of tea gets dumped out. In the teahouse, Zhu Wei Li dumped it on a symbolic clay frog that sat on her tea table. We also dumped the last sip from our teacups on a smaller version of the frog.) The same chunk of Puer Tea can be brewed 35-40 times, producing a slightly different flavor each time. When you’re done using it for tea, you can brew a refreshing face wash with the leftover tea, Li Qiong said.
Between cups of tea, we enjoyed hearing Li Qiong’s stories about her family and culture. Unlike many young Chinese, she was comfortable with philosophical discussions about China’s politics and culture clashes.
Here’s a fantastic website with details about Puer Tea.
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