Baisha cycle ride from Lijiang, Yunnan, south-west China
- A bike ride - on walkingstories.com?
- Hiring bikes and looking for a map
- Leaving Lijiang
- On to Baisha
- Musical interlude - then a picnic on a parapet
- Meeting Doctor Ho
- Retail therapy
- Another character - a Robin Hood impersonator
- An uphill cycle through the countryside
- Return trip
A bike ride - on walkingstories.com?
Putting together the photos for this story, I'm reminded just how many striking sights we took in during our daytrip out to Baisha and beyond, to the slopes of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain (Yulong Xueshan) north of Lijiang.
OK, it was a bike ride, and we only really had a short walk when we propped our bikes up against a tree in Baisha and walked around the village for an hour or so. The rest of the time we were pumping the pedals along bumpy unsurfaced roads, or beside a long straight highway, or uphill through villages then countryside, before careering back downhill to Lijiang. But it gave us lots of glimpses of China along the way, and so it might be of interest to other visitors to walkingstories interested to find out more about south-west China.
There is a bus out to Baisha, but we hadn't really considered that option. The Lonely Planet guide said it was one of the best destinations for a day trip from Lijiang, especially for those using bikes, and that seemed like a pretty good recommendation.
Hiring bikes and looking for a map
After our relaxing breakfast on the morning of 2nd June (see Lijiang story), we hunted around the streets of the Old Town for somewhere to hire bikes. Several of the guest houses, and I think the Youth Hostel, offered this service, so we had several to choose from. Although the girl at one we went into didn't seem very welcoming, we managed to negotiate a reduction in price from 60 yuan for 3 (about £4) for the day, to 45 yuan. After checking the brakes and gears, we cycled off through the Old Town (which we later found out we shouldn't have!).
We didn't get far. On our way out through the entrance to the Old Town, we spotted a shop selling outdoor gear over to the left of the taxis. Having failed to find anywhere selling a map of the area so far, this seemed like a reasonable prospect. The girls inside were helpful and came up with the "Three-parallel-Rivers Regions" Ecological Traveling Map. It said:
"Three-parallel-Rivers Regions",
The heaven of the human and the nature co-existence;
The old ancient "Tea-Horse Path Regions;"
The mysterious and attractive landscape;
The paradise for the praver who search the spirit home...
- exactly like that. And everything else on the map was entirely in Chinese. Although Catriona could read some Chinese, we didn't work out in the shop that the map covered a vast region of south-west China where the three mighty rivers of the Yangtse, the Mekong and the Salween run through deep gorges close to each other on the edge of Tibet and Burma. On the other side was a Lijiang Old Town Map, with the rest of the information in Chinese. None of this was really of any use whatsoever to us in finding a route for our cycling tour!
Luckily, I realised that the unfriendly guest house had actually given us a tiny piece of paper with a little map of the roads around Lijiang. This gave us sufficient information to know what sort of direction to head in.
In the shop I also bought what looked like a Chinese army surplus compass, so we would know what direction we were heading in (having left my trusty Silva compass at home), but this turned out to be very little use as well!
Of rather more use were the purchases we made in a shop after turning right from the Old Town entrance, heading through Lijiang - several bottles of water and some packets of Chinese snacks of indeterminate flavours. Finally we got moving again along this street, wobbling a bit and getting used to the motorised traffic rumbling past.
The road forked, and we took the easier option, going almost straight on along the right fork. We began to leave the built-up area, as the road bent to the left with an area of new parkland on the right. It seemed to be a kind of Centre Parcs complex for tourists, but we didn't look too closely. Some of the ponds being created might have been for anglers. Owen spotted a very amusing sign, and I just had to get a photo of it (see the picture above).
Black Dragon Pool Park (Heilongtan Gongyuan) - the one with the wonderful view of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain - must have been out here somewhere, but we didn't knowingly see it. Maybe this tourist development was linked to the park.
On the left, there had been a lot of earthmoving, and it looked as though infrastructure was being laid for a large new development. Suddenly the new straight road ended, and we stopped to check our route (see the next photo). We didn't really know where we were headed, but there was an road continuing round to the right, and we followed this. It became an unsurfaced dirt track, leading past rows of poor houses, then through a village with winding streets and high walls. Gateways provided glimpses of farm courtyards behind the wall, and we were to find that this was a typical type of village construction. I was intrigued by these windows into the private worlds of the people who lived here, just like the doorways through the walls in the Beijing hutongs which opened into backyards.
Many of the walls were built of mud bricks, with roofing over them to keep them dry. We rode on, past small shops and cafes, and a school up to the right. People sitting inside the cafes in the shade seemed surprised as we rode past (understandably). It was a bumpy ride.
We saw women washing their clothes on the banks of a stream a few times, but were cycling past and there was no chance to take photos. Then came a long dusty stretch to the next cluster of buildings, with the jagged line of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain in the distance. I stopped for this photo of Owen and Catriona, and a man riding a bike pulling a fully laden cart rode past.
Finally we emerged at a roundabout on the main road, and stopped a some market stalls to buy some small melons and mangos for our lunch. It's worth remembering here that we might have had difficulty with these simple transactions if it wasn't for Catriona's knowledge of Chinese - the bartering for the bikes had been easier as the girl at the guest house had spoken English.
We were now on a long straight main road. Over on the other side was what looked like a temple of some sort, but it had a strangely modern look to it. We later found out it was the mockup entrance to a kind of Highland Theme Park. On our side of the road we passed a Tourism and Culture College of Yunnan University, on a big campus.
The road wasn't busy, fortunately, but it was a gentle uphill climb, and we were feeling the heat. We followed the kilometre markers from 5 km to 9 km (from the centre of Lijiang?) and then turned off to the left when we saw a junction with a big green sign for Baisha - the Naxi people.
We could see Jade Dragon Snow Mountain more clearly now, seemingly just across the fields to the left, but in reality about 15 or 20 km, further on. It was just a Very Big Mountain!
This was a narrower country road, but with a good surface to it, and we rode the couple of km to Baisha. On the way into the village we met an English family (mother, father and daughter), also on bikes, who had been through the village and had met a Doctor Ho, the old practitioner of herbal medicine who had been featured in Michael Palin's Himalaya programme a few months previously. The daughter had been studying in China and learnt the language, so her parents had felt it was an opportunity to visit the country - sounded familiar!
Musical interlude - then a picnic on a parapet
We rode into the village along a quiet street, which came to a T-junction, and turned right into a bit of a square. There was a group of musicians on the right, sitting and waiting for tourists to turn up. They were obviously pleased to see us! We propped up our bikes and after I gave them 10 yuan they played us some lively folk tunes and let me take a few photos. This seemed like the spirit of free enterprise alive and well in rural China!
There was plenty more evidence of the market economy, with stalls set up on either side of the street. We locked our bikes and walked up between the old houses, until we reached a little bridge over a stream. We were able to sit on the stone parapet and have our picnic. Finding out what was in the packets of snacks proved the interesting bit - some were rather spicy. Trying to get the stickiness of the melons and mangos off our hands was the more difficult bit. We could observe the passers-by, and a mother and grandmother who were busy entertaining a little girl. This was typical of China, where grandmothers often provide the childcare whilst young mothers go to work.
Across the road, another group of visitors were enjoying some lunch at a little cafe. We would return there later!
Just now, we were intending to try and locate Doctor Ho, and after packing our rucsacks we started walking up the street. As we passed some bushes on the left, a face with a white beard looked through and asked "are you looking for me?". We realised we were indeed looking at Doctor Ho. Just below his face were placards bearing newspaper cuttings describing his exploits. We followed him into the wooden building behind. It was his surgery / dispensary.
He already had another customer - or patient - and his son took over for a few minutes, showing us books with more press cuttings, and photos on the wall. ( He spoke reasonably good English, like his father). Michael Palin's visit had obviously been a significant moment for Dr Ho, but only the latest of a long line of achievements. And he and his son are only too ready to run throught these for their visitors. It seems that everyone else has the same sort of experience. See, for instance, this blog by Ken who is spending a year in Lijiang, and who gives a much better description of the experience than I can manage! However, I have to say that Dr Ho's son didn't imitate Michael Palin's visit to a Yunnan toilet, or perform acrobatics on the floor for us!
Just put "Doctor Ho Lijiang" into a Google search and see what else comes up!
There were absolutely reams of testimonials and photos and clippings, it was quiet unbelievable! The walls of the one of the two rooms were covered with them, and there were more in glass cabinets which were taken out for us to see. One door led out at the back into a garden, with a house beyond. Another door led to the right, into the surgery/dispensary. After Dr Ho had dealt with his other clients, he turned his attention back to us, and asked more about where we came from. He caught on references to Scotland and Britain and found relevant testimonials and stories to impress us. It appeared that various qualified medics had been convinced of the effectiveness of his herbal remedies in curing cancer and other serious ailments.
Then he came round to the real business - which of us needed some treatment? Catriona confessed that she sometimes suffered from asthma, and he immediately whisked her through to his surgery, sat her down on a stool and gave her a checkover. Then he worked out a prescription, and finally made it up himself from the contents of the many and various plastic, glass and metallic containers on the shelves of the surgery. This resulted in a plastic bowl full of sandy-looking dust which he poured into a plastic bag, and instructed Catriona to use it to make regular infusions which would certainly improve her condition.
She thanked him, and we wondered whether we should pay for this swift and courteous treatment which the NHS would have difficulty matching. Evidently Dr Ho had dealt with this awkward situation plenty of times before, and he sort of hinted that some financial sign of our appreciation would be appropriate. I offered him a couple of notes, and he sort of muttered again suggesting this was less than might be expected, so I added another note and he smiled with satisfaction and was happy to have his photo taken with Owen and Catriona.
(When we were in Tiger Leaping Gorge over the following couple of days, walking with Mike, we told him about our visit to Dr Ho, and he decided he'd go out to Baisha to see him as well. We bumped into him again before we left Lijiang, and he related an experience very similar to ours - he had come back with a bag of powder, minus 30 or 40 yuan).
After the treatment from Dr Ho, we thanked him and left, walking on through the village. Lonely Planet reports that Baisha was the Naxi capital before Kublai Khan took over in the 14th century. It seems hard to believe now, as it looks and feels like a large farming village in the countryside. We didn't notice much in the way of regular shops (probably people go to Lijiang for most household goods) but there were plenty of other things for sale to visitors.
We wandered past one stall after another in the main street, then turned right along another street of market stalls, and right again past more shops. Many of the items were repeated from one shop to the next, and if we had each had an empty suitcase or better still a pickup truck we would have really enjoyed spending our hard earned yuan on craft items, textiles, stoneware and other attractive merchandise. But carrying loads of stuff around China for the next fortnight in packs that were already over-full didn't seem a particularly smart idea, despite the urgent pleas from the stallholders claiming that just about everything was "Beautiful" and "real Naxi".
We carefully selected a couple of purchases, then moved on through a gateway into an open area where four girls were dressed up in traditional gear. It didn't look much like a dancefloor, but they were obviously just waiting there for someone to pop a few yuan into the jukebox and they'd start up. And so they did. Catriona and Owen weren't impressed as they performed on the dusty patch of earth, avoiding the tree trunks, but it somehow seemed to add something to the visitor experience!
Another character - a Robin Hood impersonator
Back at the main street, we needed to find a toilet, and went to the cafe next to Doctor Ho's surgery which we had seen earlier. A cheerful chap greeted us and pointed the way to the toilet. Then we went through to the courtyard where we could get some tea.
We had varioius teas to choose from, and whilst his wife put the kettle on we were able to look around the courtyard - or rather a farmyard, for this was a smartened up traditional Naxi farmyard surrounded by the farm buildings, with the high rack (like wallbars in a gymnasium) hung with corn cobs drying out, sheafs of barley stacked up, and various farm implements set up for customers to examine.
Owen was given the opportunity to try one of them out, and then our host produced a number of photograph albums to show us. We soon realised that these provided a visual life history of none other than the cafe proprietor himself. He had been in the People's Liberation Army and had children who had gone off elsewhere. The next day, at the Naxi Family Guest House in Tiger Leaping Gorge, we had an almost identical presentation of family photos from the woman who ran the place. It seemed like the way to make friends and communicate across the language barrier.
(So a tip for anyone going to China, particularly Yunnan - take a small selection of family photos with you, illustrating key moments in your life!).
Our tea was served, and then our host reappeared, this time wearing a feathered cap and jerkin of animal skins. And he was carrying a pipe. He proceeded to entertain us with several lively melodies, as we sipped our green tea. If you can imagine a an oriental cross between Robin Hood and Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull, you'll get the picture.
After the tea, we were shown round the farmyard - and a second linked yard behind - and then posed for photos with the sheaves of barley and some of the implements.
We hadn't quite expected all this when we went to ask if we could use the toilet, but it added to the experience of Baisha as a place full of entertaining people.
We thought we'd better get back to our bikes and explore a bit further beyond the village, although we could easily have hung around and learnt to shoe a horse or something similar.
An uphill cycle through the countryside
Back down at the little square, our bikes were still safely padlocked to the tree. The musicians had abandoned their performance area, and were nowhere to be seen. Maybe they'd reached their target for the day and gone off to the pub. Although, funnily enough, there was no sign of any of those either.
We cycled back up the street again, over the little bridge and past the cafe and Doctor Ho's surgery. It was a bumpy cobbled street, and rather sore on our backsides. Plus, it was still hot and sunny, so we didn't hurry.
Soon we had left behind the commercial hub of Baisha, and continued past lines of farmhouses built around farmyards, with people going about their tasks without paying much attention to the trio of fair-haired tourists on bikes. They must see quite a few visitors. I was tempted to stop and try to take more photos of characteristic people doing typical Yunnan village things, but Owen and Catriona were pushing on and I was feeling a bit shy about asking people if I could take their photo. There was one more farmyard which I managed to capture through a gateway.
After perhaps a couple of miles - 3 km - of this linear settlement, we reached a properly surfaced road, making our ride a little easier and more comfortable. Now we were out in open countryside, still going gradually uphill, and there were plenty of people out in the fields tending the crops. A bunch of women sat by the roadside, chatting and doing something with baskets full of produce. A couple of horses were tethered on the other side, with a view of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain in the distance. Presumably the British countryside must have once looked busy, like this, but without the Jade Dragon dimension.
It was an indication of just how many people still get their living from the land in China. About 600 million, I seem to recall, and the government is very anxious that the movement of people from the countryside to the cities in search of better incomes doesn't turn into an unstoppable flood. That's why the development of tourism and other industries in regions such as this is so vital to maintain social and political order.
After the tethered horses, the road went downhill - a welcome break from the long uphill effort. It bent this way then that, past some buildings, and there was a religious building of some sort over to the left. Apparently there are quite a few temples with frescoes worth visiting, but this one was closed. We had missed out on visiting a good one in Baisha (I didn't notice the information in the guidebook until after our trip). But we were enjoying our taste of the countryside, and continued uphill again.
Now it really was a steep climb, and we strained on the pedals even in low gear. It was around 4 p.m. and we were all tired, but the hill went on and on.
There was a bend to the right, then round to the left past another religious building. We stopped by the roadside to review the situation. It was already late afternoon, and we didn't really have a specific objective. We could now see that the road continued climbing - it seemed to be heading all the way up Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, which suddenly appeared much closer. On the slopes ahead of us, construction work was under way on a new tourism development, with timber lodges being built in traditional style. It looked as though the religious building was part of this new development.
We pondered a bit, but really we had to turn round as it was a long ride down and back across the plain to Lijiang. So we did, zooming down the steep bits, with some more effort required on a couple of climbs. We stuck to the surfaced road rather than going on the rough track back through the long village - and this took us back into Baisha another way. Down at the square where the musicians had played, we thought we went straight on through a gateway onto a road back to Lijiang, but we were directed along the road on which we originally arrived that morning, and then turned right on another road. It meandered past fields and buildings, and seemed to rejoin the line of the road through the gateway from the square. Anyway, we were now on the right road for Lijiang, much more interesting than the main highway. It continued through a linear settlement for another couple of kilometres, with people and animals walking along the street, and other people doing busy things in their farmyards.
Then the condition of the road deteriorated as it left the houses and passed between fields, and it became a bumpy dirt track once more. At last we approached some trees, and the fenced perimeter of what looked like a theme park, with various miniature mountains and other replica features. We rode along the outside of the fence. To our left, we could see the temple which we had spotted near the roundabout on our way out, and then we were back at the busy main road.
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