Tag Archives: China

Could You Say ‘No’ to This Man?

Near the top of the chair lift leading some 500 meters up the slope of Dahei from Dali sits a small temple. After making it through some harrowing bus rides unharmed we had the intention of making a small donation thanking the spirits for their kindness. Curiously we peek into the temple and observe the two monks blessing a Chinese woman. We are invited in with friendly gestures and asked to kneel in front of the gilded Buddha statue and receive a blessing. We are lead off to separate guest books, suspicions rise as we see the entries: Pierre, France – 200 Yuan, Peter, Holland – 100 Yuan, etc. 100 Yuan, that is 20 noodle soups or ten days of lunch for us. Needless to say, Cranky parts with a big red Mao of 100 Yuan but he is able to skip the additional 100 Yuan fee for the little fake Jade Buddha and additional spiritual guidance with polite but sturdy ‘Bu Yaos’. Katja is much tougher and gets away with 50 Yuan on her end of the room. Her monk yells across to Cranky’s monk in disbelieve: ’50 Yuan do you know?’

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Dali Dinner

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We especially recommend the mushrooms, squash and chicken. The local carp from Er lake is delicious but you need to work around the bones. Remember not to use your fingers to get them out of your mouth, spitting them on the ground is much more proper.

Hard Sleeper

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This is Cranky building his middle bunk on the train to Dali. He had just painstakingly explained the numbering system of the hard sleeper beds to an elderly Chinese couple using multiple permutations of all the 27 words in his Mandarin vocabulary. His system analysis stemmed from his experience with two soft sleeper rides and careful analysis of the roman numbers displayed next to the beds and on his ticket. Only trouble was: Not only are the local people much better at reading the Chinese characters on the reservation tickets but the numbering system between soft sleeper and hard sleeper are not consistent. In soft sleeper each bed has a unique number within the train car, in hard sleeper each bed is referred to by cabin number and level: Bottom, middle and top, signified by Chinese characters.

© photo: Katja

Yin & Yang in Yángshuò

The charms of Yángshuò are very accessible, the river Li flowing through karst towers, temples strewn about, the China of our imagination. There are as many electric scooters as forward looking cities elsewhere would dream to have, restaurant scraps are collected for composting, the people are friendly and the vegetation lush.

 

There is a lot of pressure on this picturesque town as dozens of tour boats float down the river in a daily rhythm and a constant flow of buses bring more of us – tourists that is. Mostly as part of organized package tours. Restaurants, shops and hotels have a lot of unused capacity at the moment, the floodgates must be about to open.

 

But no worries, a stroll away from the well worn Xi Jie will reveal plenty exotic sights to Euro-American eyes. Food can be had very fresh, pick your red snapper from the tank while it is still swimming, take the feathered friend home for dinner, choose your own vegetables for the stir fry, snales, frogs, eels, you know they are fresh because they are squiggling. This knowing your food and where it comes from is welcome and romantic until you hear the faint barking from behind the meat counter and take a closer look at the butchered parts on display. Just the motivation we needed to learn the Chinese characters and Mandarin words for beef, chicken and pork.

 

Cell towers, WiFi and the Internets are everywhere. That is a good part of the internet … blogging platforms such as posterous are not accessible, in other words, we can’t access our own crankygerman.com. We are posting this via email, hopefully it looks good.

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