Mike In China

Upon arriving at the Dali airport we were once again greeted by our new personal tour guide and driver. First they took us to a local village to observe a three tea ceremony. Each of the three teas represents something different and I think there was something about getting married involved. Unfortunately I don't remember the details but it was nice. I think I remember one of the three teas not tasting so good, but the other two tasted all right. From there we went to the morning market to check out how the locals shop. Then we went to a local tiedye house. Apparently Dali is know for its tiedye so we observed how that is made. Basically the oldest women do all the hard work of stitching together these very intricate patterns and the young people sit around waiting for the dye to dry and try to sell you stuff. Next we had lunch and then headed to the Three Pagodas. The whole complex was very beautiful. Let me tell you a little about Dali itself. Dali is sandwiched between Er Hai Lake and a mountain range so the scenery is beautiful on both sides. The Three Pagodas complex works its way up one of the mountains so you take a golf cart to the top and then walk down. Our tour guide was great at telling us all about the temples and monuments. It was REALLY great having our tour guide there because I know that if she wasn't there Mom would have been asking me all the questions she had about everything thinking that I, for some unknown reason, now know every detail about every aspect of every area of China after living in Shanghai for six months. So that was very nice. If you look at the Three Pagodas themselves, the two smaller ones are actually leaning somewhat due to earthquakes. We then checked into our hotel and napped a little before heading to the old city portion of Dali. The old city is still surrounded by its original walls and cars are not allowed except on a few cross streets. We walked around for awhile until we found ourselves at foreigner street which is a street made up of pubs and restaurants aimed at backpackers and tourists. Mom ordered some Chinese food and I was able to get a good cheeseburger. We also had a beer, which turned into two and so on and so on and had a great time sitting there talking about random things and catching up. Nothing like getting wasted with your mom in China... The beer we had was actually Dali beer which is apparently pretty well known throughout southern China. It is made only in Dali (we were shown the brewery one day while driving by) and is actually quite good. The guy who waited on us was very nice and spoke very good English. He informed us that someday he wants to move to Beijing to become a pop star. I thought that was pretty funny. The next day we woke up, hopped in the car and had a four hour drive up to Lijiang. Our tour guide was only for Dali so she stayed there because we were getting a new guide in Lijiang. That made the car ride a little interesting because our driver didn't speak a word of English. We got the important stuff down like "bathroom" so it worked out pretty well. And here I will take a second to insert a story about Mom. Somewhere in the course of being in China, Mom decided that she was going to learn how to speak and read Chinese during her two week stay in China. I attempted to help at first with words like hello, "ni hao" (pronounced: knee how) but somehow it would come out of her mouth something like "pee cow" or "tea gao" or anything really ridiculously wrong. I love my mom and she is a very brilliant woman, but by no means a linguist. I quickly got frustrated and gave up, although she did not. She soon moved on to insisting that she was starting to recognize certain characters from trying to read all the Chinese signs and would ask me things such as, "what does the little pan shaped one mean?" Mind you that with Chinese there are thousands of Chinese characters and many of the more complex ones contain many of the more simple ones, so asking about the "pan shaped one" is probably referring to about one hundred different characters. Sensing my frustration with her efforts she eventually wrote down a character asking our tour guide what in meant. He (unlike I) was glad to help and explain. To ADD to her language quest she felt the need to read OUT LOUD every single English word on any sign. We would be in an elevator in Shanghai and there would be a Chinese add with everything in Chinese except the website and she would read it out loud and ask if I knew what it was. RIDICULOUS?! I think that it was just that it was something familiar for her but it drove me nuts! Hahaha, well what can say, she's Mom and you gotta love her. Upon arriving in Lijiang we met our new tour guide who would be with us for the next couple of days. HE is a whole nother story which I will save for the next post.