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20 August: Lijiang

We were up just after 08h00, dressed and heading out for breakfast, noodles would be the main for today. We decided to try a new restaurant which we found walking towards the town square. Of course we had to try out our newly memorized Mandarin phrases. Both of us greeted and after that I left the ordering to Leanne, my sinus was still blocked and I wasn't particularly keen on using my brain to much (and I couldn't remember that much). She ordered a noodle dish and afterwards a douw and omelet snack.

The sun wasn't quite shining, but it was a great day to explore the city. We walked through the streets much slower to really admire the art work, stepping in a few shops to watch as they carved the wood, drew with their pencils or manhandled the silver to create the intended. We had wanted to find the road from where we had entered the old city the day before, sounds easy but after an hour of looking and trying to recognize what we remembered we gave up. We passed the Mu Family Mansion, built in 1380 during the Ming dynasty, destroy and later rebuilt. The complex is 30 000 square meters with beautiful buildings which are surrounded by a moat. Unfortunately the entrance fee was just to steep and we gave it a skip, the other reason was that it was devastated in 1996 by an earthquake and practically rebuilt.

We wondered around the square before walking up the hill to one of the restaurants with a lookout point over the whole city. This was the same place we had gone when first we came to Lijiang with the French couple except this time it didn't rain and we could see the mountain. Along the way we stopped to first buy a corn cob which we shared, sitting outside before entering the hotel/restaurant. After the photo session we bought some type of sweet douw cake which was crisply fried in a very oily wok (a delicacy called 'Lijiang baba') , before returning to Mama's guest house. We had hardly made it back before the rains started and it persisted until just after 17h00.

We went out once more for a last purchase, we had seen beautifully crafted silver holders, meant for keeping tea. We had tried the day before to bargain for them, but couldn't get the price we wanted. There were only two shops in the whole of the old town we had spotted with them, so our bargaining options were limited. The one we had tried the day before wouldn't reduce her price to less than 80Y, the second one started at 260Y for one! We succeeded in the end to get the price to a reasonable 170Y for two, more than we wanted to pay, but then again it was a work of art and we really liked it.

Back in the room we were called for dinner, we went down a little later and joined a group at a table. Most of them were from the UK although 2 of them came from Poland. We spent most of the evening chatting to them, the woman was quite blessed with languages and could speak: English, Polish, Russian, German and a bit of Chec. They were only traveling for 3 weeks and had experienced a bit of the other side of China. While going through a checkpoint surrounded by 6 police officers her camera was stolen. She persisted for 2 hours trying to get a report from them, in the end one of them told her that if she didn't leave they would shoot her in the head because she was being a nuisance.

We were also able to get some information about the Chonqing Yatzi river cruise through the three river gorges. We had planned to go there next, but there was a measure of uncertainly in both of us. They told us that a friend of theirs who stayed in China had advised them not to go. They also told us of an internet site (http://oraclephoto.com/images.htm)where a photographer had displayed the effects of the building of the worlds largest dam on the people and the ecology. Later the evening we checked it out, it didn't take long to decide to make a detour from Chengdu to Xi'an rather than Chonqing.