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9 August: Xizhou Village

We woke up early, ready to go on our cycling tour. We headed down to reception where we asked where we could store our bags, since we would be gone for two days, before returning. (We had organized it yesterday with a woman that could speak a bit of english). They showed us a spot behind the reception counter, next to the computer where they sat. Not really happy that our bags with more than R10 000 and the laptop would be standing where everyone could see it and anyone could steal it. It was obvious there was some confusion, so we tried to explain writing down on a piece of paper, where we were going, the dates and when we would return. Immediately there was disagreement and they tried to indicate we could only leave our bags until the afternoon, which obviously wouldn't help us. It also sounded that they we couldn't sleep there again when we come back....At this point we were fed up, we took our deposit and headed to the hotel we had pre-booked the day before. They would either tell us we could leave our bags there or we would have to find another option, it was worth the try. We were in luck, the lady was kind and more than willing for us to leave our bags. We left them in a room, on someones bed, but at least it was behind a closed door.

Baggage organised, we left to find something to eat along the way, before collecting our bikes. Along the way was a stall selling glorified vetkoek with some green peppers incorporated within. We purchased two, in retrospect one would have been sufficient. Walking down further with the road we stopped at the cycle shop, the lady showed us the two bikes, looking brand new. She checked every nut and bolt and made adjustments to our seats, before we paid her the money and a deposit for the safe return of the bikes. We were fortunate, most of the cycle shops wanted their bikes back after a days drive, we're sure she would have also, but the language barrier was a little to much. I wrote down the dates we were traveling and when we would return and asked her to sign, just in case we ran into trouble for not returning the bikes the same day.

All ready we headed out of Dali on our way to Xizhou, a brisk 18km ride along the highway. Our book had recommended we stay on the Tibet/Yunan road due to the other parallel road being to busy. The 3 lane road had a wide shoulder so we felt safe cycling, even though it was relatively busy. About 3km out we passed the 3 pagodas and the Chongsheng temple, the three pagodas are the oldest standing structures in southwestern China, the tallest Qianxun Pagoda, has 16 tiers and stands 70m tall, the other two are 10 tiers and 42m tall. They were constructed in the mid 9th century by engineers from Xi'an. We would have loved to go in, but at 180 Yuan a piece it was a bit steep for us, at least we could get some nice photos from outside.

Back on the road, we continued another 5 km before we were confronted with a dirt road, our nice tar road was no more and we were skeptical about sharing the thin road with the likes of heavy duty trucks carrying marble blocks that looked like they were going to fall off at any moment. We had often seen roads forking off to the lake and knowing the other road ran parallel to this one we took one of these dirt roads through the farm lands. There was a small river on the right hand side with maize plantations standing tall on the left. We eventually arrived at another tar road and asked some locals whether we were at the right road (thank you map for Mandarin names!).

We headed further along the new lake road although this one was considerably thinner, carrying substantially more traffic, however the shoulder was sufficiently wide and the vehicles rarely traveled in the shoulder region. The drive was wonderful, farmlands of tobacco and maze spread out on both sides, flanked only by the road and its annoyingly loud traffic. We stopped after we had traveled about 10km for lunch, we had bought snacks the day before, a variety of dried banana, mango, coconut, and another type of fruit we're not sure of. We finished off a 1.5l bottle of water and continued on to Xizhou. Another 1 ½ hours before we came to a turnoff leading to Xizhou, we stopped to ask for directions, before at least a battalion sized unit, with 6 companies passed us. It was comprised mostly of armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles, some pulling artillery pieces or supply trucks. We stood there for 15 minutes watching truck after truck pass us. I read up about the Peoples Liberation Army (Chinese army) when we returned and they have the largest infantry army in the world with 1.6 million infantry men and 500 000 in reserve, they are also currently the largest spenders on military development. I was even able to find some of the vehicles we saw during the procession.

We continued into town and stopped at a pharmacy asking for directions to a hotel, he wrote down the name of a place and we continued cycling through town asking around where we could find the place. In the end we gave up and asked a woman at a real estate firm if she could help, she made some calls, but in the end a taxi driver offered to take us to a hotel for 2 yuan. Just before we left a new procession of tanks appeared rolling through the town road, they however didn't have the chained wheals, rather they had tires as above. The procession had continued for more than 30 minutes when we left. We arrived at the guest house, Leanne recognised the sign from our cycle earlier , but we hadn't stopped there unsure of whether it was one. The hotel was nice, rooms were clean although not the largest, the bathroom however was outside and we shared it with some other guests.

We left our bags in the room and headed out to the market, first we passed through a fresh fruit and vegetables market. We tried to bargain a bit for some fruit, we had been longing for them, but somehow in China they were incredibly expensive, in the end we purchased two peaches. The rest of the market was situated in a long street with small shops on both sides, selling clothing, "antiques" and shoes. A adidas tracksuit can be purchased for R100, but then usually the spelling is wrong! At the end of the street it opens up into a courtyard where food stalls were situated under the trees. We sat down for a lunch of spicy noodles and a Xizhou cake, both local specialities. The Xizhou cake is a large flat vetkoek, with pig fat pieces (we only found out later), but its nice and salty.

After lunch we walked up a dirt road leading through the residential area towards the main road. We passed three little girls playing in the narrow street, one with a type of fairy dress, before coming to a large temple complex being restored. Just opposite the temple was the pond stretching all the way down the road, with walkways all the way down. We walked down to the end, before buying an ice cold coke and ice tea, which we enjoyed sitting under a tree looking over the pond with its small colourful fish.

The day of exercise had taken its toll and we headed back to our hotel for an afternoon siesta. We slept just under 2 hours, waking at 18h30. We still wanted to see the Yan's Bai peoples house, a cultural center within the town. Unfortunately we had missed the demonstrations, but we were able to walk through the building before being escorted out by a gatekeeper. One of the most amazing characteristics of Xizhou is the Bai architecture for which it is famous, with its curved roofs, paintings on the sides of the buildings and red doors. The old town was full of them and we spent our time walking through the streets, until we reached a section were the rice paddies emerged at the edge of town extending into the distance. We walked into another direction, where we came upon a horse, still with cart attached, another great photo opportunity! At some of the houses on the outskirts we even notices patches of maze growing, like we would have a garden with a few flowers.

We walked back to the food court we had been earlier, but everyone had left, so we looked for an open restaurant along the way. An elderly woman waved us in and we sat down for another plate of noodles, at least we had tea to go with it! We weren't quite satisfied and were looking for more of the local specialties. We walked up to the pond where Leanne had spotted some restaurants along the main road. The sun had just started setting and in the dusk, a musician was playing a Chinese guitar on the bridge, while some of the locals sat and listened, later he even added his voice to the music. It didn't take long to find what we were looking for, we pointed to some of the specialities we were looking for at one of the restaurants and they agreed to make it for us. Sweet and sour pork fillets with rice, it ended up being really tasty, hope we find it again! Back at the hotel we finished up, before going to bed. The one thing that really stood out was the amount of mosquito's in the public toilet, there were a multitude of them, strange thing was we never got bit! (ok,we did use repellent, but there were a lot of them).