We all arrived in Lijiang in time to go out for lunch. We walked off down the road for lunch at some nice place that Alim chose for us. After another traditional style lunch for this area, we headed off to visit the old city of the Naxi People who are one of the native people of the area.
We had only being walking a couple of minutes when the heavens opened up on us. In a city without awnings over the side walk the only option was to buy $2.00 umbrellas. I think the rain is a regular event at catching out tourists and locals, as umbrellas are readily available on the street. In Dali the previous day as soon at it started to rain, a woman appeared on the street with a basket of them to sell !!!
The old city is very commercial these days as it is visited by 5,000,000 Chinese tourists every year. The whole afternoon involved a fair bit of walking and some more navigational errors; but we arrived back to the hotel – so all is well.
The drive to Lijiang for Maurie and I was interesting, as our GPS took us a country road instead of the freeway the others used. On the country drive it answered a question for me. For the last few days we had been driving past acres of Tobacco plantations and as an old tobacco farmer I wondered what drying process was used in China? Yesterday I discovered that it was air-dried in sheds. We also drove past Mulberry bush plantation for the growing of mulberry leaves to feed silkworms for the silk factories…..along with changing a flat tyre in the mud in the middle of the road works.
Today we are off to Tiger Leaping Gorge.
Ruth Palsson
Interesting about the tobacco.
Sallymae Bailey
Thanks for the update. Lovely to see the umbrella parade! I am sure they will come in handy more than once or those lovely Chinese plastic ponchos – who double as a moving sauna box!