2005/1/10: Dali

10:00 Bun Breakfast

In the morning, we woke up and went outside for a breakfast walk. The main strip (Fuxian Lu) in Old Dali is crowded with tourists - but almost all Chinese / very few outsiders. Breakfast was a collection of light white puffy steamed buns, from a cart seller in a small alley near the hotel. The vendor pulled back layers of steaming trays to show all sorts of buns, but of course we couldn't understand what was inside so we just bought... 1 yuan per 2 buns, really quite a bargain. Took the buns back to the cold hotel room and ate them with hot tea.

Dentist with foot-powered drill and cigarette in hand. We decided to wait until Bangkok for our dental work.

11:00 Bus to Xiaping Market

Up the hill [to the north-west] of the main Dali strip is a boundary road that runs past Old Dali. It's outside the main city walls. On that road are mini busses that continue along the lake to Xiaping, where a market is held every Monday.

At first we were nervous about getting the right bus, and asking for the right place to get off in Xiaping, but in the end it was so simple - It seems all the mini busses are running to Xiaping, and when you finally get there, it's obvious - the bus shuts down and pulls in next to a bunch of other mini busses. On market day you can see people heading to the market from the bus stop. The fare from Dali is 5 yuan, time 45 minutes.

Riding on the tiny bus, we bumped into Watanabe Jun, another traveller, who gave us some insight on buying dyed fabric. The road between Dali and Xiaping has a few small towns that crank out dyed fabric, these are the real sources. Elsewhere on the Yunnan Dali-Lijiang trail there's other dyed fabric but this one road is a sort of fabric dying center.

Baby pigs in baskets...

The Xiaping Market is outside the fringes of mainstream tourism. The vendors come from very rural areas outside of Dali and cater primarily to locals, with perhaps 15% of the space aimed at tourists. The rest is baskets of pigs, shoe sellers, piles of vegetables, a dentist with foot-powered drill, metal workers, small livestock, cloth, and other very rural things. There were just as many white tourists there as on the main crowded street back in Old Dali, which says that the hordes of Chinese tourists back in Old Dali just don't bother going out to the Xiaping Market.

On the way out of the market, heading back to the bus stop, we bargained a vendor down to 26 yuan for a mid-sized dyed table cloth. The basic method of bargaining is be polite, don't shout, be mildly interested as you ask the opening price, then walk away a few times.

14:00 Lunch / 88 Bai Houses

On the road back to Dali, we got off the mini bus in a town noted for its 88 preserved Bai houses. A small pony rickshaw will take you from the main road down into the small town square.

A cold, windy side street: Mii Xian and other hearty dishes advertised on a battered metal shutter.

The pony rickshaw has a tiny shell with a bench inside, and curtains pulled around both sides. The cold winter wind is whipping down from the mountains and batters the torn curtains so they have almost no effect. It's a very windy place, the whole day had really made us feel quite raw to the bone.

Walking in the town was very quiet, a long street with just some foot traffic. Nothing for outsider tourists, any shops are either aimed at locals or Chinese tourists, like an antique shop we saw.

The wind blowing down the main street was merciless. Finally we stopped at an empty lunch shop, attracted by the clay bowls and coal-fired cooking. We ate a sizzling bowl of Mii Xian, along with 4 buns, for 4 yuan. As we huddled over the low table and slurped down the hot noodles, the freezing wind blew over the coal fire onto the ground outside. The old woman hurried to gather up the coals, part of the reality of life in cold rural China.

3-pagodas plaza: outsiders just don't get it.

On the walk back to the town square, we got another dyed cloth, large in size, for 38 yuan. Hopped back into one of the windy pony rickshaws and made it back to the main road for another mini bus.

16:00 Three Pagodas

This is something we just didn't get. On the way into Dali, there's one last stop at the famous Three Pagodas. Only it's not so famous for people who aren't from China. Chinese tour groups crowded the entrance, and for us the admission would have been 52 yuan per person. Like everything else in China, the price is going up so fast the travel books can't even keep up. No way, we lingered around outside eating some apples and skipped the pagodas.

After the pagodas stop, it's only 2 Km into Old Dali. We found a donkey cart to take us in for 5 yuan. That got us to the West gate of Old Dali, where we had started out that morning.

The best place for Mii Xian in Dali, cut down below street level on a corner.

18:00 Dinner

Up toward the north end of the Old Dali main strip was the greatest Mii Xian joint. Right on a corner, this place is not even big enough for a door or windows, it spills out onto the sidewalk - We huddle in the windy chill over a large bowl of Mii Xian. 3 yuan and we're almost full / this stuff is getting habit forming...

Streetside: made-to-order grilled skewers

After Mii Xian, we strolled around and found some street cart vendors with thin skewers of grilled stuff, like the tiny shrimp we had for 1 yuan each. Other skewers were half that.