China: The Final Days - Part 2

"If there is a look of human eyes that tells of perpetual loneliness, so there is also the familiar look that is the sign of perpetual crowds."
- Meynell, Alice

We decided to spend our last few hours in Lijiang exploring the markets of Lijiang Old Town.

Mercantile aspirations are the barometer to measure the health of a community. Here, we got to see it at the local level. The soul and heart of a community are definitely in its markets. Amidst the economic hustle, we get to see social interactions; forces of supply and demand bringing communities onto common ground.


The Chinese obsession with meat is well-documented, and it plays an important role in all of the Eight Culinary Traditions of China. Yunnan is home to a mixture of Sichuan cuisine and neigbouring South-Eastern Asian/Tibetan cuisine, so it was no surprise that most of our walks were in the vicinity of meat.

The journey through the markets was fascinating, a trip through Chinese eccentricities and traditions. They seemed to eat everything that moved, which would obviously be an over-exaggeration. But the Chinese are known to be efficient. They are already practising what the world will eventually practice many decades down the line - eating every part of every animal. I would love PETA to start a campaign in China (if they can get through the Chinese censor machine), and watch how the Chinese react to all the crazy talk.

Utility certainly trumps western concepts of yuckiness, and it makes life interesting for tourists like us.

P unsuccessfully attempts to decipher the spices.

But life does move on from meat. It was here that we finally got a glimpse of the spices Chinese use to give their food its unique taste. I do not know what they are called, I do not know how they are made, and I certainly do not know how they are cooked, but I can now safely say that I know what they look like. That certainly should count for something.

The other major ingredient of  Chinese cuisine are the noodles. And here we finally got to see the different varieties of them. I now understand the difficult job chefs have to deal with when it comes to cooking. There are just so many versions and types of ingredients out there in the world, it does take an artist to put them all together and create beauty; almost like choosing between the infinite shades of colour, except here it is taste and texture.

The railway station with an endless courtyard

We moved away from the markets for the penultimate leg of our journey - the train ride between Lijiang and Kunming. Our cab took us through the wide and empty roads of Lijiang - which at 8 in the night looked like a ghost town. The railway station  was overwhelming. It was huge. For a small town, and compared to any Indian railway station.

And we Indians pride ourselves on our trains. We had trains run by the British exploiting our countrysides when large parts of the world were still galloping on donkeys and asses. But the Chinese trains were something else altogether.

To start with, the trains were double-deckered. And they refused to make any sound. No sound. Not one bit. We didn't feel like we were in a train. It felt too comfortable. And too clean. At 10 pm sharp, they switched off the lights. And the train uncomplainingly went to sleep. We were woken by the gentle murmur of the Chinese at 5am, and proceeded to head to the Kunming airport for the plane back to India, via Thailand.


After many long hours of waiting at the various airports, as we ate 'Hindu' food in the Thai airlines from Bangkok to New Delhi, we were reminded of the reason we had chosen to escape India - our own Indian brethren. We watched the passengers get drunk on the complimentary alcohol, and proceed to have loud altercations that had to be broken up by the only Hindi-speaking steward. I would be honest in saying that I spend the night huddled up in my blankets, smiling apologetically at the scared and bewildered Thai hostesses.

We landed at New Delhi, and as I soaked in the all so familiar Hindi and Punjabi, I watched the crowds. 2 weeks in the midst of emptiness, I had forgotten the feeling of crowds; the feeling of heat and the humidity of sweat as we stand in close proximity. Of the clamour and chaos of life used to living in little personal space.

And I cannot wait to escape it all once again. There are just too many empty places in the world, and just too many of us in the cities out here.

There's just way too much to see out there.

China: The Final Days - Part 1

Supermarket automatic doors open for me; therefore, I am.
Craig Bruce

The end was nigh for our long and rather untiring China trip. Manufactured tourist experiences appealed to neither of us, so we spend large parts of the day looking at the real Lijiang - tarred roads, department stores, hair-dressing saloons and supermarkets.

Tip for the traveller -
If you ever wish to buy a memento for your travels, the supermarkets are the best place to do so. 

The supermarkets were way too large for a small town. It was heaven for urban folks like me. We frolicked through the aisles, like kids in a candy store, attempting to decipher Chinese products. Not daring to splurge. And yet we did.

We picked ourselves dumplings, only to realize that we need to cook them before we could eat them. Off we went to one of the random eateries on the way and through clever use of sign language that we had now practised for the last many days, we got our hostesses to steam them for us. While they were at it, we ordered another hotpot. This time it was beef. And we did not have any Chinese translations to help us out this time ...

We ended up buying our most expensive meal to day. We felt mildly cheated but we had no way of knowing if we were correct in our accusations. And so we beat a hasty retreat, picking up as many complimentary chopsticks as possible on our way out.

We sauntered through the clean and bright streets, and watched the Chinese as they relaxed on warm sunny  afternoons. This was a week day and we still found many sitting around playing cards and chess. It's a far cry from the reports I hear about Foxconn and others. But I guess tourist towns can afford to be less hectic than the manufacturing towns. And they take full advantage of that. The faces were smiling as the cards were shuffled, and the beer bottles littered all the tables.

I stood watching a game of Chinese Chess, but the rules of the game were as complex as their alphabet.
Next stop - To the supermarket, to buy myself a Chinese Chess board. Some day I shall master it, and return to China and challenge someone on the street, on a nice warm sunny day. Like a boss.

The parks were full of people, and we often found old people dancing in them. Old people dancing away, oblivious to awkward ogling Indian tourists is a sight to treasure. The men seemed meeker than the women, an observation made in every town we visited. And the women were always stylish, with overcoats and high-heeled boots. The streets were filled with the clickety-clackety sounds of heels, each in individual harmony with its owner.

I do not wish to stereotype Chinese women, but the following image plagiarized from the internet is what I truly observed -

 And so it goes.

The absence of private property was conspicuous. The buildings were rigid. All uniform and little soul. But the lack of poverty makes up for it. It really does. Would I rather see mansions and slums, or colonies of average similar homes?
But what would I prefer to live in? Therein lies the debate between capitalism and communism. Sigh.

We would move away from urban Lijiang and continue the last part of our travels in Lijiang Old Town...

China: Day 8 - On The Backs of Horses

Horses are uncomfortable in the middle and dangerous at both ends. - Anon.

We found ourselves going to Jade Dragon Snow Mountain to hike and maybe, just maybe, touch some real snow. It was a cold December and in the distance we could see the snow-peaked mountains.They were enticing enough for P, and I tagged along with hope of seeing yaks grazing in meadows.

We paid to see meadows and snow, and were bundled up on 2 horses - as old as the guides who held their reins. My horse was a beautiful black horse who farted with every exertion. P faced the brunt of my horses's gastric inconveniences. P's horse, on the other hand, grunted its way up the hill. It seemed tired enough to collapse, even without anyone riding it.

The old man and woman who accompanied us looked equally frail. And P and me found ourselves getting off the horse to allow the horses to rest and allow the old guides to ride the horses.  This was until I realized that they had more stamina than I could possibly hope to have. The air was getting thinner as we went up the hill, and I found myself out of breath when I walked. So for the next hour or so, I sat on the horse like royalty and let the guides earn their money. All of this while P still graciously allowed the the woman to ride her horse. Though I believe this was mostly because P didn't want to be on the horse if it decided to embrace an untimely demise.

We were supposed to go up the mountains through 2 or 3 meadows, on the way looking at some luscious green patches of beauty. But found ourselves going nowhere close to anything remotely good-looking. After an hour of randomness, we finally found something worth our money. Nestled in the midst of the mountains was a lake. Greenish-blue clear water. We stood in the face of winds that nearly swept us off our feet, especially little scrawny me.

It was a breathtakingly beautiful place. A still scene out of a fantasy novel.  The old woman, through very efficient use of sign language, conveyed that in the spring, the place looks even more beautiful. P meanwhile stood in the distance, a speck contemplating her place in nature.

We sat back and rested, smoked cigarettes with the guides. And then it was time to leave. We were excited about what other pearls lay nestled in these hills.

But then oddly enough, we began to descend. We tried communicating with our guides, that we had paid for more, in the best possible sign language. But we failed. We sat fuming on our horses, as our butts ached from the hard saddles and the lack of sufficient posterior fat.

And then the couple refused to let us get down our horses. We pleaded, gesturing towards our butts and aching legs, only to be ignored by the now rather sullen and indifferent old man. We rode for a long time, towards the town, still not allowed to get off. I had thoughts that maybe the old couple were having thoughts of kidnapping us. It made no sense but there seemed no other justification. I wondered if jumping off a horse could ever be fatal.

When we were finally allowed to get off on a deserted road in the middle of a town, the old woman demanded money from us, which we reluctantly took out. She took a 1 Yuan note and pointed at a sign. We're slow when it comes to trusting human nature, so it took a while for it to dawn onto us. The old couple had taken extra effort to get us to a bus stop so we could get back safely to humanity. Or maybe they wanted to get rid of us as soon as possible, so we would not be able to complain about not getting what we had paid for. We would never know.

The woman waited with us till we caught the bus. And we rode back to civilization on the modern horses of steel, which farted exhaust fumes. They were cool though. And more comfortable.