First Street Sights in Kunming
Arrival in Kunming, Capital of Yunnan Province
More Kunming Streets.. The Bulls are leading Tobacco Company, Yunnan Province Largest Industry
First Buddhist Temple in Kunming.
Fake tree holding up real tree!
Interior of Temple grounds
Common Buddhist Protectors We will see in various forms throughout Yunnan
Kathy had paid 1.25 to release a bird in buddhist ceremony. The priest is in yellow; the women in red are novices from the city training in Buddhism - religion is undergoing resurgence all across the province
On the road to the next stop, ancient Buddhist carvings in sheer cliffs overlooking Yunnan's largest lake. Note essentially all tourists are Chinese....
First climb to the cliffs.
View from the cliffs...
Typical carving location of images carved in rock..
Here's what the carving looks like... note the path carved directly into the rock as tunnel....
The famous “Dragon Gate”.. note that toucing the top for good luck
View of the lake.. the bad news is that this is one one of the most polluted lakes in China - swimming is NOT recommended
The Chair lift down. It took half hour to get back.. The Chinese love chairlifts for scenic areas throughout Yunnan
View from the Hotel in Yunnan
Art Students at Yunna's largest Botanical Garden - next day of travels
View of the botanical garden splendor
First view of the Yunan Stone Gardens. Very popular attraction as you will see. The Low buildings with tile rools are the last remaining original village of the gardens.
Preliminary entrance to stone formations...Note Grass and plants are all added for scenery
The entrance to the gardens.. characters are old poems that have been preserved
Characters say “long live Chairman Mao” inserted during Cultural Revolution.. with subsequent defacements
Formations start getting more interesting..
All guides in traditional Yi/Bai outfits....
Elephant formation ...
View from the summit
A lot of climbing to get up here !
Exterior of the Kunming Hotel
Still have bicycle rush hours throughout the city....
Last remaining old marketplace in Kunming.. note the surrounding modern buildings..
Children at the animal section...
She couldn't take her eyes off the rabbits...
Old Architecture ....
More old architecture
Our first trip to a real rural village.. we are in the one of the most rural farming parts of China from now on...
How the famers live....
Big push for solar heating in very village we visited except the most poor . Note also the glass windows...
Growing the product. Note the palm tree on the right
This village was right next to a large paleontogy site.... dinosour bones inside...
The director assured us the bones were really white without the dust... the whole building was filled with fossills in situ...
The country musuem later actually had the skeletons from the site.. the museum was up to US quality and a surprise to our tour leaders.
In the Chuxiong town square, center of the Yi minority. This was the town with the dinosour exhibit. Unfortunately the show was lousy.
On the road from Chuxiong to Weishan.. on the way to amazing Buddhist sculptures but wil visit Chinese High School first.
The rural scenery just will not stop.....
The number 1 high school in the county. Note the brand new building... interesting note is this school is built on the site of the Flying Tiger Barracks for the US Fighter Squad fighting the Japanese over the Burma road. The Chinese are very proud of Flying Tiger story, and have many movies about them fighting for the Chinese.
First view of the kids at the school
In the classroom. Note the study books piled on the desks. These are the cutest and brightest kids you can imagine.
Law making a cameo appearance. Sun Business cards were a huge hit... but the concept of the internet and URL escaped them (or perhaps the translation didn't quite make it ...) the guy on the left with the classes is retired nuclear physicist with Los Alamos - he was the star once they heard that and left me in the dust.....
More kids...
The best students got to chalk their latest studies in the entrance to the school. Note they are studying genetics....
Arrived in Weishan, old trade center and concentration of the Bai people. One of our best hotels.
Start of old town area. Weishan is very undeveloped compared to Dali and Lijiang, the big tourist spots. But it is very interesting to see towns before the become major commercialized and are still their own trade areas ...
First start of the tourist preparation.. English is always suspicious....
The people are the most interesting....
The older people play “chinese chess” a lot.
Kids like being photographed
Good view of the architecture of the market area
Also a lot of card playing on the street..
Most of the stores made their product right on the street, with must people living at their store areas.
No explanation needed....
Bai Girls, although they look pretty close to the “real Chinese” - Han - to me....
Cadets at the town square for upcoming celebration. Note all the empty blue chairs waiting for “reserved” folks, while the other people sit on the sides, waiting for the show..
Classic .. grandfather with grandaugther, waiting at the square. The boy is probably brother... the recognized minorities have permission to exceed the one child rule as long as the family does not move the large cities, according to our guides.
This side seem to have all women, not sure why that was...
Traditional Yi fire ceremony, even though we were in Bai city. The women had great voices and seem to really enjoy the dancing. Later, more Yi joined after the show in the square.
At the end, the women singers sung a good bye song to the audience as we left
Muslim village on the way from Weishan to Dali. Note two item.. the people are actually Chinese that converted to Islam from the nearby silk road influence. Second, both electrical power and TV cables...
Mosque... note the painted doors behind Kathy
Mosque, note the painted doors behind Kathy
Detail of doors. From now on, temples, mosques, etc would have consistently amazing art in the middle of ordinary villages...
Bai woman on the way to market square. Note she is wearing the traditional costume, despite having nothing to do with tourists, or care. Traditiional clothes in the minority areas are making a comeback for the women, after years of suppression from the communists and ridicule from the cities. Men are almost never seen with traditional outfit, outside of tourist sites...
Poorest Yi village we visited on the way to Dali. Note satellite dish and electricity
Kids at poor Yi village. The adults would not come out... think they were tired of seeing tourists, without having store or goods to sell to us.
First view of Dali.. walled city and center for Bai. Note greatly developed stores and number of tourists compared to Weishan earlier.
Part of the Chinese tourist packs at the Dali old town....
Woman demonstrating child container.. note piles of fabric. All is hand embroidered. Kathy bought much fabric here.. the woman took dollars instead of Yuan...
Christian church in the middle of Dali... more evidence of religions coming out of hiding in today's China...
Side street somewhat more “authentic” than the main shopping. Note the view of the mountains and ... those damn electric wires getting in the way of the scenery again !
Mountain close up... just wait for the next day....
Our Dali Hotel
Old Chinese instrument orchestra in Dali that evening.
Cute Girl reading the introduction, in English to our crowd.
Starting our trip on Erhai Lake to the Bai fishing village. Decidedly NOT as polluted as the lake outside Kunming
View from the boat....
Note... Golf course in progress ! turquoise areas are the start of the fairways...
Docking at the village
True direct from the farmer to you ! Note that the vendors have to pay rent to use the concrete tables.. can use the ground for free.
The meat section...
Our local guide for Dali. Each tourist town had a guide assigned to our group... utility was often not clear, but am sure this is required by the local governments. Notable for our guide here... she was a proud member of the local Communist party and was trying to convince our tour leader to join. He told us later he was not close to considering this, but was good friends with her anyway.
Note the folk art at this little temple, that has been toured into a elderly clubhouse (men only) Our local guide said all the items here were created by the local people.
detail of artifacts
Note quallity of painting on the wall....
The old temple
Interior of town's main buddhist temple...
More wall paintings..
Main temple figures... combined tibetan, local buddhists and home grown Gods
On our way to the top of the Zhonghe scenic area....
Fields on the way up the mountain....
View from the top. City of Dali is foreground right.. lake in background
Start of the hike....
The path was inlaid stones the size of one foot square, continuing for over three miles that we saw..
on the trail....
more on the trail
Here we are... still half mile to go
The view toward the lake. The towers in the foreground are over 1,000 years old.
Can't resist the scenery.....
Laughing Buddha at the entrance to temple for Zhonghe
On the way down... terraced fields on the outskirts of Dali.. note the large structure on the wall marking old Dali walled boundary, the white buildings in the middle are new.
The Chinese bury their families in the fields.. there are hundreds of grave sites going up the mountain...
Chinese farming..
Farmers close up. this is a rare sight of men next to the women.. 75% of the workers are usually women
More typical men's pose....
Tie dye was big in Dali. Woman is stitching fabric to create pattern before it is dyed.
Plant used to create indigo color
Typical truck stop restaurant we used for lunch. The food here was especially good
The food in these places were directly from the next door farms.. always fresh and customers can see what they are getting.
Along the road from Dali, we stopped at Stone Bell Mountain, site of 1,000 year old Buddhist sculptures carved directly into sandstone caves.
View from the caves...
Edge of stone mountain caves... photos of statues were forbidden.. so have to see the postcard books. But the statues looked great ! (take my word ll)
Patchwork - fields of mustard in bloom and other greens
Next at the Village of Shaxi. Certified by our leader from Yunna as “80 % authentic”.....
Entrance from the farms.. note the Lunar New Year decorations
Alleys in Shaxi village
Walking the farms in the back of the village
More residents on the main square ..
Our guide estimated that these women are about 70 years old
A local eating a popsicle
Our hotel in Jianchuan. Owned by the local Communist Party
Entrance to the Ziyun (Purple Cloud) Buddhist Monastery on the way to Lijiang, next to Lashi Lake
On the road from Jianchuan to Lijiang...
Entrance to the Temple.. male lion with foot on ball, female wih foot on cub...
Temple Itself... Giant Buddha sculpture inside but photos forbidden..
While at the temple, we ran in to artists that are painting murals... this solves a mystery to me.. ie who actually *does* the paintings, murals, sculptures. It turns out that primarily Tibetans do the work on a contract AND there is a book of stencils that guides every image....
Stencil ...
Mixing paint....
The stencil.... ready for transposing...
The secret book.. with titles in English...
We walked from the Ziyun temple into another town, past farmland and a rock quarry.
Note that all the quarrying is essentially manual....
Check the load, the condition of the truck, the proximity to the edge. Not a lot of OSHA in this part of China....
Turn your head.... and this is the view from the other direction...
Coming in to Town....
Greeting committee.
Expanded view of greeting committee... note size of basket for the woman on the right, with the fashionable rope
Entrance to old town Lijiang... Lijiang old town has been refurbished to resemble its ancient look. With original canals, cobblestone streets and beautiful mountain scenery it is sort of the Chinese version of Carmel.
The view from the streets of Lijiang...
Lijiang central square. Area is center to Naxhi and Bai people. The costumes and dancing seem to be spontaneous rather than tourist attraction - a prime indicator being that no money being requested or selling related to the group. Note the woman in the center is the dance instructor.
Dance group close up .....
These canals are throughout the city and are authentic from the town's beginning. In Dali, previous tourist town, the canals were added in the past five years to copy Lijiang
Views of old town Lijiang from the highest point
More old town views showing the mountain scenery ..
More birds eye views....
People like to rent costumes and get their photo
Typical canal view in center of town
Miles of shops that look just like this. All buildings in prime condition...
On the road to Yi village and elementary school in far outskirts of Lijiang
Yi village... all original wood pole architectures and pretty poor people. The Yi are somewhat analogous to US Native Americans. They were the most hostile group to the dominant Hans... the Bai, Naxi assimilated while the Yi moved higher into moutains to get away from the towns and farms of the Han and their allies... They are just now being brought into schools... note the electricity even up here.
Yi houses.. wood supply. De forestation is a huge problem in this area. Ethnic groups are have wood allowances but probably exceed them. In some cases pictures forbidden because of evidence to authorities of too much wood.
House and view of local mountains...
Neighborhood elementary school.. courtyard and view of mountains..
The kids at the school.. 1st through sixth grades...
Kids loved getting the attention for a picture..
These are the “Jade Dragon Snow Mountains”... just up the road from the Yi village
Out from Lijiang to the first bend of the Yangtze River. This is a very famous part of china geography... it is the spot the yangtze makes a 90 degree turn from running south from Tibet to east.. eventually ending in Shanghai. It is argued that the Yangtze river is so important the rest of China history that it would not exist as we know it without this miraculous bend diverting the river from its natural course similar to the parallel Mekong river.
She is making three brinks from this clay mass
This cylinder will be split into four roof tiles - notice the slight impress where the cylinder will break
She is making these cylinders
Roof tiles
Hand made brick factory few hundred yards from the river. The bricks and tiles made here sell for 6 cents each... owner says they make a good living and moved from the city to grab this opportunity...
We follow the Yangtze on the way to Tiger Leaping Gorge...
The farms along the river
The beginning of the famous gorge... structure is tourist center still being built
North end of Tiger Leaping Gorge.. the mountains push the rive back to a north course ...
The Yangtze winds through the gorge....
A sense of how steep and tall the surrounding mountain walss are
At this time, the river is the lowest of the year. No convential rafting has ever succeeded Tiger leaping Gage. Five or ten years ago , a chinese team made a run in a barrel and survived, the first time a person had survived the gorge run.
Villagers are planting nursery rice - starter beds which will be moved to rice fields
kiln to fire bricks and roof tiles
Beautiful stone designs make the patio
Our hotel in Lijiang
Our breakfast and latte spot - it did have a great view of the city
Another lunch stop along the road
Our luggage van broke down along side the road - Mark and David are analyzing the situation - we're at about 9,000 feet
Our first views of the Tibetan plateau outside Zhongdian - Shangrila!
Scott on a Yak with a Tibetan character!
The local Tibetan Buddhist Temple - Songzanlin Lamasary. This is the largest Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Yunnan Province
Tibetan Mastif pup
Tibetan Plateau
Young monks questioning the meaning of life
Old town in Zhongdian
Old building - probably 150 years old - in Zhongdian old town
Black neck cranes are endangered but here they are enjoying Napa Hai - a seasonal lake for migratory birds
Mud rammed walls form three sides of a Tibetan home
This gives you a sense of the size of a Tibetan home
Beautiful details in these homes
These yaks are ready to go inside for the evening but we were between them and the door
Pork and other delicacies hanging above the upper balcony where we tried yak butter tea
our host
The interior of the home where we were served yak butter tea and roasted barley flour
Our host family
Yak butter stored in a lovely cabinet
Time to bid good-bye and for the yaks to go in for the night
Zhongdian - Shangrila
Tibetan Mastif - what a barker!
Master potter in Nixi
Tools of the master
Pot in process - two more dragon heads to be added
I'm high on a hill - about 11,000 feet
Tibetan Mastifs hard at work
The bridge in Shanghe - were crossing from Yunnan to Siuchan Province to lunch on the shore
Here Tibetan homes have flat roofs since space is limited. The roof is used as a deck.
Terraced fields
Others in Nixi selling black pottery
Our local guide, Tinzing, sporting a pot for a hat
Back in Zhongdian city... on weekend some sort of government project was happening.... gangs of women working all over
Hotel in Zhongdian
Leaving Shangri La.......
Morning in our hotel in Siem Riep, Cambodia. The children played for hours in the lobby
First temple complex in the Angor Wat area - Ta Prohm. There are dozens of city areas in the complex..
On the way to Ta Prom - farmers crippled or blinded by land mines from Khmer Rouge era. These are the only groups allowed inside the temple grounds for sales. The Khmer Rouge era still haunts the area.. Siem Riep/Angor Wat was close to the stronghold in the late 1970's
Carvings detail at Ta Prohm.. all over the temples in the area
One interior area of Ta Prohm.. gives an idea of the scale.. the whole city is 2 square km...
Ta Prohm notable for still having trees/jungle still present... much of the other cities are cleared and restored...
Famous four face buddha image over the entrance...
Small, pristine temple. Note complete jungle clearance.. bricks used rather than huge stones, so older... built early 10th century, compared to Ta Prohm in 13th century with huge blocks
Interior of Prasat Kravan
Entrance to Banteay Srei.. small temple compared to others, but carved in harder red sandstone, which preseverved original detail of carvings... 10 th century...
Kids at Banteay Srei.. just looking at tourists..
Small idea of intricate carvings.. great details
Sun catching the carvings just right...
We visit a village on the outskirts of Angor Wat complex.. note no electrical, even next to largest tourist area in Cambodia
All houses raised.. this is the driest part of the year.. this entire area floods every year. eliminating year round growing
The kids, after counting 1 to 10 in English, in unison with no problem...
Our favorite Cambodian guide... it turned he was also a policeman
More kids, grabbed lfowers to get us to photograph them, see the doll for the baby girl...
Elephant transport outside Bayon temple
Bridge to Bayon..
Bayon interior..
Frieze on Bayon walls... note woman is holding turtle that is biting the warrior's butt.. incredible detail all over if you look closely.
View from outside Bayon Temple..
“Leper King” temple outside Bayon. nobody could figure the what the big deal was, but the Asian tourists surrounded it...
The Elephant Terrace part of Bayon..
Three Headed elephant.. and surrounding carvings
Our first view of the Angor Wat outside wall.. the most famous temple
First Buddha on the way in to Angor Wat interior
Angor Wat temple after walking the in from outer wall...
On the way in to the interior
Final ascent to the interior towers...
View from the top....
Another view from the top of Angor Wat
Intricate carvings of the Apsaras.. women figures that were celestial maidens in Hindu mythology.. there are 2,000 carvings of apsaras at the main Angor Wat temple... we will see real life versions of the maidens later
Detail of the famous reliefs on the outside walls of the temple ,,, there are 700 *yards* of these reliefs showing history, battles from both mythology and Khmer history
Battle scene from mythology...
Us in front of the famous reflecting pool on the way back
Two of traditional dancers for the night show..
Folk dancers...
Modern version Apsara dancers.. the moves incredibly intricate.. we read later the woman start training before 10 years old and are selected by the Apsara/buddhist dancing schools
Check the hat and the hand gestures
The full Apsara Group
The full troup after the finale, men are way in back
Last day of trip.. view from our hotel room in Bangkok... Sheraton Orchid, a great hotel, the best of our whole trip...
Start of river trip on the boat in the background
On the boat... this is the main Buddhist temple in Bangkok, but was closed for the Kings coronation weekend..
Floating 7/11 that just happened to be ready for us...
Feed the giant catfish with white bread.. just like the San Diego Zoo used long ago with the bears !
Housing all along the river. note kids in the water...
Working on the river, construction crew
We transferred to another boat.. supposedly a rice barge, but had very good fruit, vegetable buffet with some excellent whiskey. (just a taste for the full cultural experience, of course..)
Our hotel...
The end... fruit, drink offering for luck on the prow of our boat and a final vibe for a trip that could not have been better....
