Baisha

This is a Naxi traditional village 15Km outside Lijiang. I went there by bike yesterday to spend the day and check things out. It is a rural community, mainly living off cultivating corn, keeping some livestock and mostly selling their crafts to tourists. It was a nice but rather long uphill bike ride there....and then I just strolled aroud noseing into people's courtyards. The Chinese build like the houses we have in Andalucia....few windows to the outside but a main courtyard in the centre. The doors are always open though....all of which kind of defines theChinese somehow. I've seen a lot of corn and chilli drying outdoors. The stgrawberries here are DELICIOUS! In fact, the other day, Jerome and I in one of our mishappen breakfast ordering sagas, ended up eating inly the strawberries we'd bought off a wandering naxi woman. People here follow you everythwere to sell you things..whether it be fruits, socks...etc.

You'll also see the picture of a child wearing that interesting outfit I remember describing previously.....the slit up the bum to allow them to urinate more easily (or that's my guess cause only a certain age kid wears them and my phrasebook seems to have missed the chapter on "questions of interest regarding local habits".

Other interesting things....women here sing away. There is no worry about whether they sing well or not. Everybody sings out loud on the street, in their shop, in their hotel, while on the internet etc. It's actually quite nice sine it is usually the traditional folk songs.

It continues to be cold here. Some random dude in the dorm the other night made me change rooms yesterday. I ended up paying for a single in the bottom floor and to my wondrful suprise, it had a heating blanket! I was over the moon. Only this morning, the hot water wasn't working so I had to go out and use the communal showers...which is fine cause they're usually quite good, very hot and have lotsof power. All fun and games. The best is yet to come though. Tonight I take the overnight sleeper bus back to Kunming (10h drive). These are apparently like sleeper trains but in bus format...i.e. you have beds. I'll let you know what that's like. I'm not keeping my hopes up cause Jerome toldme a nightmare tale of his journey...a lot of feet smells and cigarette smoker smells..an lots fo snoring. Oh well....you gotta try it all, eh?

Anyway, I leave you with some pics rom yesterday. Many kisses. Teba