After a night of heavy rain, the prospect of a pleasant day was dim. We carried the borrowed hotel umbrellas that we used last night walking through Dali’s Old Town. After Garry discovered he had left his sling bag in the dining hall and recovered it without anything taken, we headed off to a small town on the outskirts of Dali to experience one of the daily markets.
The market vendors offered anything the locals might need for meals such as eggs marinated in tea, cones of brown sugar, meats, vegetables, fresh noodles and tiny fresh water shrimp. One old woman hunched over her small tarp of wiggling shrimp, picked through the pile and sorted the darker ones into a green bowl. Apparently the darker shrimp are more desirable for eating, but their looks didn’t excite me. One thing we’ve seen in other markets around the world, but not here, is bread. Noodles, yes, bread, no.
A man in a small shop was using an electric motor-driven machine to press canola oil. He dumped bags of the small seeds into a hopper and the press extracted the oil with the oil dripping into a large pan and the cake ejected into a bin. After a second pressing, the dry cake is bagged and sold as animal feed. Nothing is wasted.
Finishing our walk through the market, we visited a nearby 100 year old house that now houses five families. The house is two stories high with four sides surrounding a center courtyard. The strange thing is that the second floors are no longer used as living space and their main use now is storage. Even the staircases once used to reach the upper floor are boarded off. Perhaps, safety is the concern. Garry mentioned later that my grandmother Sallie, who will be 107 years old in August, was 7 years old when this building was constructed.
The weather cleared as we headed to the Three Pagodas, San Ta, where Dali once existed within a monastery before being destroyed during the Qing dynasty. The middle pagoda, built in 800AD, is the tallest with 16 stories, and the two adjacent 11th century pagodas are smaller but more elaborate in detail. These pagodas have the Cang Shan Mountains as a backdrop and they face a very large lake named Er Hai which translated means … Ocean. The location of these pagodas is an excellent example of Feng Shui with the mountain in the back and the water in front signifying that Dali is strong and it will survive anything.
The tall pagoda had suffered a large crack during an earthquake many years ago, but during the 1925 earthquake the crack closed and is no longer apparent. One of the smaller pagodas is leaning significantly, reminiscent of the tower at Pisa.
As we walked through the park, the rest room building was a point of interest. The guide jokingly referred to it as a five-star toilette. Equipped with a TV, hairdryer, fancy mirrors and wash basins, it was not quite the Burj Al Arab in Dubai, but interesting.
Some of the other tour guides we passed were using an electronic megaphone to talk to their groups. This was very strange because it not only interfered with our guide’s talk, but also disrupted the serenity of the entire park. The park has pools of water, lovely vegetation and rocks hiding speakers that emit smoothing oriental music as you walk along the paths. Then suddenly you’d hear the high pitched voices amplified by their megaphone. It sure offset some of the Feng Shui.
There is a large reflecting pool in a garden setting where you can see the reflection of all three pagodas. After a photo session there, we climbed the bell tower to have a bird’s eye view of the pagodas and Er Hai. The top floor housing the bell, which is seldom rung, has walls made of wooden slats. Clowning around, Rich and Garry held the slats inside as if in a prison cell with Garry yelling, “Free Tibet.” The humor might be lost on some, but not us.
Our next stop was lunch. Zhang, our guide, took us to a noodle soup restaurant, and we use the word restaurant loosely. An apparent favorite of the locals, it has just a few tables, but the large bowls of soup with thick rice noodles, onions, spices, pork, chicken and whatever else were very tasty. All of this cost about one dollar for all five of us to eat.
After lunch we took a boat ride on Er Hai which is about six miles wide and 25 miles in length. This lake serves as one of the branch sources for the Mekong River. No fishing is allowed from January until June 1st so the lake can recover from over-fishing. The lake was also polluted, but the government now restricts construction around the lake, not allowing any hotels or factories to be built. No motor boats are permitted either, and apparently these measures are working because the water appeared clean.
Leaving the park, we walked for several kilometers and the driver picked us up along the way. The weather was nice and the exercise felt good. Dinner was in town at Marley’s Café on a second floor balcony overlooking Foreigner Street. Our table had Chinese food for the most part, except for a shared “Marley Burger”, a hamburger about 1/4th inch thick with a very good sauce.
Later in the evening we attended a show titled “Butterfly’s Dream” which we thoroughly enjoyed from our 2nd row seats. The quality of the show surprised us, and it would do justice to any Las Vegas production. There was a cast of hundreds in this dance and acrobatic extravaganza who were adorned in wonderfully colorful costumes representing many of the 53 ethnic minority groups in the area.
Rich, Tamara, Garry
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