The Dali Zone

Dali is the sort of place where someone can zone out. They can forget about the New York City feel of most Chinese cities; look up and see stars instead of neon.

China seems to be wrecking its cities at an alarming rate. And wrecking is an apt word since it's the wrecking ball that is raising the old towns to make way for McDonalds, KFC, Popeyes, Maxi shopping malls and WalMart. If you want to see China, you better come quick because the future is bright - bright in neon and lights and Time Square-size glowing LED displays.

But Dali is different. It's not immune to 'progress' but the only lights you'll see at night are the ones glowing from restaurants offering western food and free Internet, from the light bulbs set up above tables full of cheap Chinese antiques or Dali batiks on the sidewalks, or hazy from the smoke of local food sellers.

This may still sound a bit too much like a China bent on racing to the future, but at least the only structures that reach for the sky are the pagoda-topped city gates on either side of the old town wall.

I read over the shoulder of one traveler sending email home. She wrote, "Dali is touristy. I was hoping for paradise." But for me those two can easily go hand-in-hand.

Touristy means there are guest houses to choose from. Touristy means facilities are clean, food is good, there are tour agents to tell you how to get to the Wase indigenous people's market, how to arrange a bus to Lijiang and to let you know that the once-a-year torch festival is happening tomorrow night. Touristy means life is easy. You don't have to think as hard here, you can zone out. That to me is paradise. A guest house with a bamboo courtyard and a bubbling pond doesn't hurt either.

Locals spreading their wares out on tables on the sidewalks and shops keeping their doors open till midnight gives us something to do at night. Plenty of other travelers give us people to talk to. And, after two and a half months away from home, even the big screen TV playing Hollywood's "Pearl Harbor" at Guest house #5 was welcome.

All this paradise is still definitely Chinese. The houses and stores are old. They have grass growing on the roof tiles and black and white painted panels below the roof line. Paintings of bamboo, lily flowers, sumi-painted mums and mountains lend themselves well to their real-life versions on the hillside. To remind us that we are still in China, there are red paper lanterns on doors, colored roofs, Chinese characters on signs, and translated to English notices in the toilets: "Please to leave only water. Paper will cause cabinetstool backup." Not least of all there are Chinese. More Chinese travel in China than do foreigners. On the train to Dali we saw only four other non-Asian faces in the jam-packed waiting room.

I can understand why people come here. The scenery that edges Dali is beautiful. Mountains loom over Dali on one side and the ear-shaped lake of Erhai Hu presses up against it on the other. Chinese junket boats float in the water. Fishing baskets are pulled in and children jump from the sides for a swim. A temple sits on a small island just off the shore.

To get away from the tourist feel of things - the English music and western pancake breakfasts - we need only walk up town. We shopped at the local vegetable market, walked (quickly) through the pig-slaughtering and duck skinning streets, and poked our necks into some local eateries. On the 5th, we boated across the lake to the Wase market (held once every five days). The locals were there in full indigenous costumes. There you can buy a barrel of eggplants or perhaps a pig head. Maybe negotiate for a live pig or a chicken. You can get your shoes repaired. You can get your head shaved (if you trust the barber) - we saw two travelers later with shaved heads; or you can just wander like we did pulling chunks of fried potatoes from a skewer and taking it all in.

To escape even further - get even the locals from our sight, we hiked into the mountains. We took a horse cart to the base of a cable car, and then silently moved up the hillside to the Zhonghe Si temple. This was truly paradise (perhaps that other traveler had missed this part of Dali). We hiked along the mountain ridge on a well laid stone path for 11 km. We passed waterfalls cascading from high cliffs, hundreds of feet into deep ravines. The scenery was spectacular. At the end of each deep inlet we could see great views of the city and lake.

We opted against a gondola ride down on the other side in favor of a steep descent along a river bed that gave us a chance to see a bit of the local life. We passed naked children swimming (all yelling, "Hello, hello!" at us). We passed farmers in the fields and mothers carrying their babies, strapped by their feet, to their backs.

We caught a local bus back to Dali and then collapsed at an outdoor restaurant. "One Dali beer and two Korean BiBimBabs," I told the waitress. While we waited for our dinner, we sat back, zoned out, and watched the touristy sidewalk life of old Dali town move in front of us.