Xizhou - Tacheng

April 14 2013: Xizhou - Tacheng

In the morning,  we found ourselves with half an hour to spare after breakfast, so snuck off for a wee nose around the village. It was so beautiful, clean and relatively affluent as it was surrounded by fertile valley fields of broad beans, barley et al.  One of the old men invited us in to his ancient dwelling, a biggish house around a central courtyard, which seemed to shelter 3 or 4 different families judging by the electric meters!  An old lady then invited us to stay for “cha”, but we had to decline, as pressed for time.  I did manage to buy a beautiful table runner from the one craft shop that has opened with the advent of tourists to the guest house. The enterprising Chinese are always quick to meet demand!

On the road again, through increasingly beautiful scenery until we stopped for lunch at Lijiang.  We are returning there to stay later in the trip and will visit the old part of town, however, for the rest of it, you could be anywhere in China, save for some fancy Yunnan trim on the tops of the thousands of new high-rise apartment blocks standing empty on the road into town.

The real thing?

After a fairly average dumpling lunch – we Hong Kongers have high standards! - we set off to head north towards Tibet and to find the Yangtze river .  We had a good photo opportunity of it at Shigu where this mighty river takes an astonishing 120’ turn to flow almost North, circumnavigating Lijiang before it turns again to flow South again.

Crossing The Yangtze

Our First Stupa!

The blue/black external home decorations became rarer as we headed along the Yangtze valley through terraced farmlands of barley and buckwheat (rice is later in the year), and were replaced by homes with a very Tibetan influence. Likewise the people too, more and more having the distinctive features of the Tibetans who many years ago had invaded the area and never returned.  We finally turned west up the hills to the side of the valley, arriving at Hada, at our next lodgings close to Tacheng. This proved to be one of several Songtsam Lodges set up in the area by a trio of Tibetan, Chinese and Singaporean founders; all are very similar in design and utterly delightful.  The staff are local Tibetans, and so helpful and charming.  We were to stay in four different Songtsam Lodges and it was hard to find fault with anything – the food was fresh local produce, mainly superb vegetables,  pork and yak meat, tofu and wonderful soups. All very healthy!   However, this day, we arrived in a torrential downpour, so no external photos, but then the sun peeped out and we had a fabulous rainbow across the terraces from our balcony: 

Around Tacheng

April 15 2013: Around Tacheng

We spent two nights in the lodge, to give us the opportunity to explore this lovely mountainous area between the Yangtze and the Mekong rivers.  It’s an area full of ethnic culture with Tibetan, Naxi and Lisu villages still following their traditional life styles. 

Morning Has Broken!

We spent the morning taking an interesting hike up through the small village by the lodge and into the hills.  Met lots of interesting people in the fields, some fixing walls, one tending bee-hives and also a group of women and a baby cutting ribbons out of old cloth and plastic to act as bird-scarers for the many vines that are being planted in the region, taking the place of corn – it seems this part of Yunnan has exactly the right climate for wine, whereas corn grows anywhere! 

Exterior of lodge

After lunch, we had couple of hours R&R (zzzzzz!) before being taken to visit the homestead of one of the local village families.  We were greeted by an ancient uncle, a venerable monk with the sweetest smile, who presented us all with white silk scarves.  The rest of the family then came to introduce themselves, the older couple, three daughters and two of their husbands; the children were at school. 

The ladies were cooking up a storm in the kitchen and laid an enormous feast of Tibetan breads, cakes, pastries, honey, doughnuts, and the fried tops of small ferns, curled round to look just like caterpillars!!!  We did our best to  eat up, but as fast as we did, they just brought more! And then brought a couple of savory pork and veg dishes, after all the sweet stuff.  We were given salty Tibetan tea to drink, made with yak butter – an acquired taste!!  They were so friendly and seemed to really enjoy the whole thing as much as we did

Butter Tea - an acquired taste!

We were then encouraged to tour the courtyard and farm and animal area – a fine bull, well tethered!, some pigs and piglets, a granary, another kitchen for preparing the animal feed, and a farmhouse mog, a right scaredy-cat! 

As we were about to leave and say our goodbyes, Mama-san decided to offer us a wee dram of her home-made barley wine, more like a schnapps or grappa – it was crystal clear, and slipped down well, but we declined her kind offer of a taste of her rice wine too!  It was a really super experience, didn’t feel touristy at all, we just felt very honoured to share their time and produce.

Family Trip To Lhasa

Love The Pin-Up!

So on home for our delicious supper, the last one with wine before we climb up to 3600m/12,000ft high (we were at 2,200m at this point), where alcohol is not recommended!