Yunnan IV

3-15
Leaving Shaxi in the morning I got to enjoy some morning light by the crystal clear river on the outskirts of the old town. The first place the tandem tour busses stopped at was a monastery in the hills where images of the Buddha had been carved into a mountain side until the youth brigades of the Cultural Revolution blew them to dust. It was a freezing morning walk to the top of the main part of the monastery. The climax of the monastery trail was beautiful but I was sure if I could walk a little more up the trail I would find something a little more significant.
I wandered up the trail and I began to miss my mountain bike. The trails reminded me of Nor Cal and the best mountain biking trails I could imagine. Climbing up a rocky switch back I could hear voices above me. It was a group of my colleagues and we hiked up the mountain together.
We ended up finding an untouched nunnery that was as old as time. Walking further we entered the temple associated with the monastery to find that two people were still constructing and painting the images of their deities. There were flowers blossoming in front of the wooden monastery. It looked like the ancient temple had been gutted a few years ago but came upon a little pity money from the government to rebuild what had been lost during the destructive frenzy of the Cultural Revolution.
Continuing on the trail we came to the flat part of the mountain where I could see nothing but trees and mountains—the first time this has ever happened to me in China. It was unstoppably awesome: all I could see was trees and mountains all I could hear was wind. There is a connection with nature that knows no national boundaries—only peace of the natural world.
On the walk down back to our tour bus doom we saw a tribe of monkeys as interested in us as we were in them. It’s always nice to see relatives. The bus took us through a valley known for stone carving and eventually had a tasty lunch in an agricultural and industrial town.
On the way up the mountains our tour bus caravan stopped abruptly and we all got out to go into a Naxi woman’s home (Naxi being the main ethnic minority of the region). This was in a village in which no one knew its name, a woman who was not expecting 40 foreign visitors let us into her home. With all that aside she offered us all tea and walnuts that we cracked with the bottoms of our shoes.
She wore traditional Naxi dress and told us she was a communist party member and she lived in the home of the former landlord. I looked around her house and found ancient farming tools and donkey sheds that have since changed their purpose. It turns out that Naxi people are an umbrella minority for many other minorities in the area. Many villages have different languages and styles of dress but if they were all to be official minorities they would get a place in the National Congress, which would make there be more minorities than Han Chinese. Outside a very old Naxi woman was working the canola fields. It was all a great site (see the picture of the woman in the field).
Back on the bus we burned through mountainous death roads on the cliffs of the steep canyons that we would soon call home for the night. By the time we got to our hostel we all became aware that we were surrounded by mountains and cliffs at a place called Tiger Leaping Gorge. I took a before dinner walk to a waterfall then had a simple night of sipping beers and talking about Giants baseball.