Yunnan V

3-16
The next day started out with the delicious banana pancakes. After breakfast we were given “hiking instructions” and then told to organize in groups ranging from the fastest walkers to the slowest. I was in the fastest; one guy had a knock-off scarf that we raised like a flag so we called ourselves team Gucci. We were six guys and one Tibetan tour guide, Jimpa.
It took us an hour to get to the top. At times we were almost running up the peak. At the top we raised our flags and then quickly began again. There was very little time to enjoy the jagged mountains and the snaking river thousands of feet below. Tiger Leaping Gorge is China’s equivalent of the Grand Canyon. The trail got warmer as we went higher up and the trail also gets more interesting. The end of the walkway fell almost immediately into the emptiness bellow. Along the way we saw a group of Korean tourists who we cheered on with the enthusiastic rowdiness of any group of American men. We also came across a goat Sheppard dressed in traditional mountain attire. I told him in Chinese that I liked his vest.
After having lunch at a hotel along the trail we made the boring decent back down to the road. The trail went through a mineral factory which was busy putting holes in the mountains. By the time that the bus left the mountainous road I got the idea that beautiful scenery destroyed by bad engineering to make this place accessible to tourists. Chinese people think they can completely control Mother Nature whereas Americans think that nature gives gifts that much be harnessed from the earth. The end result of the prior ideology causes great erosion and environmental destruction.
Our stop for the next two nights was the UNESCO world heritage site of the old town of Lijiang. There I ate some bad beef which floored me for the next two nights.