Well, farewell Tibet for now. Had a interesting final chat with our guide/minder "Jesse/Tsetse" as we stood urinating next to a bridge draped with prayer flags on the way to the way to the Lhasa airport and he expressed for the first time some emotion for the first time about the Chinese occupation. I told him that many in America and the West care about Tibet, but thought to myself later about how our actions- the desire for cheap Chinese anything, ultimately belies and betrays our words. The scene at the airport itself felt somewhat laden with meaning, arrivals seemed to be full of soldiers and departures full of monks. Symbolic? You tell me, or maybe we just arrived on a particularly ironic day.
Anyway, the flight to Shangri-La in Yunnan Provence was easy enough. And let me say a few words about airlines. Chris, you might ask, you're an intrepid traveller, what are the best and worst airlines in the world? We all know the American ones are decades past their glory. Europe? Please! Not much better. What about Japan Airlines, please fulfill my stereotypes about the orderly and clean Japanese! Nope, the same shitty food, seats and attitude as the major Americans. The best airlines my dear reader are found in developing countries, aspiring countries. Royal Thai, India's Kingfisher, China East, I bet Korean Airlines is great. They load you up with swag beforeyou're even sitting down- various bottles of tea and water, stuffing your pockets with pens and mints, multiple full meals on 45 minute flights, even today on China East it's a complementary mystery box of four tablets from "Yunnan Mingjing Pharmaceutical Ltd."
Regardless. We made it to Shangri-La, and so now, here's the story of Shangri-la, not to be confused with the legend. The scenic Himalayan town of Zhongdian in Yunnan Provence decides a few years back to rename itself Shangri-la to boost tourism for the great and growing middle class in The New China. Tourism booms, and charming old neighborhoods are demolished for high rise hotels. Tourists and their yuan stop coming because quaint village is now gone. Local town fathers come to see the tragic irony, but no so aware of irony that they decide to build overnight from scratch an ersatz "old city" with antique style buildings and suspiciously even cobblestones that now overflows with trinket shops and hotpot restaurants. Yep- irony dies faster in The New China than a nascent democracy movement. The whole place feels a bit disney-esque, or like a movie set. Peek down an alley and catch a glimpse of workers furiously building a new old style building, saws humming and hammers swinging and the whole place still smells of sawdust and fresh wood varnish with probably none of this here even a few months ago. Giftshops sell more Tibetan crap than I saw in Tibet, plus tons of animal pelts, real and fake, and overall its a bit of a shock to see so many tourists, both Asian and Western after Tibet, which had at most about 200 westerners in the whole region last week. Had the most expensive and worst meal in China yet (okay, the barleyflour and yak butter tea was worse), at an overpriced tourist joint (hard to find much else) where we had the yak hot pot- 80% gristle and fat, 19% bone, 1% meat. The streets are full of tourists and the occasional tribal woman from the hills wearing an elaborately embroidered vest and fuchsia turban, of course she is getting crowded out by the Chinese women in their fake tribal costumes.
Our plan to do some trekking north of here was shattered by the disappointing news that due to construction, only one bus every 10 days goes north. So looks like we're stuck here and then tomorrow its on to "Tiger Leaping Gorge." We've now made it down to Lijiang, another scenic town with a real old town. Buses were sold out so we waited in the rain at the Shangri-La bus station- fairly typical developing world bus station (which is to say, generally nicer but more chaotic than those in the states). Watched the weird apple-green three wheeled taxis pull up, which look like a 70's vision of the future, (kinda like the cars in "Sleeper"), and unload passengers with laundry baskets of live chickens- not so unusual, but then seeing someone unload a BAG of live chickens- that was a new sight for me. Horribly uncomfortable busride, though through some beautiful foggy mountains with scenic villages looking straight out of Crouching Tiger or something, and then some pretty grim communist era "new villages" where the pigs and dogs fought over the trash- which was ironic, because really there was plenty to go around.
Anyway, Lijiang is beautiful and now I'm feeling a little more optimistic about China. Tomorrow we'll be trekking the gorge...
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