Last year, less than a month of arriving in Asia for the first time, I took my Chinese New Year (aka Spring Festival) to Guilin and surrounding environs. This year, a colleague, Li Zhen (aka “James”), suggested what we go to the Yunnan province in central southern China bordering Burma and Timbet. This sounded just dandy to me – remote location I hadn’t heard of before, near other mystical places, Shangri-La, 20K foot Himalayan foothills. Sign me up. We left on February 5th by plane traveling from Shenzhen to LiJiang, with a short layover in Kunming, the capital city of Yunnan. As we banked south towards the LiJiang landing strip, we enjoyed an up close n’ personal flyby of the big peak overlooking the city of LiJiang, Jade Dragon Mountain (Yu Long Xue Shan), rising over 5600 meters above sea level.

Jade Dragon Mountain on a bright day from a hill in LiJiang.

We were met by a representative (a driver hired for a few cents) of the inn/house that we were staying at and hopped into the little Chinese made minivan. Dang, I can’t remember the name of the brand, but, Yunnan being a poor province and these automobiles being cheap, these small vans are popular all around the province. Thirty minutes later, we pulled into the old town of LiJiang, disembarked, and walked 5 minutes to our inn. There was no heat anywhere where we went in this province, but each bed had a small electric pad placed on the top of the mattress to warm the bed. We were hungry so took off wandering around the town. I was mesmerized by the town and immediately proclaimed it as one of my favorites. It reminded me of Venice, and is often referred to as “The Venice of China” in tour guides, with the canals and bridges all around. The Jade river flows into the plain where LiJiang is built and splits into several tributaries. A couple of thousand years ago, someone had the great idea of building a city on top of the water and controling the tributaries with canals. It is stunning. The water is crystal clear and there are plenty of “old town” sites such as people washing their clothes vegetables in the canals (in the mornings it’s brushing teeth). There are lit orange lanterns everywhere that give the alleyways a perpetual sunset look at night.

(left) Check out the cool tripod I’m using to take night shots. (right) Night shot from Jame’s “night” lens.

Night shots of LiJiang. Pretty amazing, eh?

The city was quite chilly but a tasty dinner of hot noodles, toufu, and bananas fixed that right up. Later on, with some other inn guests, we headed in another direction and into a lively crowd. The setting was stunning with the canal running down the middle of the street.The only moment that sullied the experience was a mother holding her young child in the “bathroom position” (baby’s back pressed against the mother’s chest as the mother pulls the child’s legs up, rear end pointed directly down). The kid has already produced a mess in the middle of the floor, a store floor at that! Baah!