I had a hard time dragging myself out of the bed today because it’s so cold out. But, we needed to be moving by 8:30, so with a bit a whining to myself, I got it done. We had a tasty breakfast (some sweet bread, two fried eggs, and a rice porridge). It was enough that it kept me satisfied most of the day.

Finishing up the rice porridge

Li Zhen (James) planned our day today which entailed going to the other side of Jade Dragon Mountain and then hiking and horseback riding our way back to LiJiang. Unfortunately, James didn’t negotiate the price beforehand and these guys wanted like 600 RMB for their services to get us back to LiJiang. “No way!”, I said. I said we could just walk the whole thing (we could have…would have been a long day, but doable). They were a little taken aback and we were able to negotiate down half price. Much better, but still pricey considering what we got. I mean, I had fun, but in terms of Chinese wages, they made out like bandits.

Still, as I mounted my little dumpy horse that was led by a local guide, I felt a bit like a dork. “I know how to ride a horse, just give me the map!”, I wanted to say, but I played along. “At least I can probably take some video…nope, too bumpy.”

The scenery was great. Strangely, it reminded me a lot of the South Park area around Colorado. Big open spaces, wide lakes, water birds, a thin veil of snow in places, cold. Even some of the vegetation in the mountain felt like a mix between Colorado and Georgia. Guess the world just keeps getting smaller and smaller. For part of the trip, we borded a boat. There’s really no purpose in it because it doesn’t get us anywhere, it’s more of those “do something that you’ve never done before” activity geared towards a city slicker from Shanghai. It was very windy too so I thought we wouldn’t be able to go very far. We didn’t. A few minutes after being blown down the lake, the guides start having to put their backs into poling us back to the landing dock. Silly.

A windy day on the water.

Birds in flight along the broad lake.

The rest of the trip was the journey back to LiJiang over a mountain pass. Again, we could have walked this, but it would have been a long day. What’s worse though is that there are so many unlabeled trails crisscrossing that almost anyone would certainly get lost and take double of the time they should, even with a map. The whole trip was well below treeline.

Upon arriving in a village with similar canals near LiJiang, I experienced the first of many false scares of losing important items. I have a bad habit of absent-mindedly placing important items in random places, granted safe but still random. It took me about five minutes to discover that I put my wallet in my vest pocket. I was so relieved and offered to pay for lunch which consisted of some Tibetan tea which is heavily laden with butter! It was very good, but I can’t remember tasting so much fat before…even moreso than a fast food restaurant. It was even served in a mini butter churner apparatus.

Villagers washing in clothes and vegetables in a canal (village near LiJiang)

This evening was Chinese New Year which began with a big dinner at the hotel. I introduced myself in Chinese and upon request, got up and sang “Lin Mei Mei”. Most of the folks then went out to a bar for a while. It’s customary for everyone to spend Chinese New Year at home. Lot of folks, and I’d even say almost all, have a bad habit of watching the Chinese equivalent of the Dick Clark New Year show. There was plenty of Chinese opera performances (one was even “Lin Mei Mei”), some of them were tolerable, a couple of them were awful. A much more respectable tradition is to make homemade dumplings and eat them before the new year. I didn’t make any, but I lent a helping hand eating plenty. Since the year of the pig was on the way out, I was able to justify losing count of how many I had. Actually, these were the best dumplings I think I’d ever had in China. The cooks had also put a coin in a dumpling or two. If you were lucky enough to find a coin (and not swallow it), maybe wealth would make a visit to you. No coins for me. The fireworks dutifully went off at midnight. There was no singular large fireworks display that I saw, but rather they were in all sorts of different locations. I got the sense that the Chinese didn’t enjoy the fireworks as much as we do (I’m sure they do), cause I didn’t see any crowds looking at the fireworks. In fact, some folks lit fireworks with nonchalance as if it were their 9-5 job. I saw one guy open his door, light a huge string of firecrackers with his cigarette, throw them out in the street, turn his back, walk back inside and shut the door.

(l-r) Cooking dumplings. A feisty, fun, and friendly Naxi woman, introducing herself as “Monkey”, displaying some fresh dumplings. Smoke from the fire clouds the social scene just before the new year, the year of the mouse.

Shortly after midnight, we promptly went to bed. We were going to get an early start tomorrow morning to head to Shangri-La and Mei Li Xue Shan (a 22,000 foot peak, still unclimbed, which we hoped to see).