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).

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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!

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I set foot in China for the first time around one year ago, within just a couple of weeks to attend the 2007 Annual Party. That party, as you may have read in the original post, was a total surprise to me. The typical bo-ring US corporate party was my precendent and what followed was shocking – and great! There was such a genuine festive mood in the air and folks when around wishing each other a Happy New Year, complete with drinking and laughter. What was even more surprising was that coworkers, regardless of their ability, got up and performed for each other. In fact, I remember clearly Sally, one of the HR girls, had joined our team that very day and was the first performerer of the evening. She got up and sang a solo! That blew me away!

Fast forward one year to the 2008 Annual Party. We had a bigger budget, a bigger crowd, a real stage with lights, digital video, the works. I was impressed. The organization is still something of a mystery to me – a committee of employees somehow forms and they end up putting together this amazing good time. I was volunteered to sing a duet with Sally – the same Sally. “OK, sure!”, I said without hesitation. It was quite a challenge for me, though barrels of fun. Learning an old “Chinese Opera” duet was no easy feat. I practiced the song, entitled “Lin Mei Mei”, many times so that I’d have it committed to memory.   I had a sense of pride that prevented me from allowing myself to show up on stage with a cheat sheet, although I was tempted to scribble the beginnings of the lines on my hand.

Here are some pre-party preparation pics:

(l-r) Practicing again and again w/ Sally, Trying out the stage, Some of the boyz perfect a funny dance

(l-r) Cherie is our talented choreographer (and receptionist), Displaying some of the doorprizes, Posing with some of the dancers, who are test engineers mostly.

More performers for the evening:

People start rehearsing for the show about one month to two weeks before. I didn’t get serious until the final week and had to cram the night before the show. Even then I was getting my “Xin1″ 心 (“heart”) lines mixed up a la “My heart is moving like the wind blows through the willows” and “Though this stranger has descended from the sky, deep in my heart I know she’s a long time friend.”

Here are some great shots from the performances:

(l-r) The dance number set a good tone, Leon and Pinkamon perform. Pinkamon is from Thailand and has about the same Chinese ability as me. We were the only foreigners to perform. Gotta get Bill or Daryl (if he’s in town) to perform next time.

Like the costumes?

There were some choice door prizes too: Zunes, Gifts Certificates, XBox 360s… Jimmy gave out many of them. I like this picture which shows Jimmy and William looking surprised at the recipient of the current prize (not sure who this particular prize was for):

We had a tasty Cantonese dinner spread out over a long time while playing a singing game. The microphone went from table to table and someone would get up and sing a capella. I think the objective was to begin your song on the same word that the last song ended. Finally, to wrap up the evening, we then went around to each other’s table toasting and wishing a each other a happy new year of much prosperity, luck, fortune, money, happiness, and so on.

Marshall croons for the appreciative crowd.

A colleague shot this video on his still camera so it’s not so good, but you’ll get the idea of the performances. There will be a high quality version which I’ll be sure to add later.

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