Shangri-La

Visiting Shangri-La was one of the main reasons why I chose to visit the province of Yunnan instead of going to Beijing. Shangri-La is a place I have always wanted to visit, a place I imagined to be closer to the world in its beginning state, untouched by the speed of our modern world.

From Lijiang, Shangri-La is a 5 hour bus drive away to the north east, very close to Tibet. The place is actually under Tibetan authority and every inscription is both in Mandarin and Tibetan. As we came to say, Shangri-La is “as close as you can get to Tibet without getting your nose cold”, nor a permit.

We got there in the late afternoon to discover that our hostel had cancelled our reservations, so we decided to walk around in the old city until we found a place to stay. We ran into an old inn that looked really cozy and decided we would spend the night there. The owners were really friendly and enjoyed talking to Jake in Chinese and who also helped us a lot with getting around places.

The old town of Shangri-La was quite similar to the old city of Lijiang, but much smaller. The narrow streets lead to a central square that was packed with street food vendors in the morning and where people gathered for line dancing in the evening.



The biggest attraction of Shangri-La is definitely the Songzanlin Monastery, built in the 17th century and located about 3km away from the old city. It is Tibetan in architecture and essence and embodies the core of the Tibetan Buddhist culture. We walked around the monastery and the little village at its base for half a day, and also received blessings from the monks (the blessing were accompanied by a wooden bracelet and a colorful thread necklace). The weather was really capricious, it was clouded and rained most of the time, and at times it got really cold and windy.


Unfortunately, the central body of the monastery was under reconstruction.











This reminded me a lot of the Chinese Pavilion at the World Expo.




Stupas, Buddhist structures that contain relicts, are everywhere around the place.

We got back in town in the afternoon and discovered the entire old city was still out of electricity. Luckily it wasn’t raining anymore, so we went out exploring the old city and climbed the interminable steps to a Buddhist temple from where we got an amazing view.







The minority ladies were kind enough to let us take a picture.


The power outage lasted for at least 12 hours, which meant that we had dinner at candle light. Jake spotted a Nepalese restaurant where we had a very delicious, but quite unusual dinner: Indian food eaten with chopsticks.



Another remarkable attraction around the city is the Pudacuo National Park, a reserve over 1200 sq km at 3500m above sea level. The administration of the park has a very well organized system of getting around: they provide buses that stop in designated spots and they drop you off at the next viewpoint. We spent a whole day visiting and the whole time I could not stop but think how amazing it is that there are still places like that left in the world: it’s all green, the water is crystal clear and the skies show no signs of pollution.







It is impossible to talk about Shangri-La without mentioning the Tibetan food – by far my favorite of all the things I tried in China. We tried many yak specialties, the famous Tibetan yak dumplings (called momos), had yak cheese balls with sweet sauce and even felt adventurous enough as to try the yak butter tea. It’s all about the yaks in Tibet!



My initial image of Shangri-La was probably affected by Hilton’s novel “Lost Horizon”, in which he presents it as an earthly paradise isolated from the rest of the world. What I discovered was quite different; it had many of the modern facilities: electrically heated beds, ATMs, full phone service and decent infrastructure. Even the monks used cell phones and ads for China Mobile and Coca-Cola where inside the monastery. While I had wished to find my Shangri-La, the real Shangri-La taught me that it is impossible not to be touched by development and is unfair to pretend these places should keep their old lifestyle – it’s normal that they want the benefits of progress as well.

Lijiang

Probably the most beautiful city I have ever been to so far. It is one of the biggest cities in the Yunnan province, located in southern China, bordering Laos, Vietnam and Burma.

Getting into Lijiang from Shanghai was a really long trip: Jake and I took a 37 hour train ride into Kunming (the province’s capital) and then switched trains for another 10 hour ride. But it was all worth it and time flew by as we slept, read, made friends with one of the conductors or just enjoyed the scenery – breathtakingly green.


Panba Hostel - amazing!

We got into our hostel quite late, but decided to go for a short walk in the Old Town anyways. The old town of Lijiang is probably the best preserved ancient town in China and is also listed in the World UNESCO Heritages.





The weather was good, meaning it wasn’t pouring and it was not too cold either (around 18 Celsius at night, compared to 30 in Shanghai). We walked through the old narrow streets all the way to the main square and then explored other adjacent streets. The place was packed with tourists, mainly young Chinese people, who were enjoying Lijiang’s renowned nightlife. It was indeed very lively before midnight, with many souvenir shops on every street, restaurants that serve southern specialties, and bars and pubs with live music. We spent a couple of hours wandering around and admiring the beautiful lamps and lanterns which created a very warm and cozy atmosphere.





The next day we went for one of the main touristic activities: climbed to the Lion Hill Pagoda, which offered an amazing view of the Old Town.


Lijiang by day.


Lion Hill Pagoda


People write down their wishes and hang the bells so that the gods hear them when the wind blows.



The amazing views of the old and new cities of Lijiang.




In the evening went to see a performance by the Naxi Minority Classical Music Orchestra.



The Naxi are originally of Tibetan descent, but moved to Yunnan after the 1st century. They fought Western influence, but ended up suffering big losses in terms of culture and religious practices during the Cultural Revolution started by the communist party. The Naxi have their own unique written language, a set of pictograms conceived over 1000 years ago. All inscriptions in Lijiang were both in simplified Chinese and Naxi.



One thing you should not miss in Yunnan is eating yak meat, which I really liked. It’s a tasty red meat, a bit lighter than beef and not at all greasy.



One last thing we did before leaving Lijiang was to visit the Black Dragon Lake – an amazing park with crystal clear waters and very pretty pagodas and bridges scattered all over the place.









Once it stopped raining we climbed about an hour to the top of a hill from where we could get an amazing view of the city on one side and a green image of valleys covered in virgin forests on the other side.





While walking around, we ran into a sign saying “your dreams return to Lijiang”. My dreams definitely return there as I fell in love with the place. I don’t know if it was the architecture, the beautiful lights, the yak meat or simply the atmosphere, but there was something magical about this city.


"Your dreams return to Lijiang" (courtesy of Jake)

Hangzhou

We planned on getting in Hangzhou around 7pm, have dinner and go out to explore the city. But of course things don’t always happen as scheduled. We arrived around 9pm because the train was delayed and our taxi driver dropped us at the bottom of a hill, pointing to a narrow street and probably saying that our hostel was that way.

After a 15 minute walk to the top of the hill and multiple trials of asking the locals, we arrived to a hostel that had some sort of outdoors restaurant. No one spoke English and our Chinese was limited so we had a pretty hard time explaining what we wanted. One of the guys was kind enough to call the hostel (we had the address and phone) and ask them to come pick us up, so eventually we got to the right place – which was at the bottom of the hill, right on the other side of the road.

After a quick shower, we decided we were still hungry and wanted to go for something to eat, but everything was closed at the time and we got out of our hostel just to discover that it was pouring and the streets were completely flooded. I had never seen anything like that before – the water was up to my ankles and my jeans were wet to the knee. My mom had told me that it usually rains a lot in Hangzhou, but I never thought it would be that bad – it was the rainy season. Soaked, we resigned to getting in a taxi and writing down: KFC.

We spent the morning of the next day discovering the city. Hangzhou is located on the lower part of the Qiantang River and is very famous for its beautiful scenery around the West Lake. For hours we walked around the lake, took pictures and watched people walking by. Apparently, the city is a very popular honeymoon destination for Chinese couples, and indeed we saw many walking hand in hand and wearing matching T-shirt, which is very common in China.





You could take a boat tour around the lake in the big boat or in smaller ones.







The view of the lake from the top of one of the hills around the lake.





The scenery is indeed amazing, but it can get really crowded around the lake, it’s really hot, and you never know when it starts raining. Just as we were walking out of the lake area, it started pouring. Really hard. In 10 minutes we were soaked and my umbrella was pretty useless. The worst part though was trying to get a taxi – no one wanted to take us back to our hostel and we never understood why. We showed them the address and they said something back and then left. We tried walking to the next corner, but it was just clearer that we would get no taxi. By the time we figured that out, we also figured out we were lost in an area with no other people or buildings to go inside. So we kept walking, for an hour and a half, soaked, but keeping our calm and trying to make fun of our miserable situation. At some point we passed something that looked like a tea plantation… luckily though, we eventually found a taxi and got back to our hostel.

We did not feel adventurous enough to go for dinner in town, so we had Jake order something for us over the phone. I admit, we were pretty spoiled. At night, we did go downtown and walked around for a bit, got some Black Dragon Tea and spent hours talking in a coffee shop.

Overall, Hangzhou was a very beautiful city, with amazing scenery, but for us, the rain was such a pain…

Suzhou

I learned in China that sometimes the best thing to do is to just take the chances given and do less planning.

Probably for two full weeks we kept thinking about how we would be able to travel outside Shanghai, given that we were stuck in the campus for a full month and were given days off randomly. But, one afternoon, we found would have the next day to rest and right away someone came with the idea of leaving that evening and going to Suzhou, a city 2 hours away from Shanghai. Everyone agreed and in less than half an hour we were catching a taxi to the Shanghai train station. Half way there, Jake realized none of us had their passports, so we could not check in the hostels. It was a costly ride, but I guess one has to pay for his mistakes.

After grabbing our passports, we took an Expo bus downtown, which saved us a lot of money. Once we got to the train station (Shanghai South), we realized we might not be able to get tickets – the place was full of people who had visited the Expo and were now going back home. We made our way through thousands of people and Haibaos and luckily got standing tickets for Suzhou; it was supposed to be a short ride anyways. The only issue was we were leaving from another train station (Shanghai Railway Stn), so we had to get on the metro and get there.



The train was crowded and people were standing everywhere they could, but at least we were leaving Shanghai. We were finally travelling.



We got in Suzhou much later than expected and went to bed a little before 2am. However, the next day we were pumped and ready to go pretty early.

Suzhou is a very beautiful city in the Jiangsu province and is often called “Venice of the East” because of its many canals and bridges.

The first place we visited was the Beisi Pagoda, which was built in the 12th century. We climbed all the way to the top (76m) and got an amazing view of the city. It was a more traditional Chinese city, completely different from downtown Shanghai. It still kept a lot of traditional architecture and had a warm and relaxed feeling.






Lucky Buddha

From there we headed to the Lion Forest Garden, built in 1342 during the Yuan Dynasty. The labyrinthine rockery is definitely impressive and resembles lions in different postures: roaring, playing, sleeping, etc.





The next spot we visited was my personal favorite: the Panmen Scenic Zone – a combination of canals, pagodas, bridges, water and land city gates. The ticket we got there says it is a “National Tourist Attraction of Grade AAAA” and I have to agree. The place was amazing: we enjoyed walking around for hours, we took a boat trip on the canals, did a bit of souvenir shopping and got our picture taken with the locals.

I particularly enjoyed this place because, unlike the other canals of Suzhou, these ones did not smell and you could see through the water. I guess being a national attraction helped stopping everyone throwing dump in the waters. Also, the pagodas and the bridges were amazing!











Unfortunately, Jake and Tim had to teach the next day, so they got a train back to Shanghai, and Dan and I were left alone to make our way through China, without our secret weapon: Jake’s fluent Chinese… we decided to spend another night in our hostel and head for Hangzhou the next afternoon.


The pond in the inner garden of the Suzhou Museum.

The next day, after visiting the Suzhou Museum, we decided to have lunch. Fortunately, we happened to walk into a restaurant that had pictures of the main dishes displayed on the wall and you just had to check your choices on a menu. We didn’t want to be the typical tourists that point at pictures so we did our best to recognize the characters of the 3 dishes we wanted and mark them on the menu. Then we asked for tea (cha) and two bowls of rice (fen). We felt incredibly proud of ourselves and then we were off to our new adventure: Hangzhou!