Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Day 155 – Black Dragon Springs, Naxi and Shihe Villages

 Our tour guide allowed us to sleep in today, so we didn’t have to be out to the bus until 9 a.m.  That was a needed extra few hours of sleep.  We first went to Black Dragon Springs and walked around and saw how beautiful it was.  There was a lot more to see than we had time to see. 

Some of the traditional costumes of the area.  For a fee you could put on the costume and have them take your picture.

Black Dragon Spring just bubbles up.


We loved the blue skies and the mountains.  We are at an elevation of 7300, so it was pretty cold this morning.  It warmed up nicely later on and we could shed all our layers.
 After the springs, we were driving to a place where a traditional Naxi (pronounced nah- shee) village is.  The Naxi are the ethnic people that have lived in the area for centuries.  It is not a tourist place that most non-Chinese get to see.  We walked the streets and saw how the people have lived for a long time.  The buildings were old and the ways they did things were pretty much the same as it was centuries ago.  They do have electricity and cars to make some tasks easier, but they still grow gardens and raise animals the same as they used to.  Their clothing is still pretty much the same also.

An adobe wall in the Naxi village.

This is the area of a traditional house that they make tofu.  Except for the electric wheat grinder, they do things the old way.

A cow in the village eating on dried cornstalks.  
After we walked around there for an hour, we went to another place called, “Shihe Village.”  It is mostly a tourist trap that they want the tour guides to take tourist to so that they will spend money.  We could either walk the streets to the top or we could ride in a horse (pony) cart.  If you rode in the cart, you didn’t have to look at all the shops, but if you walked you looked at all the shops.  We elected to walk and just ignored what was in the shops.  We did learn some interesting things about the village and the way the people used to and some still live there.
 
This is the Naxi symbol for eternal marriage.

One of the shops in the Shihe village.

A mannequin in traditional dress.

The cart rides.  The horses were about the size of a welsh pony.

This is a traditional well in the village.  The top or first pool is for the drinking water,  The second pool is for washing the clothes.  The third pool is for scouring, I assumed is meant washing the dishes.  After that the water goes to water the gardens.

We went to lunch and then they drove us to the old Lijiang Village area.   This area was hit by a devastating earthquake in 1996 and half of the old town was destroyed.  They keep the Old Town Area for tourist to see because some of the buildings date back to 800 years ago.  The rest of the town is new and modern because it was rebuilt after the earthquake.  They did have another big earthquake here in 2008, but that one didn’t do as much damage. 

This area again turned out to be a lot of shops and restaurants.  We first climbed the steps to the top of the area where we could take pictures and see where the old area was.  After that, we wandered the shops and since we didn’t find anything that interested our pocketbooks, we found a McDonald’s and had an ice cream cone.
 
These ladies were walking around it traditional dresses.

The guy in white is their employer and he runs a restaurant as well as several shops.  He invited us to take a picture with his ladies.  He was pretty funny.

This is the old village of Lijiang that we walked to the top of the hill to see and take pictures of.

We were then taken back to the hotel and had a couple of hours to rest before a very unappetizing Chinese New Year traditional dinner.  We ate some, but most of us didn’t care for the dried baked fish or the pig feet peanut dish, or the cabbage that was so spicy it left your mouth burning for several minutes after.
 
This woman was wearing traditional dress.  I thought the head dress looked hot.

Since we had time to kill after dinner, we got together with Wayne and Libby Clarke and played games until we all knew we were tired enough to go to bed.
This girl was posing in the costume of the Miao (sounds like "meow") people.

1 comment:

ConservativeTeacher said...

The "McDonalds" was only an ice cream shop, very small.

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