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Description
God's spotlight shines down on the fields between the town of Dali and the shores of Er Hai, prelude to a downpour.

Day 95 - Wednesday 29 April

Dali

I slept extremely well in my comfortable new bed and only really awoke once when the wind had got up in the night and the door started banging and opening, and I had to get up to wedge it shut using my daypack. It was after nine-thirty when I got up and I was in no real rush to go anywhere, especially as it seemed to be a very overcast and quite cool morning. Once I had sorted myself out I went to pay for another night and hand over a bag full of very smelly clothes at the laundry service desk. At only five mao per piece it just wasn’t worth all of the hassle of doing it myself, and hopefully they would be able to get my T-shirts much cleaner in a washing machine than I would be able to by hand washing them. Then it was on to the Tibetan Café for breakfast of a very tasty omelette and a bottomless cup of green tea. It was not until after eleven o’clock that I left the café, staying to hear the end of the Dire Straits album Brothers in Arms that was playing.

By this time the sun had made an appearance and it had turned into another glorious day so I decided that I could not simply return to my room to write my postcards as I had originally intended. On the other hand, neither did I feel particularly energetic after the exertions of yesterday and with the cold that I had developed, although that did seem slightly better this morning thanks to a dose of paracetamol. The most relaxing thing to do, therefore, seemed to be to stroll down to the shores of Er Hai and sit in the sunshine. I returned briefly to my room to change into my cycling shorts, these being the only ones that I hadn’t sent to the laundry and it now being too hot to wear my black trousers. I then set off through the town and down the hill towards the lake. Once clear of the town it was a lovely walk through the fertile green fields of the plain. There were occasional patches of brilliant emerald green where the rice crop was ripening beneath the warm sunshine, but the predominant crop appeared to be a dark green, parched and almost weed-like grass that was being harvested everywhere, mostly by old women. It looked to me as though whatever this crop was it was cultivated to provide animal fodder and silage and certainly didn’t appear as if it possessed any human nutritional value.

Once I had reached the lakeside villages it was like trying to navigate my way through a maze as I turned constantly left and right in my efforts to find a way down to the waterline and I had to turn back on several occasions as I found myself at a dead end. Eventually I found a way through to some fields beside a series of ponds that were protected from the lake by stone walls. I climbed up onto these substantial structures and walked along until I found a reasonable place to rest. It wasn’t exactly the kind of spot I had been hoping for but there were some lovely views across the blue waters of Er Hai to the barren looking green and rust coloured hills of the eastern shore. The hills came down to the water on that side of the lake to form a bay, behind which sheltered the village of Haidong, while a little further to the south was the island of Jinsuo Dao.

There was lots of waterborne activity on the lake, ranging from small sampans propelled by a lone oarsman or oarswoman, others with two or more people aboard, small motorised sampans and the larger fishing vessels. The latter, although equipped with masts and presumably sails, were invariably motorised, and many were plying up and down the lake, letting out their nets. Some of the smaller boats were pursued by the trained cormorants that were used to dive for and catch fish, strings being tied around their necks so that they can’t swallow the catch but making them regurgitate the fish into their owners’ boats.

Several people came over to speak to me while I sat on the wall, usually to try to persuade me to take a ride out on the lake in their boats, but whilst the idea did appeal to me I did not want to do so today as I had not come prepared, anticipating that it would probably be much cooler out on the water away from the shelter of the land. Instead I sat enjoying the warm sunshine, took some photographs and wrote my diary. Once my journal was up to date I remained there and made a start on writing the eight postcards that I had not got round to during my last day in Kunming. Once I had completed those I set about walking back to Dali via a fairly aimless and rambling route through the farmland.

There were more people than ever working in the fields that afternoon, including a lot more men than I had seen in the morning. Perhaps they only came out to lend a hand once they had finished their day at the factory or wherever? The irrigation systems in use in the fields were quite ingenious, channelling water both up from the lake and down from the mountains by way of a complex system of canals, aqueducts, sluices and pumps into every tiny field between Dali and Er Hai. On closer inspection I realised that the crop that was being grown in about 80% of the fields was some kind of bean, and I suspected that they were probably soya beans. I picked one of the beans to take away with me in the hope of confirming my beliefs later. By this time it had turned very cloudy over the mountains of the Cangshan, making for some wonderful chiaroscuro effects as the sunlight streaked down onto Dali and the surrounding farmland between the gaps in the rain-laden clouds. Before long, and while I was still making my way back through the fields towards the town, that rain began to fall. At first it was very light, although the individual raindrops were enormous, exploding onto my T-shirt like water-filled balloons. The rain gradually became heavier and heavier, and it elicited a tremendous noise from the fields, the source of which I couldn’t quite identify as to whether it was emanating from the chirping of insects or the croaking of frogs. The shower stopped almost as abruptly as it had started, but as I reached Dali the rain began again, this time far heavier than before, although it still hardly seemed worth the effort of stopping to remove my rain gear from the bottom of my daypack and put it on. It made me think of Juliet and Nobby and how they said that they had been dogged by rain on their previous trip to Dali. As far as I was aware they hadn’t arrived here before today and I pondered how ironic it would be if they should arrive today to find it raining yet again after the past three days of beautiful sunshine.

By the time I arrived back at the hotel it was absolutely pissing down. I went straight to my room and, as I was waiting for the really pretty, blue-uniformed floor attendant to come and let me in, who should I bump into but Nobby! He said that they had arrived at half past ten this morning, having taken the overnight bus from Kunming. Their bus had broken down on the way and they hadn’t moved for a couple of hours until it had been repaired, hence the exceedingly long journey time. We stood there chatting for a while and said that we would probably meet up again tonight.

I spent most of the time between then and eight o’clock writing and reading, at which point my grumbling stomach decided that it was time to go out to eat. I had a quick look inside the Tibetan Café but didn’t see Juliet and Nobby so I guessed that, unless they had not yet ventured out, they would be at Jack’s Restaurant, where they had previously told me they used to eat when they were here two years ago. When I arrived there I found them and I joined them at their table. We chatted over a couple of beers about what we had been up to since last Friday night, our old room-mate Jeff, and what we were planning to do for the next couple of weeks. They said that they had met most of the VSOs in and around Kunming, who had indicated that there was a good chance of being able to get them a teaching job in a summer school for a couple of months.

My food, when it eventually came, was good, although the steak was a little tough in places. Nobby’s food they forgot completely; so much for the advantages of being a friend of the family! Juliet had quite a long talk in Chinese with the mother of the family that ran the place and who seemed delighted to see her again. Nobby’s food finally arrived after I had already finished mine. Juliet, who hadn’t ordered anything at all as she was feeling very tired after the overly long bus journey, and slightly pissed after a few bottles of beer, only ate a little bit of Nobby’s before she went back to the hotel.

Nobby remained with me in the restaurant and we got talking to the group who had arrived and sat at the table next to ours; an English guy accompanied by three beautiful Swedish girls. At first I had thought them all a bunch of real prats, like a group of giggly pubescent teenagers, but once they had calmed down and began to talk with us they seemed okay. The Bai guy called Jack who ran the place, although I’m guessing that wasn’t his real name, also came over to join us. He spoke very good English, was only 21 and I figured him as being the local Del Boy (or should that be Dali Boy?), although he looked more like Mickey Pearce with his pencil moustache, pony tail and sharp grey suit! He was certainly an interesting character and I stayed talking with him for some time after all the others had left.

It was half past one before I staggered back to the hotel, feeling a little the worse for wear. As there was neither sight nor sound of the floor attendant I resorted to shouldering the door open, the lock on it not being particularly effective. I got into bed but within half an hour I was awake again and feeling absolutely terrible. I not only realised that I was imminently going to be sick but that I was also about to shit myself. Luckily, because I was in a double room, there were two of the enamel washing bowls provided and so I quickly squatted down on one and leant over with my head above the second. It had not been a moment too soon, for within seconds I was evacuating a disgusting, evil-smelling, dark brown mess from both ends. It must have been at least ten minutes before I stopped crapping and throwing up, and I then had the extremely unpleasant task of taking the bowls along the corridor to the lavatory to empty them and thoroughly wash them. Thankfully the lovely floor attendant was still not around; she was probably fast asleep somewhere. I don’t know what the cause of this was; the beer seemed the most obvious culprit because I had drunk five pints, which was considerably more than I was used to drinking of late, but in truth it was most likely a combination of the beer, my cold and the effects of too much sun during the course of the day. Whatever the cause, I hadn’t felt so dreadful for a very long time.

Description
God's spotlight shines down on the fields between the town of Dali and the shores of Er Hai, prelude to a downpour.

Day 95 - Wednesday 29 April

Dali

I slept extremely well in my comfortable new bed and only really awoke once when the wind had got up in the night and the door started banging and opening, and I had to get up to wedge it shut using my daypack. It was after nine-thirty when I got up and I was in no real rush to go anywhere, especially as it seemed to be a very overcast and quite cool morning. Once I had sorted myself out I went to pay for another night and hand over a bag full of very smelly clothes at the laundry service desk. At only five mao per piece it just wasn’t worth all of the hassle of doing it myself, and hopefully they would be able to get my T-shirts much cleaner in a washing machine than I would be able to by hand washing them. Then it was on to the Tibetan Café for breakfast of a very tasty omelette and a bottomless cup of green tea. It was not until after eleven o’clock that I left the café, staying to hear the end of the Dire Straits album Brothers in Arms that was playing.

By this time the sun had made an appearance and it had turned into another glorious day so I decided that I could not simply return to my room to write my postcards as I had originally intended. On the other hand, neither did I feel particularly energetic after the exertions of yesterday and with the cold that I had developed, although that did seem slightly better this morning thanks to a dose of paracetamol. The most relaxing thing to do, therefore, seemed to be to stroll down to the shores of Er Hai and sit in the sunshine. I returned briefly to my room to change into my cycling shorts, these being the only ones that I hadn’t sent to the laundry and it now being too hot to wear my black trousers. I then set off through the town and down the hill towards the lake. Once clear of the town it was a lovely walk through the fertile green fields of the plain. There were occasional patches of brilliant emerald green where the rice crop was ripening beneath the warm sunshine, but the predominant crop appeared to be a dark green, parched and almost weed-like grass that was being harvested everywhere, mostly by old women. It looked to me as though whatever this crop was it was cultivated to provide animal fodder and silage and certainly didn’t appear as if it possessed any human nutritional value.

Once I had reached the lakeside villages it was like trying to navigate my way through a maze as I turned constantly left and right in my efforts to find a way down to the waterline and I had to turn back on several occasions as I found myself at a dead end. Eventually I found a way through to some fields beside a series of ponds that were protected from the lake by stone walls. I climbed up onto these substantial structures and walked along until I found a reasonable place to rest. It wasn’t exactly the kind of spot I had been hoping for but there were some lovely views across the blue waters of Er Hai to the barren looking green and rust coloured hills of the eastern shore. The hills came down to the water on that side of the lake to form a bay, behind which sheltered the village of Haidong, while a little further to the south was the island of Jinsuo Dao.

There was lots of waterborne activity on the lake, ranging from small sampans propelled by a lone oarsman or oarswoman, others with two or more people aboard, small motorised sampans and the larger fishing vessels. The latter, although equipped with masts and presumably sails, were invariably motorised, and many were plying up and down the lake, letting out their nets. Some of the smaller boats were pursued by the trained cormorants that were used to dive for and catch fish, strings being tied around their necks so that they can’t swallow the catch but making them regurgitate the fish into their owners’ boats.

Several people came over to speak to me while I sat on the wall, usually to try to persuade me to take a ride out on the lake in their boats, but whilst the idea did appeal to me I did not want to do so today as I had not come prepared, anticipating that it would probably be much cooler out on the water away from the shelter of the land. Instead I sat enjoying the warm sunshine, took some photographs and wrote my diary. Once my journal was up to date I remained there and made a start on writing the eight postcards that I had not got round to during my last day in Kunming. Once I had completed those I set about walking back to Dali via a fairly aimless and rambling route through the farmland.

There were more people than ever working in the fields that afternoon, including a lot more men than I had seen in the morning. Perhaps they only came out to lend a hand once they had finished their day at the factory or wherever? The irrigation systems in use in the fields were quite ingenious, channelling water both up from the lake and down from the mountains by way of a complex system of canals, aqueducts, sluices and pumps into every tiny field between Dali and Er Hai. On closer inspection I realised that the crop that was being grown in about 80% of the fields was some kind of bean, and I suspected that they were probably soya beans. I picked one of the beans to take away with me in the hope of confirming my beliefs later. By this time it had turned very cloudy over the mountains of the Cangshan, making for some wonderful chiaroscuro effects as the sunlight streaked down onto Dali and the surrounding farmland between the gaps in the rain-laden clouds. Before long, and while I was still making my way back through the fields towards the town, that rain began to fall. At first it was very light, although the individual raindrops were enormous, exploding onto my T-shirt like water-filled balloons. The rain gradually became heavier and heavier, and it elicited a tremendous noise from the fields, the source of which I couldn’t quite identify as to whether it was emanating from the chirping of insects or the croaking of frogs. The shower stopped almost as abruptly as it had started, but as I reached Dali the rain began again, this time far heavier than before, although it still hardly seemed worth the effort of stopping to remove my rain gear from the bottom of my daypack and put it on. It made me think of Juliet and Nobby and how they said that they had been dogged by rain on their previous trip to Dali. As far as I was aware they hadn’t arrived here before today and I pondered how ironic it would be if they should arrive today to find it raining yet again after the past three days of beautiful sunshine.

By the time I arrived back at the hotel it was absolutely pissing down. I went straight to my room and, as I was waiting for the really pretty, blue-uniformed floor attendant to come and let me in, who should I bump into but Nobby! He said that they had arrived at half past ten this morning, having taken the overnight bus from Kunming. Their bus had broken down on the way and they hadn’t moved for a couple of hours until it had been repaired, hence the exceedingly long journey time. We stood there chatting for a while and said that we would probably meet up again tonight.

I spent most of the time between then and eight o’clock writing and reading, at which point my grumbling stomach decided that it was time to go out to eat. I had a quick look inside the Tibetan Café but didn’t see Juliet and Nobby so I guessed that, unless they had not yet ventured out, they would be at Jack’s Restaurant, where they had previously told me they used to eat when they were here two years ago. When I arrived there I found them and I joined them at their table. We chatted over a couple of beers about what we had been up to since last Friday night, our old room-mate Jeff, and what we were planning to do for the next couple of weeks. They said that they had met most of the VSOs in and around Kunming, who had indicated that there was a good chance of being able to get them a teaching job in a summer school for a couple of months.

My food, when it eventually came, was good, although the steak was a little tough in places. Nobby’s food they forgot completely; so much for the advantages of being a friend of the family! Juliet had quite a long talk in Chinese with the mother of the family that ran the place and who seemed delighted to see her again. Nobby’s food finally arrived after I had already finished mine. Juliet, who hadn’t ordered anything at all as she was feeling very tired after the overly long bus journey, and slightly pissed after a few bottles of beer, only ate a little bit of Nobby’s before she went back to the hotel.

Nobby remained with me in the restaurant and we got talking to the group who had arrived and sat at the table next to ours; an English guy accompanied by three beautiful Swedish girls. At first I had thought them all a bunch of real prats, like a group of giggly pubescent teenagers, but once they had calmed down and began to talk with us they seemed okay. The Bai guy called Jack who ran the place, although I’m guessing that wasn’t his real name, also came over to join us. He spoke very good English, was only 21 and I figured him as being the local Del Boy (or should that be Dali Boy?), although he looked more like Mickey Pearce with his pencil moustache, pony tail and sharp grey suit! He was certainly an interesting character and I stayed talking with him for some time after all the others had left.

It was half past one before I staggered back to the hotel, feeling a little the worse for wear. As there was neither sight nor sound of the floor attendant I resorted to shouldering the door open, the lock on it not being particularly effective. I got into bed but within half an hour I was awake again and feeling absolutely terrible. I not only realised that I was imminently going to be sick but that I was also about to shit myself. Luckily, because I was in a double room, there were two of the enamel washing bowls provided and so I quickly squatted down on one and leant over with my head above the second. It had not been a moment too soon, for within seconds I was evacuating a disgusting, evil-smelling, dark brown mess from both ends. It must have been at least ten minutes before I stopped crapping and throwing up, and I then had the extremely unpleasant task of taking the bowls along the corridor to the lavatory to empty them and thoroughly wash them. Thankfully the lovely floor attendant was still not around; she was probably fast asleep somewhere. I don’t know what the cause of this was; the beer seemed the most obvious culprit because I had drunk five pints, which was considerably more than I was used to drinking of late, but in truth it was most likely a combination of the beer, my cold and the effects of too much sun during the course of the day. Whatever the cause, I hadn’t felt so dreadful for a very long time.