The old city of Dali, Yunnan province, China, is a perfect flower of a town, especially when you arrive after spending the early hours of the cold winter night camping on the pavement outside Departures at Kunming airport.
Our Lucky Air flight from Tai Yuan had been two hours late, the only flight delayed. We waited, wondering what had gone wrong with our plane and empathising with the poor staff manning the duty-free stores, selling nothing, but apparently under orders to stay open until the last plane arrived. They slumped over their counters in exhaustion until our plane arrived at midnight, the only one remaining on the departure board. In a flash the shops were shut and the sales staff stampeded towards home.
Two-and-a-half hours later we arrived at Kunming, our plane roaring over blocks of flats built right up to the runway. No 11pm curfews here.
We were hurried through Arrivals, each piece of luggage checked against a receipt stuck to our boarding passes to ensure there were no mixups. Sydney’s laissez faire approach, by contrast, always leaves me wondering…
With only a few hours until our 6am checkin to Dali, we had planned to wait at the airport but, with no obvious route upstairs to Departures, we were unceremoniously ejected and the doors locked behind us. We fought off several dodgy taxi drivers offering off-the-meter fares to equally dodgy hotels, and, wondering where to safely camp, eventually found a luggage-unfriendly flight of concrete stairs leading to departures. There, the doors were also locked but a couple of Asian guys with luggage were hanging around in the same predicament and there were security people inside, so we settled down outside the cold glass doors.
I borrowed a camping chair I found around the side of the building and we zipped up our jackets, wound up our scarves and watched the world’s ugliest clock, perched on a tower peeking above the raised concourse, tick away the early morning minutes.
Luckily we had stocked up with a bottle of Chinese rice whisky* [*travellers’ tip] and some excellent sun-dried fruits from Ping Yao, so we kept warm and made it a bit of a party, taking pictures of each other stranded in the cold. Gradually more travellers arrived and joined our vigil.
At 5am the doors opened and we entered the aircon-heated wasteland typical of all airports. Everything was closed so we wandered around dragging our luggage because all the trolleys were still wired together. The need for coffee and hot food was urgent, and we eventually found a KFC hidden up some more luggage-unfriendly stairs and, discarding all principle, ordered burgers drowning in cheap mayonnaise, bits of spiced chicken carcase and coffee. We even enjoyed it at first, deciding that KFC stood for Kunming Food Crisis.
When we emerged the place was teeming, all the trolleys now taken. The departure board directed us to check-in counters G, H, which several luggage-unfriendly circuits of the airport revealed not to exist. We asked at Information and were directed to Check-in 19, to our left. There, the counters started at #50 and rising. We again traversed the airport to find #19. Wrong airline, wrong flight. We asked another Information person. Ah, Check-in 61 – a gorgeous interlingual dyslexia having confused our original informant.
And so to Dali, 35 minutes’ flight over mountains, lakes and dams, where we were met by the man from our guesthouse and driven beside a cobalt-blue lake, through the well kept new city and dropped outside the old city walls at an arched gate which led to our guesthouse, built in ancient style with carved latticed shutters all around dark wood rooms. There we were told our room would not be ready until 1.30pm and we were invited to ‘walk around’ until then. Needing a loo stop, after some arranging we were shown into a bedroom where someone was still asleep in the bed, and we used the facilities.
Then, glazed with jet lag, sticky eyes and unshowered body ick we entered a paradise. Old Dali is as close to heaven as you will find on this earth. Bubbling brooks streaming down from the mountains laugh through the car-free streets. Wizened coolies haul handcarts of fresh produce, and local restaurants display spreads of greens and vegetables bursting with crisp freshness and colour made vivid in the clear light.
In two hours I got more grade-A photo-library standard pictures than I had shot in the past five years. Golden-green leaves shone translucent in the bright slanting sunlight. Chillies arranged in perfect florettes burned in bright red counterpoint. Exotic fungi, tiny orange gourds, sunflower seeds, baskets of brown eggs, red onions, pink garlic, black-green cabbages and fresh bean shoots were laid out in displays worthy of our Easter Show produce extravaganzas. Smoked cuts of meat hung in doorways, large sacks of nuts and various cured teas lined alleyways and the streets were lined with Japanese wild cherry trees in full dark pink bloom, contrasting perfectly against intense Sydney-blue skies. Vendors offered steamed dumplings or fried or grilled Rushan – aereated yoghurt-based sheets rolled and served hot on a stick, and sellers at the food market weighed-up using hand-held scales hung on string.
A three-flowers omelette – jasmine, rose and ‘pineapple broom’ with a mug of rich Yunnan coffee – made a delightful antidote to the KFC, which had given me prodigious wind. There are many places offering quality western food, too, from mouth-watering German cakes to crisp, light, crisp herb-flavoured pizza.
Side streets still offer a different craft in each – tinsmiths, blacksmiths, silversmiths, tailors, quiltmakers and shoemakers, one of which, squatting in a dark lane marked by a sign saying ‘SEX TYOS’, rebuilt and cleaned three pairs of ours. Hint: We forgot the golden rule – always negotiate your price first.
The main local ethnic tribe, the Bai, were everywhere in their bright ceremonial headdress and immaculate white embroidered fabrics. While hill tribes in South-east Asia, all of which originate from this same sub-Tibetan region, suffer second-class status, the Bais here operate in the mainstream economy, owning shops and the women frequently seen wearing wireless headsets amplifying eloquent spiels guiding groups of wide-eyed Han Chinese tourists, who far outnumber westerners.
But it’s still a tourist strip, and the intelligent post-modern traveller no longer looks for authenticity, rather seeking out the ways that different places create its illusion.
Rising before a late winter dawn, I found the cobbled streets, pedestrianised by day, busy with honking cars and motorbikes as the Chinese got on with the real business of living. A windstorm had blown up overnight, dislodging many of the ubiquitous red lanterns. A sweeper scornfully kicked one into the gutter as he continued, fag hanging from mouth, to make the streets spotless.
A town clock broadcasts tinny, digital Westminster chimes and a child late for school breaks into a panicked run. I am still the only westerner about, sitting outside the closed restaurant which had promised to be open by now as I wait for an appointment with a man who has a fishing boat and who is also late.
And the night before I had been told by Tibetan Jim, owner of two eponymous café/guesthouses, that the bubbling brooks were artificial, all the water pumped up from the lake for the benefit of the tourists and I also discover that the glorious produce displays are kept shiny and intact with cockroach spray.
by Michael Gormly
