Dali



Day 302 (April 26, 2019) – Dali, Yunnan Province, China

Dali was full of surprises. Some good and others not so good. There are actually two places called Dali. The modern part of Dali is called Dali City and the more historic part of town is called Dali Old Town (or sometimes Dali Ancient City). They are a good distance apart from one another but as a tourist almost everyone arrives by train in Dali City and then heads over to Dali Old Town.

Most of the streets in Dali Old Town are pedestrian-only and have streams running along them.

Dali was our first visit to a Chinese “ancient town.” China has many towns and cities which have been inhabited for hundreds if not thousands of years. If these historical towns have been well preserved over the years, they often become popular tourist destinations, as is the case with Dali. Dali is a particularly attractive destination because the geography is beautiful. In the mountainous terrain leading up to the Tibetan Plateau, Dali sits in a long and narrow valley with mountains on either side and the enormous Erhai Lake taking up the space in between. I don’t know if it had anything to do with the high elevation, but like Kunming, the weather was beautiful during our visit. The sun was always out and we saw some of the bluest skies we’d seen in months.

Waterfalls and photo opportunities were plentiful.

Dali was a very pleasant city to walk around in, but it was not exactly what we were expecting. Calling Dali an ancient town is sort of a poor translation. If something is called an ancient town it gives me the impression of going back in time. That things haven’t changed all that much since ancient times. If you slowly wander the streets you should be able to almost imagine what things would have been like all that time ago. By this definition, Dali didn’t give any impression of being an ancient town.


There are plenty of historically significant sites in Dali, including an enormous city wall with huge gate buildings. There are old temples and plenty of stone streets to walk along. It’s a huge place and the style of the old architecture has been maintained throughout the entire town. However, nothing gave the impression of being old. Everything felt new and shiny. There were countless stores for shopping and eating but nothing that you wouldn’t expect to find in a modern mall. It just didn’t feel like people actually lived there. It felt more like it was constructed to be a cute tourist town.

Trying to highlight some of the architecture. It's very ornate and the whole town looks like this. We were also laughing a bit at this restaurant's English translation: "Oil Leaching Duck Head." Sounds tasty...

There appears to be significant cultural differences in how preservation is defined. For us, preservation usually means to restore something, but in a way as to not alter the original appearance. In China, whenever something was preserved, it generally means that it was completely rebuilt in a way to show off its previous grandeur, even if it looks different. Now, I don’t know if the following example is actually true or not, but it sums up my impression of the whole thing. If you had an old stone building (I’m thinking of an old Colonial house) that had to be restored, at home we would rebuild it using stones that looked like the old ones. The stones are probably irregular because the stone cutting techniques where not that great back then, but regardless of modern methods you maintain the old look. In China they would rebuild it from stones using the newer and better stone cutting techniques, perhaps making it look more like marble than old stone. So, while you have a building that looks beautiful and aesthetically pleasing (and extremely photogenic), it doesn’t convey the historical character of it, other than there used to be a building there of similar grandeur back in the day.

You can see the mountains from just about everywhere. The lake is in the other direction, although harder to see unless you're on an upper floor of a building.

That pretty much sums up our impression of Dali. It’s called an ancient town, but it really feels like a giant outdoor theme mall that was only recently built. Granted, it is an extremely pretty outdoor mall. The architecture of the buildings is very ornate and consistent all within the city walls. There are streams and waterways running all throughout town. There are waterfalls and flowers and tree-lined streets. The nearby mountains tower over the city. At night, all the buildings are lit up and there are enough photo opportunities to keep one busy for hours. Every time we walked through the main square we ended up with new pictures on our phones.

This was one of the main squares. I don't think we were able to pass through without taking a picture.

The other thing that detracts from the ancient town feel is the sheer number of people. There were generally a lot of people in the town but the worst of it was along the main pedestrian street. Despite how wide the street was, human traffic jams were common. The main culprits were tour groups. Always characterized by a woman carrying a flag and talking into a loudspeaker, she was the first indication that a group of about 30 or so people were coming up right behind her. It wouldn’t be so bad with one tour group, but along the main thoroughfare there was a near constant stream of tour groups. You could look down the street and easily spot half a dozen flags waving in the air. The people in the tour group were looking all around them and taking pictures and not paying much attention to where they were walking (understandably, there are so many great photo opportunities in Dali) and it made it hard to make our way down the street, even when we knew exactly where we needed to go.

This was on the main street with lots of pedestrian traffic.

The other interesting behavior that hardly goes unnoticed in crowded areas is the ubiquitous Chinese habit of spitting. I’m not joking. Hawking and spitting is just something that people do as commonly as we might blow our noses. You are never far from the sound of someone clearing their throat and spitting to the ground. This isn’t just something that old men do. Everyone does this. As we were walking down the street trying to avoid the people, we were also trying to avoid the projectile phlegm. People are courteous enough to not do this in your direction, but I was always afraid of walking past someone too fast and he or she not realizing I was there and inadvertently getting spit on my shoes. It never happened, but I was always worried about it.

One of the city wall gates.

And with all the people comes a lot of noise. The voices emanating from the tour group loudspeakers would overlap one another. And on top of all that was the favorite advertisement method of small stores: more loudspeakers. Everything from small stores, to intercity minivans, to the produce section of grocery stores all had their own vocal advertisements. Someone would record a short advertisement message into a loudspeaker, set the speaker down on a table or hang it from a tree, and set it to continually repeat their announcement at deafening audio levels. Walking down particularly active streets felt like an assault on your eardrums.

This was a street fair of sorts just outside the city walls. Lots of activity and lots of noise... thanks to all the loudspeaker advertisements.

Despite our disenchantment with Dali Old Town, Dali still had some pleasant surprises for us. Our trip to the Three Pagodas was very memorable. We almost didn’t go because our guidebook didn’t give it the best review, but we quickly learned to not trust much of the tourist information we got because information always seemed to be out of date. It’s so hard to get reliable tourist information in China because things change so fast. What used to be a 6-hour bus ride a year ago is now a 1-hour high speed train ride and what used to be a taxi ride across the city is now a few stops on a newly built subway. In the case of the Three Pagodas, an enormous temple complex was built behind the pagodas and opened just last year. The temple complex was so huge that it took us a good half day to explore the whole site.

The Three Pagodas. The central pagoda is quite large. You can see Travis walking up to it.

Looking back at the Three Pagodas and out towards Erhai Lake. 

The main attractions were the three pagodas themselves. The largest pagoda stood in the center and was flanked by two smaller ones behind it to the right and left. The main pagoda was built in the 800s (yes, 800s, not 1800s) with the other two built around one hundred years later, but all are still standing today, 1200 years after their construction. Even with an earthquake that nearly completely leveled the city of Dali in 1925, the pagodas remained standing. There was a very peaceful park at the base of the pagodas with benches and trees and discretely placed speakers quietly playing relaxing Buddhist music. Behind the pagodas were half a dozen Buddhist temples that were built on the hillside leading up to the mountains. Many of the temples had top floor balconies where you could look out over all of Dali and Erhai Lake. The scenery was spectacular.

One of the many buildings at the Buddhist temple complex.


The other highlight was a pair of two large temple halls filled with gold statues of Buddhist monks. Every statue was unique. Some were very serious while others were quite comical. There were statues of monks laughing and smiling brightly, playing musical instruments, or holding important objects, and they all looked frozen in time. Some were riding on top of turtles or dragons and other had extraordinarily long arms or legs that gave them an appearance more of a superhero than a monk. It was almost creepy because you half expected them to start moving or talking to you. We spent a long time wandering around the halls looking at each and every one of them.

From one of the temple balconies.

Golden monk statues.

Someone is going to have to explain this one to me. His arm is stretched up almost to the ceiling. Perhaps a superhero monk?

While Dali Old Town wasn’t what we expected it to be, it was still an interesting experience. It was worth visiting for the Three Pagodas alone. Although I suppose if you know what you’re getting into (not an ancient town and more of an outdoor theme mall) then it could be a very pleasant experience. The funny thing was that our guidebook hardly even mentioned Dali because the most popular tourist destination in Yunnan province was another ancient town called Lijiang, where we were headed next. So, if Dali was this crowded and yet hardly made mention in our book, what on earth was Lijiang going to be like?

Comments

  1. I was sent your blog by our mutual friend Kyle Wagaman. I have lived in China for the past 4 years and can attest to much of what you have observed. Be glad you didn't get them blowing snot rockets because they will do that everywhere too. The tour groups is how most Chinese people travel. Tourism is really a newer concept for them. They will not explore or do anything alone. The lack of authentic buildings is also true for the whole country. They realized they must preserve things far too late, plus many things were destroyed during the revolution.

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    1. Hi Chris, that's very cool that you found us. We hope to meet up with Kyle and Lauren during our time in Europe. I wish we had known you were in China and we would have offered to meet up for dinner if our paths crossed. I would have liked to hear what your 4 years living there have been like. Our blog is pretty much perpetually out of date and we're always trying to catch up so we're actually in Georgia right now and headed to Europe next, but we were in China roughly from the beginning of April to the beginning of June. It was quite the trip! I'm glad to know you've had similar experiences and that it wasn't just us.

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