If you happened to view “99 bottles…” between yesterday when I posted it and now, you read a mistake I corrected. I called those people in the village north of Lijiang, Dai. They weren’t Dai; they were Naxi. The Naxi are interesting. They are one of the few matrilineal societied on Earth, certainly one of the biggest, with a few hundred thousand of them. The women really do run the show. They are in charge of everything, names and wealth is passed through their line, the works. There are Dai around, and the farther south you go, the more there are. the Dai are the largest group in Dali. The Dai actually had a kingdom a thousand years ago, stretching from southern Yunnan through Northern Burma, Laos and Thailand. Here’s a Dai lady in Dali.
Lonely Planet thinks Dali isn’t as “good” as it was when it was the last stop before going into the Yunnan hinterland. I beg to differ. It’s actually fairly normal, with a sort of kitchy old town, but it’s regular too. And it becomes real regular real fast if you walk out of that area. It’s along the banks of a rather indistinct lake. We wandered around town and out in the fields. It was nice. Here are a couple photos of the older part.
I wanted to post these yesterday but ran out of time. Last night we took the night sleeper bus (Sleep?! Yeah right) to Jinghong, the principle city of Xishuangbanna in the south of Yunnan. The Mekong River runs through here just before forming the Lao/Myanmar border, then Thai/Lao border.
We’re a little bushed. Myung wanted to go buy some tea, so I’m hanging out here in this internet place. The deal in this area is to look at the minority peoples. There are about a dozen or so tribes around here. There are even Lahu. The medic who helped me so much in Maung Na was Lahu, and I stayed in the Lahu village near Maung Na. We don’t have an exact plan yet. We’ll have to do the usual weighting fo desire versus feasibility. I’ll try to blog whe I get some photos and have had a look around.
I really don’t know what Myung is doing by this pole. She isn’t a boy, so it can’t be THAT.
