BY Clay Larroy
It doesn't matter if you take a trip
across the state line or the border, being far from home can be exciting and
also a bit stressful. When considering traveling, it is important to think of
the best mode of travel. Traveling by car can offer many more
sights and opportunities for side trips. Traveling by train can offer a chance
to relax and get some work done if they wanted. Planes can cover ground fast
but don't allow much movement and one cannot get off the plane in flight. Each
mode of travel has its own advantages and disadvantages to be considered. When you want to plan a vacation contact me!
Lijiang, “China a Disappearing Culture”
By
Steve Tauschke
‘I am old and ugly - why do you want a picture of me?’
asks the grizzled village elder, shaking his weather-worn head in bemusement.
Dressed in simple village attire - loose cotton pants
and 1950s Mao jacket - and clutching a silver angel-hair tobacco pipe matching
his wispy grey beard, this handsome octogenarian in many ways typifies China’s
humble beauty.
I am in Baisha, a small town in the country’s remote
southwest province of Yunnan where, in stark contrast to much of rapidly modernizing
China, the ageless reign. Here, old is good, old is beautiful, old is something
to be treasured.
Baisha constitutes part of the famous three-town
cluster of Lijiang, the historic well-preserved prefecture that sits beneath
the lofty Jade Dragon Snow mountains, not far from the mythical Tiger Leaping
Gorge. Within easy reach of the fabled Shangri La region, immortalized in James
Hilton’s 1933 novel The Lost Horizon, Lijiang is said to be a town
left behind by fairies, born a millennia ago when the nomadic Naxi (pronounced
Nashi) minority people crossed over from the Tibetan plateau, trading in their
long-distance yak caravans for a pastoral lifestyle on the surrounding fertile
valley.
Today, Baisha remains a Naxi stronghold, a place
virtually unchanged since the 11th century. With my guide Gou, we explore its
dusty streets, catching a rare glimpse of primitive rural China; chickens
scratch in the dirt, mahjong tiles clack, women in doorways wash their hair
from wooden buckets.
The town’s time-locked culture makes it a living
museum enjoyed by a growing number of domestic and overseas tourists, many
fascinated by the Naxi’s unique lifestyle. Almost half of China’s 60 recognized
ethnic minority groups reside in Yunnan province, each with their own colorful
history and tradition. The Naxi are no different.
Until recently, this 250,000-strong nationality
remained one of the world’s last free and open matriarchal societies whereby women-controlled
family affairs, organized market activity and indulged in taking multiple
lovers, an ancient ritual known as the zouhun, or ‘walking marriage’
system. Gou says despite the recent outlawing of such customs, largely due to
the Chinese government’s crackdown on adultery and polyandry, Naxi women remain
respected and independent.
Resplendent in traditional dress, trousers, aprons and
caps in various shades of blue, Naxi women also wear crisscross strapped goat
skin capes embroidered with seven circular patches said to symbolize the stars
of the Big Dipper constellation under which they toil. Not surprisingly, Naxi
women constitute the bulk of the workforce.
Naxi men, on the other hand, are left to drink, paint
and ponder their place in life, and some male elders are renown calligraphers
and musicians, performing regularly in various classical orchestras throughout
the Lijiang area. Remnants of an earlier era, these unabridged musical
collectives were originally founded in the 1200’s under Kublai Khan’s patronage
and remain famous for their ‘three olds’; old men (few players are under 80
years of age), old instruments and old songs.
Banned during the Cultural Revolution, many musicians
concealed their instruments by burying them underground. These days, aided by
public donations, Baisha’s local orchestra conducts daily roadside
performances, its poker-faced, silk-robed members re-creating with solemn
simplicity folk-based compositions from the Song Dynasty that marry ancient
Torch music with Confucian ceremony.
Also held in high esteem in this part of the world is
Dr. Shixiu Ho, Baisha’s spritely 82-year-old Naxi herbalist and Tao physician
whose Lijiang Jade Dragon Snow Mountain Chinese Herbal Medicine Clinic has
gained significant notoriety in the region since it opened in 1985. The
diminutive Dr. Ho, a spectacle of herbal wisdom in his white laboratory coat
and fu beard, counts himself as a natural healer and acupuncturist, having
purportedly treated more than 300,000 patients world-wide suffering such
ailments as diabetes, cancer, bronchitis using wild herbs and roots collected
from the nearby hills.
‘To treat a disease is like fighting fire,’ he is
quoted in one of the many newspaper articles written on him.
Ironically, it was his own potentially fatal illness
in his 20s that led Dr. Ho to return to Jade Dragon Snow Mountains to
investigate medicinal herbs. After a decade of study, including his father’s
secret botanical recipes, he eventually cured himself, earning his doctor’s
stripes along the way. An unashamed self-promoter, Dr. Ho claims he was ‘discovered’
in the mid-1980s by the English travel writer Bruce Chatwin who wrote of him in
the New York Times following one of the author’s forays
through China.
‘He died in 1989,’ he laments, pouring me a bitter
herbal concoction. ‘I was very sad.’
The multi-lingual Dr Ho has since become an
international celebrity of sorts, hosting diplomats, dignitaries, surgeons and
television personalities, including self-styled nomad Michael Palin and
comedian John Cleese, the latter offering the parting quip: ‘Nice bloke, crap
tea!’
REFERENCE SITES:
http://www.travelresearchonline.com/
“Its important to be comfortable with
uncertainty.”
―
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