30th December: Dali, China
We had a lovely chill-out morning at the hotel before venturing off to find some food. Kaja had seen there might be a veggie café/shop about half an hour walk north. We crossed the death-trap main road and took the back streets, through an endless market of sugar cane and fruit. It wasn’t easy to get to on foot, but this place was amazing! It turned out to be a whole courtyard area of community run sustainable enterprises.
We ate at a Buddhist communal café where you helped yourself to as much tomato noodles, mushroom and yam casserole, baked sweet potatoes, fresh fruit, and as many glasses of fresh smoothies as you liked all for around £4 each. Suitably full of healthy goodness, we wandered on around the courtyard past allotments, ceramics workshops, and coffee roasters. We couldn’t resist a tiramisu style cake, and an espresso brewed from Dali-grown coffee. The entire complex runs on an ethos of “healthy life zen” and is entirely vegan and free of highly processed foods. Most, if not all, of the produce is hyper-local and organic. Many customers were monks. It was a fantastically inspirational and truly sustainable place, in every sense.
Not wanting to pay the extortionate entry fee for the Three Pagodas site, we walked around the community and area surrounding it. This turned out to be lovely and the views were almost as good. We passed small mahjong clubs full of older people playing in the early afternoon. We also stopped to chat with the manager of a Bai tie-dye workshop who showed us some of the amazing patterns. The colours apparently come from natural dyes such as radish, walnut peel, pomegranate peel, and various leaves.
After wandering a decent distance up the hill along the edge of the huge site, Kaja went back down and I carried on up a pathway. I think the top section of the walled off 3km long area is a series of temples, but I never got high enough up the mountain to find out. Firstly, I got jump-scared by a motion sensor speaker in a bush, although I think this was telling me about the fire risk. Then, the path turned into an eerie route with 3-metre-high concrete posts connected by barbed wire on both sides and signs saying keep out – again, I translated and read these as that I was OK on the path but couldn’t cross the fence – a moat and then a high wall. Finally, three security guards in uniform jumped out of a booth and told me that I wasn’t allowed to go any further. I’m convinced there’s a viewpoint at the top from where I could’ve seen the Three Pagodas in front of Lake Erhai but it very much seems like somebody doesn’t want people going there. Perhaps it’s not a temple after all!
Wandering back down, there were more great views of the Three Pagodas. I met Kaja about halfway down the hill and she’d had a much more productive time. On this road, almost every restaurant happened to be vegan and seemed like really cool places too! So, it was a temple?! A lot of Bai people are still practicing Buddhists, so cruelty free food options are important.
We took a bit of a stroll down to the front of the Three Pagodas to work up more of an appetite. From here, the ancient light-coloured towers were sat in front of the dark green Changshan. The pagodas themselves are incredibly impressive and a rare truly ancient site in China which survived the Cultural Revolution relatively unscathed. The 1,800-year-old buildings, still stand proud, the tallest at 70 metres. Back up the hill, we chose a mushroom hotpot restaurant for dinner as we really wanted to try this before leaving Yunnan. Again, this was around £4 each for anything you wanted. We both took a local wild mushroom broth which was heated on individual ceramic plates in front of each seat. You could then take your choice of any of the items on the conveyor around the room to cook in your own personal pot. We mainly plumped for the many types of incredible mushrooms, tofu, and various greens. As is often the case you could also make your own dip from fresh parsley, sesame paste, fermented bean curd, peanuts, chillies, soy sauce, vinegars, and oils. The drinks were awesome too, including a fiery gingery version of my favourite pear and jujube compote. A top food day!
