Dali

We are coming to the end of our 10-day tour and they have saved the best for last - the peaceful, quiet town of Dali.  In a beautiful location up against a mountain (on the other side is Tibet), the sky is blue, the water clear. Their produce is grown organically and they've prohibited any fast-food restaurants. The Chong Sheng Temple site was the largest, best preserved, and cleanest of any in China.

with reflecting pond

The Three Pagodas site is at the bottom of the hill and you climb to each progressive level. (We took a cart to the top and walked down so we'd have time to see everything.)






Just a sampling of the many beautiful temples:

In this last and tallest temple was this female Buddha, which stands in the center.

She stands four stories high

 Here is the view from the top:

There are something like 11,000 Buddhas at this site and such a wild range of styles. Here is just a sampling:

Wow! Wonder what the story for this one is!

I love the faces of these - Buddha, the teacher:

And then there were the warrior, protector guys:

And to finish up, just a sampling of the beautiful, peaceful landscaping:

Lijiang

Some of the sights down Foreigners Street (Paying Customers Welcome):

   Beautiful handicrafts!

Does this look like China, or what?

   

This is one of the cleanest places we've seen on our trip - Fresh air, clear water, 

clean streets, tidy gardens.

Reminded me of Cove Fort

Water flowing thru town

Crystal clear water

 

Lijiang

I love walking down the tiny streets of these ancient villages, peering in through ornate gates and doorways, and seeing into the lives of these people.

 It's also fun to people watch.

What a great old truck!

pig's head, anyone?

Villages

Early one morning we walked around a small lake called Black Dragon Pool and enjoyed the picturesque walkways past  temples and pagodas. This walk was so beautiful in winter; can't imagine how breathtaking it would be in spring/summer!

Next we traveled to a small village of the Naxi people, called Shuhe. Here is the alphabet of their language painted on the wall at the entrance to the village.

We heard the women are in charge here. That seems to mean that they do all the work, from growing the food, to cooking, to hauling and laying bricks, and so on and so forth. Here's the women:

drilling

washing clothes

scraping the skins

chopping

cleaning

even the old women were working

And here's the men:

 We were lucky to come across a young couple getting their wedding pictures taken:

Later we  realized that all the food preparations we had seen were for the wedding feast. Soon the whole community started gravitating to an open courtyard for a celebration. They let us know we were not invited!

Doesn't this old gentleman look like a pillar of the community?He's on his way to the wedding feast.

More in the next blog...