One of the main reasons for coming to Lijiang was to hike the Tiger Leaping Gorge. Unlike the Grand Canyon, it's not clear exactly how the gorge got its name, but Jamie and I were satisfied with the explanations we came up with and decided not to ask anyone for the actual story. The day began with a 2-hour taxi ride from the old city to the base of the first mountain. Two paths diverged in a gorge, and we, we chose to hike the higher trail. The harder trail, naturally. I had my little 2-pound daypack (camera, journal, sunglasses) and Jamie had the 30-pound backpack with our clothes, water, food, and, of course, the slingshot I had bought. Just in case. I offered to switch packs, but it was the kind of offer where you know that the person is gonna respond, “No, it's fine. Don't worry about it,” but then you can still say later that you did in fact offer. The TLG (sounds like a rapper) is one of nature's incredible accomplishments – mountains 12,000 feet high, mostly sheer rock, divided by the Yangtze River down below. It's like a pineapple being split by a piece of floss. The scenery at first reminded me of Sapa, in North Vietnam: vast green hills, villages tucked into the landscape, hill tribe people, a defined path. But when the green hills turned into rock cliffs, the villages disappeared, the people were replaced by herds of goats, and the path became less and less distinguishable from a landslide – I knew I was in China. In a word: gorges. (I had to, it's just too easy.) The original plan was to hike 7 hours or so to a guesthouse, spend the night (hence the pack of clothes), hike a few hours more the following day, and catch a ride back to Lijiang. After a strenuous 15-mile trek, however, we decided that there wouldn't be tons of new scenery to see and that it'd be nice to spend the night in a reliable place. We took the next path down to the main road, then hitchhiked to where we got on a bus to where we took a taxi to where we could walk to the Tea Horse Family Guesthouse. Total hiking time: 6 hours and 6 minutes. (Does riding in a public bus in China count as smoking? We went from pure mountain air to cigarette central. It's as if the people on the bus felt that at least 10 cigarettes should be lit at all times.) We got back to Lijiang (no leeches!) and walked the streets, puffy red lanterns glowing outside of every store. I met this extremely talented artist who does portraits/caricatures out of wood, on shirts, from clay, etc. I fell in love with his unique style and had him do one of me on a small slab of wood. It's awesome. I'm thinking it would look great where my brother's high school graduation picture currently hangs in the living room. I hung out with the artist, Tom Shi, and his wife for a while in their tiny workshop, shouting to people as they passed by, “Lai, lai, kan yi xia!” Meaning, “Come in, come in, take a look!” Once people recovered from their shock of seeing a white boy speak to them in Chinese, they actually wandered into the store and occasionally commissioned something. Tom Shi offered to return the favor by doing a portrait for me of Zhang Ziyi, my favorite Chinese actress/future wife. What Asian fetish?

This entry was posted on Monday, September 26th, 2005 at 3:54 am in IV. China. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.