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Arrival in Lijiang (?) Early in the morning, still in Yunnan (云南). The landing plane is impressive. Lijiang (?) Is a city surrounded by mountains, so the plane was facing winds swirl and maneuvering space is rather limited ... Then a bus took us to town, and it was delivered directly into the old city to find a hotel.

Here is the view from the hotel ... great view, pleasant room to hope, shower and toilet inside, large TV with DVD player, 8 € per night! Hard to find a better money ... Lijiang concentrates a majority of craft souvenir gifts, here's one. The specialty is the manufacture of small bells, but sorry, there's po toff .


Lijiang is the capital of the Naxi minority. Naxi are nicknamed the "water people" because water is ubiquitous in the city, it composed a large network of small rivers. The people are predominantly composed of women who perform the most important tasks, which is a good thing, is not it ? Besides, we often see people screw around and play mah-jongg while women are still with baskets on their heads or doing the laundry in their small stream ... This people has its own language, his own writing (close to the ancient Chinese script, which resembles small drawings), and its own religion (the Dongba).

The city is super nice, we found only traditional houses, everything is decorated, well kept, super clean, and very flowery. The kind of place where you feel good and we did not want to leave. It was therefore decided to stay 3 days ... half the trip!


There will be ample time to visit Lijiang later because the hotel is right in there! So we rented bikes and we started the adventure ... to an older village. On the road, a small Chinese a decade we docked, he insisted we just took the old village. I thought I could find the road with my feline instinct, but Wei has not (yet) trust in my abilities truffiaires preferred it with us ... unless the reason is that the old boy living in this village, she wanted to try everything to get himself invited to her house for tea !


After 1 hour of cycling, we arrived at destination. It turns out that the old village has been well restored for tourists, so it's almost as cute as Lijiang. The small Chinese guide is on the left picture ... it would be very proud to be on the net, already he could see nothing of that on the digital ! A typical home side a corner.


Wishing a little more discovery and encounters of the 3rd kind, after a short walk through the village, we took a path to another, slightly more stashed in the heights of the mountain.

We crossed a river with, we got to almost excalader barbed wire, everything that's po my fault, I wanted to take a path that seemed to go to a village apple, and Wei showed me another route that ended in the undergrowth ... So we came out all but a scrub anyway managed to reach the village . I'll just believe in an old village Pyréenées, with Chinese and more ... and also large houses where large families live. We visited most of the village, but I dared not take a picture, since 3 generations who watched us (well mostly me and my blond "dazzling" moahah ).


It was nice to see an old village lost its farmers who work small children playing with all that train women who are all together along the creek, one for washing, the other to clean the rice, vegetables, or I am not sure what other (I had the impression of seeing stones ...). Many animals also oxen, roosters, chickens (he looks good in the form of the above anyway !)...


On the back we could admire the sunset in local cycling. Arriving in Lijiang, we visit a traditional Naxi concert. This music has kept all its original appearance, and yet they date from the 13th century! Some people even say that the songs played are "living fossil of Chinese music" ... and one could say the same for musicians ... In fact, there is a large majority of very elderly musicians, but there was anyway a young-among them (although it should run after all). I could define the music that was played as ... haunting, very rhythmic sounds completely unusual but amazing ... Briefly, for a musician today (like me, a great guitarist to the eternal ) Is a good time to delight in the beginning, after it becomes a bit repetitive and there is much less discovery. That said, it's definitely worth going there to vibrate the eardrums and the same opportunity to make a small jump in the past.