And yet another day in Dali

We woke this morning with the realization that we had one more day in this exciting town. We stretched out our breakfast at the Sunshine Café as long as we could To make the day seem at least quasi-interesting, we decided to take a cable car to the monastery on the mountainside. We took a 4-yuan horse and carriage ride to the chair life with a wild driver. John was making strange noises (bombing sounds) and weird faces and the driver seemed to love it. We took pity on the poor horse and got off half way up the hill to the chairlift. The Chinese families didn’t seem to have the same concern for their horses. We saw families of 7 in one carriage riding up the hill while the horse stumbled and strained. China is truly an animal lovers nightmare.
The chairlift took a full 23 minutes to get to the top. It was the slowest chairlift ever. We amused ourselves by saying Ne- Hao (Hello in Chinese) to all the Chinese tourists going down. At the top, the so- called monastery was a Disney-esque creation, obviously re-built after the Cultural Revolution.

The panorama of the city was beautiful and the viewing platform was filled with …what else- Chinese tourists and families- eating. The Chinese seem to spend most of their days eating noodles (or fruit or sunflower seeds) and in between bites, chattering to their friends. Whether they’re sitting around or playing mah-jongg they’re always talking. They are some of the most social people we’ve ever seen.

We walked around a bit. At each level of the monastery, there were more little stalls filled with bowls of vegetables and fruit and cages of chickens, rabbits, and pigeons. We watched “lunch” being prepared- some kind of recently killed bird being washed and cleaned while his buddies in the nearby cage looked on.
We took the slow chairlift back down (watching the X-er’s going up saddled with their bicycles).

China road scene--Dinner!

Once again, we had some sitting around time. This time we were approached by a local English teacher with 6 of his students. The students get very little chance to practice speaking their English so he takes them in small field trips to talk with tourists. They were 16 years old and extremely shy. They each had a rehearsed speech about themselves and then he tried to force them to ask and answer questions. They had quite a good grasp of English and evidently do quite well with writing/reading but are very fearful of making a mistake when they speak. John told them that my Chinese name was “Emei” or “goose”.
After an hour or so, we escaped from the students and did some more people watching. We stuck up a conversation with a local tout with great self-taught English. He told us about the “massage chickies” and the beauty parlor fronts for prostitution rings.
Our last night of Shepherd’s Pie and white wine. It was definitely time to leave Dali.

Our favorite sign at Cafe de Jack: