Day By Day

Saturday, July 09, 2011

Return to China -- Part 26, the Naxi Village

Our next destination was Baisha Village, one of the oldest settlements in the Lijiang area and formerly the capital of the Naxi Kingdom. Not a lot has changed here over the course of the past few centuries and it shows in the houses and public works. 




Baisha is home to a famous set of murals and we were able to see them. Unfortunately the small temple in which they were displayed was quite dark, too dim for non-flash photography, and I was told that flash photography was not allowed under any circumstances. So, I don’t have any pictures of them, but the surrounding buildings and grounds were quite pretty. Searching on the internet I found that several people in the past have taken pictures of the murals we saw. Here’s a link to some of them.


"You are Welcome Here" the sign proclaims, and so we were. This is where we ate lunch -- a lovely, picturesque little restaurant. The food (Sino-Tibetan cuisine) was delicious, the staff was fluent in English, and we enjoyed our time there. I discovered that I really liked yak meat.


Afterward we walked through the narrow streets, being careful to watch where we put our feet to avoid stepping in the ubiquitous yak droppings. Our local guide, seen here, stopped along the way to explain where we were going and what we were going to see. 



And where were we going? Why, to an "embroidery school" -- yet another shopping opportunity. Here we see some of the "students" toiling away at intricate pieces of art. The pictures on the wall are not embroidery. They are Naxi hieroglyphs. I was told that I could take pictures of anything except the embroidery products so, once again I put my camera away.






 I wish I knew what kind of tree this is.


Here's a wider view. The legs in the middle of the picture belong to Mike, one of the members of our group.



Doors and courtyards. And so it went. Eventually we again got on our bus and headed west into the really high country.

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