Day two in Lijiang involved a hangover. A nasty one. I cured it with plenty of water, a wander round town and some stir-fried potatoes. Lunch was eaten in a little cafe that had the most amusing menu I have ever seen. I was already chuckling away at the names of several dishes when I came upon the final and most unbelievable item on the menu. It was (and this is deadly serious) 'Fuck the plum to boil the fish'.NO joke. I took photos, but they didn't really come out. Now, forgive me for not ordering this and settling for fried rice instead, but I just didn't want to tempt fate.
I'll leave you to speculate...
So, after all this I walked down to Dragon Pool Park - a series of pools set within a park containing a couple of temples and a spectacular view of the Jade Snow Dragon mountain behind. Pretty cool. I bumped into Grey and James again here and we decided to go for a walk. We just headed towards the mountain and when the road ended we just kept going along paths beside fields. It paid off as we came to a beautiful reservoir and a new housing project with obligatory mountain photo opportunities.
Later on that evening we went to a concert by a traditional Naxi orchestra. The Naxi people are the local minority group in Lijiang and have their own heiroglyphic writing system. They're a matriarchal society where the women do literally everything while the men all sit at home, eat, drink and play mahjong (sounds like the guys have got it down!). The orchestra is made up of about 20 Naxi and is almost unique in China for playing ancient Chinese music on original instruments. Speaking of ancient and original, most of the members are knocking on a bit. The eldest guy there is 86 and it really is remarkable that they're still performing almost daily. There aren't too many of these instruments surviving in China these days. These only survived the Cultural Revolution, when music was effectively banned, by being buried until happier times returned. A few of the players created their instruments themselves, one, the Sugudu, is related to a long-gone 2000 year-old Persian instrument while another is 100% unique in the world. There is no human conductor. Instead the 'conductor' is an assembly of about 10 mini-gongs, each of which is periodically struck and to which the other musicians time their performances. I have no idea how this actually works. To my western ears it didn't sound like it did at all, but then, what do I know of Chinese classical music? I can't say that I'm gonna clear off my Ipod and replace it all with this, but it was certainly different and a worthwhile experience.
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