From Dali we took a bus four hours to LiJiang. Such beautiful scenery. It's mostly all farmland and everywhere people are working in the fields. As we got closer to LiJiang, the farmland changed from muddy fields being planted to fields with dried mature rice being harvested.

The villages we passed all had the same architecture as Dali: the gray tile roofs curving up to the sky at the ends, white plaster walls with the blue flower up at the point and scenes painted on the walls. As we got closer to LiJiang I started to notice some sort of animal sculpture in the middle of almost every roof. I thought it was a lion or some sort of cat. It was blackish gray like the roof tiles. I found out that it is a mythical monster that wards off evil and brings good luck.

LiJiang is a big modern town 7800 feet up in the mountains. When we arrived at the bus station, Dad called our contact and she came and picked us up. He told her as she drove us to our guest house what we were interested in seeing and we arranged to go the next day. We parked in a lot at the edge of the old town because cars can't go inside. We walked down narrow stone streets made of a local stone called five-colored stone in square blocks worn smooth, sometimes very slippery. We were winding around sure to get lost, went the wrong way, but we found the guest house owner who was looking for us and brought us back down the narrow streets across a bridge over a little canal to his wonderful guest house.

This one was even nicer than the one in Dali. It's built around a huge courtyard with inlaid stone with flower and bat designs for the floor and filled with potted trees and flowers. Songbirds in little cages hung throughout the courtyard and filled it with the most wonderful music. There was bamboo furniture all around, so you could just sit and enjoy. All the rooms had windows that slid open, so it felt like you were out enjoying the courtyard even in your bed. We walked around the old town, which is another tourist mecca, even beyond what we saw at Dali. But it was beautiful just the same. I think it's known as the Venice of China because it has canals running all through the lower parts.

It also goes up a hill, so there are very steep streets and panoramic views overlooking the gray tile roofs stretching out and in the distance the mountain range called Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, a huge snow covered peak. It's a big climbing destination. We finally saw our first foreign tourists. LiJiang was crawling with them. It has definitely been discovered. The streets were filled with shops selling a lot of stuff we had seen at Dali, the batik and tye die in particular, but also tons of silver jewelry, fur pelts and leather bags. In Dali we never saw people actually making any of the crafts, but in LiJiang every shop had somebody making what they were selling, making wood carvings, jewelry, embroidery.

In 1996 there was a 7. earthquake that destroyed the old town, but you really wouldn't know it now. Most of it is completely restored and looks as if it has been there for hundreds of years. Up the hill I saw a lot of reconstruction. You could see that they are using the old traditional methods, even having women carry the rubble up the hill in big baskets strapped to their foreheads up the hill to a trash pile an back down the hill for more. All the old gray tiles are made new. It's interesting to see a place that values it's history, that benefits from it with massive tourism, while in Beijing they can't wait to tear it down, rather than restore it. It's a different world. Along the canals are cafes, one after another, all with red lanterns hanging in front. And willow trees. It is so peaceful, even with thousands of tourists filling the streets.

Xue Gao Cun

So the next morning, bright and early we had a traditional breakfast of onion sort of pancakes, like a fried bread, but the most flaky pastry like phyllo on the outside and more dense and moist on the inside. Delicious. And tea eggs, which are hard boiled in tea which turns them brown. We met our guide who first took us to this little village of Naxi people at the base of the mountain. They are the main ethnic minority in LiJiang. We parked in a square filled with mules and local men and women waiting for tourists to come and hire them to take them up the mountain. The streets were mostly dirt, the houses were made of mud bricks and wood with the gray tile roofs and monster on top. The houses were all built around a courtyard and really beautiful, but nothing fancy. Lots of dogs running around, a bull or horse tied up outside, or a mule inside, chickens running around, sometimes a cat.

We went to the main attraction in the town, the former residence of Dr. Francis Rock, a famous botanist who spent almost 30 years studying the local flora and the Naxi people, translating their pictographic writings and studying their customs. They are Dong ba, which is a local Tibetan Buddhist sect. While we were walking around some children waved to me from their yard, which was like a little farm with chickens and a mule. They were playing in and old truck. I took some pictures of them and then this old guy came up and indicated something which seemed to mean he wanted me to take his picture. He took me in his little house and showed me a picture of himself in a costume smoking a big pipe. Then he showed me a picture of Dr. Rock. I guess he knew him. So he started putting on his costume. My Dad came over to see what was going on and started talking to the man. It turned out he's the local high priest.What a wonderful place. And what an incredible setting. Every house with a view of this magnificent mountain.

Dong Ba Shen Yuan

Then we went to this place called 10,000 spirit garden which is this big meadow at the base of the mountain filled with wooden totems carved by the Naxi people over the last few hundred years. Each one different from the last, all spread around this vast mountainside and in the center a carving on the ground stretching about 300 feet with the 18 levels of hell, the gates to hell and then the levels of human existence and then the spiritual realm, all carved and painted, these wild looking frightening creatures and gods, flowers, all part of the Dong ba religious ritual. About half of it was brightly painted, the rest faded. There is one man who paints it and it takes him a year to paint the whole thing, so he was just half way through. Then we went to another section with a big brass wheel with a frog in the middle and the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac around the edges. They worship the frog in the Dong ba religion. There was a handle next to each animal and you are supposed to hold the handle next to your animal and walk clockwise a full turn to have a good year.

Next we came to an area filled with pine trees covered in prayer flags and windchimes all blowing in the pretty strong breeze. Then stairs going up to this platform with a huge golden Buddha flanked by two demons holding swords. The snowcapped mountain behind surrounded by clouds making it all even more dramatic.

We were led into a temple where monks were waiting and we were introduced to one who was said to be a living Buddha. They said it's only the second time since the earthquake in 1996 which had destroyed this place, that he's come here to see people. He invited us to sit in front of him on two little stools. He took my father's hand and started talking to him in a very distinct, definite, clear way. I, of course, had no idea what he was saying, just sat there taking in all of it. The wind outside, the windchimes ringing, the smell of the incense burning. Finally he snapped his fingers to an underling who brought over a red prayer flag with a yellow border covered with Tibetan writing. My Dad told me the priest was going to write my Dad's name on 13 flags so he would have good luck for the year. We got up to go and then, well you didn't have to speak Chinese to understand the rest. My Dad had his hands upturned, "Mayo, mayo." Which means something like "don't have." We left and he told me the guy asked him for 100 yuan for each flag!

As we were walking back down the hill, I asked what else the guy had been saying. He said that he told him he would have an accident in September, a fall and he might break his leg. Not more than 2 minutes later, my Dad slipped off the path and took a tumble into the brush. We helped him up, got him on his feet, he said he was okay, but later on back in our room, he showed me his ankle. Completely swollen, black and blue.