Lijiang

Lijiang old town is beautiful! It is full of charm, character, old buildings, cobbled streets, canals, bridges, old and new parts of life (hand-making silk scarves to wifi cafes!)….it is the perfect quintessential Chinese town. But with that comes lots and lots of Chinese tourists and to make things worse the week that we were there also coincided with the national holiday, so even more people were there! Although, no matter how many people you have to fight through on the small little lanes the place is worthwhile.
We spent a few days just wandering the streets and soaking it all up, and eating a lot of it up too – they have hundreds of little street vendors selling anything from roast potato’s and tofu to fried dragonflys and grubbs (gave the later 2 a miss though!). The Chinese holiday was to celebrate 60 years of The People’s Party in China and on the morning of the actual main celebrations the streets were empty – everyone was inside watching the celebrations live from Beijing on the TV and just like the Olympic ceremony they put on a good show! We tuned in along with some Chinese people in the hostel we were staying at and it was a parade that went something like this….Important looking people marching round Tiananmen square, followed by children in different colours to spell out something when viewed from above, traditionally dressed people from different minorities followed, then here comes the army marching only like the army can, oooohhh here comes the thermo-nuculear war heads, missiles and tanks, and it’s back to small children dancing! The whole parade was put to music and the whole hostel sang along with every word. We asked what it would be like being in Beijing and they said there was no point as no-one was actually allowed anywhere near Tiananmen and 6,000 extra police had been brought in to make sure no-one tried! The fun of a people’s republic celebration. Our final night in China was yet another celebration day, the Mid-Autumn Moon celebrations, we decided to escape the mayhem of the streets below and head up the hill behind town to a little bar we’d spotted the day before. When we got there we ordered our beer, which we sipped whilst overlooking the town before the owner came over and started to ply us with rice wine, mooncake (the celebration festival cake) and roasted chesnuts – it was fantastic!