Fiction aside, Dali has had a long history. The Nanzhao kingdom was founded here in the 8th century. Allied with the Chinese (the Tang dynasty), it dominated much territory in Yunnan and today's Myanmar and prospered for several hundred years. The Nanzhao later became the smaller Dali Kingdom before being defeated by Kublai Khan.

After a night on the train, we woke up to a misty morning in the green countryside. Passing terraces of rice fields and white washed villages, we arrived in Dali station in pouring rain. An enterprising taxi driver awaited us at the exit, umbrella in hand. We drove through the newer part of Dali -- it is actually a separate city called Xiaguan -- and onto the older country road, as suggested by our driver, who turned out to be quite a talker and tour guide. He pointed out the marble rocks lying by the roadside, and told us that garlic was a major Dali crop. Then he explained the four famous Dali scenes and their respective stories: the wind in Xiaguan; the flower in Shangguan, an ancient Camellia tree that used to produce many special flowers but no longer blossomed after some stupid act by the locals some hundred years ago; the snow on Mount Cangshan; and the moon on Erhai Lake. He also recommended a Dali snack called erquai, which he nicknamed "Dali hamburger". "Are you a Bai?" asked Matthew, who was curious about the local majority tribe. He was not, but he was married to one. And he proceeded to teach us a few Bai phrases (which I have unfortunately forgotten by now). Dali people are a really nice bunch, he went on to tell us. They are genuine folk who are not prone to cheating tourists. Look at the pretty green countryside, the cobble stoned streets, the neat white-washed houses...Dali people are at harmony with their environment, he said. You might find this a paradise.

We arrived at our hotel, right next door to the Three Pagodas. Located about 1 km from the old town itself, it was quiet here -- the hotel was modeled in the Tang style, with a series of buildings laid out in the gardens. There were gold fish in the ponds and the scent of osmanthus filled the air. After walking extensively the day before and a night on the train, we were happy to finally have a shower and rest a bit in our room with a window facing the shimmering lake in the distance.

It was drizzling slightly as the hotel shuttle dropped us in the middle of old town. The main tourist street, Huguo Street, is better known as "Foreigners Street" (洋人街). According to our driver this morning, in a sense it was more happening in the 1980s when backpackers discovered Dali. Back then there was no organized tourism, only backpackers, who found this a relaxing haven. The backpackers are still coming, but Dali has become a center of mainstream tourism. And the people strolling Foreigners Street and sitting in the cafes are a mix of Chinese and foreigners of varying age groups. Though most of them still seemed like individual travelers -- I did not see many color-coded tour group hats around. The "old town" does not look all that old itself, though not quite "brand new" as described by my sister. In fact most buildings were probably erected about 10 years ago, though in the traditional style. The town looked pleasant enough, and felt calm in the misty rain: a little "canal" ran along the street, carrying clear mountain water; the streets were paved with stone, clean and shiny from the wash of the rain; the little white houses with grass on the roof tops were all shops selling local specialties and tourist stuff -- tea, candied fruits, silver wares, plum wine, etc. There were also a few stands selling the local snacks: We tried one of each: erquais are pancakes made of rice flour, then stuffed with chili sauce and various fillings (meat or veggie) and heated on the grill -- it was pretty tasty; milk fans are basically fried milk on a stick, arranged like a fan and sprayed with sugar. Then we had some spicy cold chicken noodles in a small shop with a couple of low lying marble tables, run by a busy woman who was proud of her noodles. "We're famous," she told me, "many people walk a long way to have our noodles!" The noodles were delicious, and at 2 yuan (about a quarter in U.S.dollars) a bowl nobody ran the danger of breaking the bank any time soon.

The streets were not crowded, probably because of the on-and-off rain. As it started to rain heavily, we turned into a tea store which, like every tea store in the province, specializes in Pu'er tea. Tea trees actually grow in the Dali area, and it is such a touristy place, so there seemed to be even more tea stores around. The lady in the shop (who had been verified by Matthew to be a local Bai person) let us sniff various jars of tea leaves, then sat us down in front of her special tea tasting table. We chose a Pu'er black tea (in Chinese it is actually called red tea) and an osmanthus infused tea. They were duly "washed" and steeped just a little in front of us and served in tiny little clay tea cups. The teas smelled and tasted good, and the elaborate process of serving them was just as interesting. After a little bargaining, we emerged from the store with some purchases. The rain had almost stopped.

Next we wandered into a "Tibetan Cafe", where free internet was served as well as Tibetan style "butter" tea, made from yak butter and with a texture and taste more butter soup than butter tea. Meanwhile, a couple of women in traditional dress were peddling trinkets on the patio and one of them walked up to us and started demonstrating a silver hair pin on me. A couple of cups of tea and a few hair pins later, the rain had finally stopped. I had originally planned to climb up the Mountain behind the town -- Mount Cangshan, but it was already late in the afternoon -- about 5pm. Walking aimlessly down the street, I saw a poster which advertised gondola rides up the mountain. So I asked the men who were standing by the poster whether the gondola would be closed. One man replied that the gondola rides would stop at 6 and it might be a little late to go up the mountain now. What about the Erhai Lake? I asked. Would we still have time enough to tour the lake? The man thought about it, and consulted his friend. It might be a little late for that too, but we might still be able to catch a boat, although the price would be much higher now than earlier in the day. If we want to go we could take the bus to the pier. Just then the bus sped by. The other man, who seemed a more enterprising sort, suggested that they would give us a ride to the pier and help us find a ride. I was a little suspicious -- were these people trying to help us or make some big bucks off us? But it was late, the bus was gone and I wanted to see the lake, so we took the ride.

Fishing on Erhai Lake (洱海) with Cormorants

Our newly found chauffeur turned out to be a restauranteur, who ran the establishment that we were just loitering by -- the poster was on the restaurant window, apparently he also sold gondola tickets and such on the side, like every other entrepreneur in town. The "boss", as he was called by his friend, was a quiet guy, a little nervous at driving. His enterprising friend was more talkative and could speak some English as well -- he had gone to University in Kunming and majored in textile manufacturing. He mentioned he had worked in a textile factory for a few years but found the tourism industry more lucrative.

We got to the pier at the nearby village Caicun, just in time to see the last of the tour boats returning to shore. Our new guides now talked with the person who ran the tour boats -- not very inspiring looking big vessels. The boat tour had just closed, we were told, so we had to pay extra for a private tour. These boats do not look interesting, I said, I want to take a small boat, like that one over there, like a fishing boat.

So a deal was made, the man in charge will take us to a fisherman, who will take us out on a little fishing trip with his cormorants. Because it was at the end of the day, we had to pay a little more, but it was not expensive either. Matthew's eyes lit up when he saw the cormorants -- he was not entirely kept up to date during the negotiations, and was vaguely alarmed that I would prefer to go on a small boat on this windy big lake, but now he was excited that we were going fishing with cormorants!

I thanked the restauranteur and his friend, assuring them that we would return to his restaurant for dinner. They had probably got a cut from helping to arrange our little fishing tour, but we were pleased with the deal and they seemed nice people. Then we jumped on the little boat, manned by the fisherman and his wife, and rowed out to collect the cormorants.

Erhai Lake sits east of Dali town and is ringed by mountains -- most of them still shrouded in low-lying clouds, although it was clearing up. The second largest lake in Yunnan, just after Lake Dian in Kunming, it was a much prettier sight. Fed by surrounding mountain streams, the water looked quite clean, and it was deep.

Our fisherman's cormorants were a tame and eager bunch of birds. They looked shaggier than the Bay Area cormorants and when they swam, they sat quite high in the water. Before going fishing, each bird was outfitted with a straw "necklace", which prevented them from swallowing their catch. In theory, I felt that these cormorants were being exploited. But I sensed no cruelty, the birds looked very settled, not holding any grudge against their masters. Catching fish for their masters was just part of their lives -- they were trained from an early age. The fisherman and his wife seemed fond of their birds. As our boat took off, the cormorants swam to follow eagerly, the way dogs follow their masters. They were not particularly fast swimmers when paddling on the surface, and sometimes they had to use their wings a bit to catch up, but they were very nimble under water, which was getting a little dark now that the sun was setting. Usually fishing trips are scheduled earlier in the day when visibility is better, but today they were doing an extra trip for our benefit. They followed the rhythmic banging of the fisherman's pole on the side of the boat -- Dive! Dive! And soon came up with swollen necks, which their masters helped to empty in his bucket. As a reward, they got the small fish for snack. But they would often try to sneak a dash at the bucket of big fish, which was carefully guarded by their master.

Once there were many cormorant fishermen on the lake, our fisherman said, and there used to be plenty of fish to catch in the Erhai's deep waters. But in recent years, due to pollution and over fishing, fishing had become restricted. The lake was only officially "open" for part of the year, and the rest of the time only fishing within a boundary is allowed. Still, Erhai fishermen are famous for their cormorant fishing techniques. Several villagers including our fisherman, whose name is Yang, had gone to Japan once to show off their birds and demonstrate their methods. Five of his cormorants here had toured Japan! The Japanese were very impressed -- even though they fish with cormorants too, their cormorants were not so tame and had to be leashed.

As it was getting darker, it became harder and harder for the cormorants to find fish. After paddling around for a while we headed back to shore. For their efforts the birds got some small fish for rewards, and we posed for pictures with two of them standing on Yang's pole. Posing with tourists was obviously a familiar chore for them.

We were almost ready for supper too. But there was one more thing to do. Earlier at the Tibetan cafe, we had seen the sign of a little massage parlour across the street, and we had talked about going for a foot massage, so that was where we headed to. There was some visitor's testimony posted outside the shop, and a line read something like "they could not express themselves very well, but they really give a good massage". They could not express themselves? What was that supposed to mean? Only after we climbed upstairs and sat down did we understand that statement -- all the masseur here are deaf! To communicate with the masseur, we were each given a card with "Softer" printed on one side and "Harder" on the other. But there was hardly any need for the card, for the masseur was quick to recognize any little sign shown on my expression, and he gave such an excellent massage that I soon relaxed. At one point I almost fell asleep (later after comparing notes with Matthew, I found he had the same reaction). And a "foot massage" here actually includes a quick back massage as well. An hour later we emerged from the parlour, feeling like jelly and totally relaxed. All this for just forty yuan (five US dollars)! We were so grateful that we gave each masseur a ten yuan tip and they seemed quite pleasantly surprised since tipping is not expected in China.

As promised, we went back to the restaurant (it is located on Bo'ai street, just at the corner with Foreigners street, and its name is Pinenlai -- 品恩来), where the boss happily cooked us dinner -- Dali claypot fish, wild mushrooms, and pea sprout. The food was good and so was the complementary plum wine -- homemade, sweet, and fruity. He also promised to gave us a discount for the gondola tickets the next day, complete with another free ride, too.

I had the best night of sleep since we arrived in China, probably thanks to my exhaustion as well as the excellent massage. After breakfast we paid a quick visit to the three pagodas next door.

The Chong Sheng Temple and monastery had been an important Buddhist center throughout the Nanzhao and Dali kingdoms. The temple itself was destroyed, but the three pagodas remain at the foot of Mount Cangshan and still dominate the Dali landscape. The center tower, named Qianxun (thousand search), was the oldest, built in the 9th century AD, as well as the tallest at almost 70 meters high. The Tang style four-sided pagoda looked distinctively different from the other two smaller octagon pagodas, which were built in the 12th century. The pagodas had been slightly fixed up, but still looked pretty much like they did for hundreds of years (there was a photo of them taken in the late 19th century in the museum). Walking underneath them gave a bit of a sense of a glimpse of the past.

After touring the pagodas, we checked out of the hotel and went back to Pinenlai. Leaving our luggage for safekeeping at the restaurant, we took another ride with the boss, this time towards Mount Cangshan.

A bumpy road of cobble stone lead us to the gondola, which then took us up the green mountain. Cangshan has 19 peaks, all above 3500 meters high. The top of the peaks are said to be snow capped all year around, but they seemed to be hidden in clouds all the time. In the gondola, the panoramic view of the lake and the surrounding mountains was superb. At the end of the ride, a huge Go board was laid out on a hill top, with straw hats as Go pieces. This was designated as the site for an important Go game in the famous Kungfu novel (天龙八部). Next to the Go board, the path led us across a bouncy suspension bridge to Qingbixi.

Qingbixi is a stream that forms a series of waterfalls cascading down the mountain. Following an especially wet rainy season, the waterfalls were going full force, even covering a walkway across the stream. At the edge of the big waterfall, a sign read "Slippery! Do not climb down!" in Chinese, which was promptly ignored by Matthew, who made it down the wet rock steps to the little clear pond by the foot of the pretty falls.

The path diverged here, one signed "Jade Belt Road" and the other "Great Canyon". I had read about the Jade Belt Road, a scenic 11km path that leads to the next temple north of here. Not sure what the great canyon was, but it seemed closer and as our time was limited, we decided to give it a try. We followed the stony steps up the mountain and was soon rewarded with a most beautiful scene: a landscape of mist, streams, pine trees and steep rocky cliffs -- all the quintessential elements of a classical Chinese painting, where nature looms large and humans seem minuscule. It felt like a landscape suitable for ancient poets and hermits; a sanctuary for monks and people who seek spiritual enlightenment; as well as a place where the heros of fictional Kungfu novels dwelt. Ahead of us, the stony path followed the stream, crossing it from time to time, climbing up and up, and disappearing into the mysterious depths of the misty mountains. We followed the path for a while, with another couple who were a little doubtful where this path lead. It was like a completely different world -- a haven isolated from the chaotic outside world.

Had we had more time we would surely have followed the path to explore the mountian deeper, but we had a bus to catch to Lijiang in the afternoon. So we turned back. Some day we hope, we will come to visit Cangshan again.