Yunnan Interior Design

Once majestic merchants houses. Beautiful wooden houses. White stone houses with painted frescos with black tiled roofs. Inner courtyards, the veranda running around the quadrangle with an upper balcony with living quarters. I guess the livestock lived down below in stables, and still are. Except now these beautiful houses, torn apart during the revolution when it wasn't a good time to be rich and successful, are falling apart.
Once home to a family and servants, now home to around 10 families.The plaster is peeling, and that's an understatement, all is in total disrepair!

Shigu, had a glimpse through  this doorway and the owner invited us in. I think when there is not much personal space another visitor is not an issue! The inside of this house in Shigu was unbelievable. Like a stage set for a Charles Dickens novel.  Bare wood, shafts of sunlight coming through the dark showing the dust. A bare earth floor, chickens and pigs, the old folks sitting playing cards. Washing and clutter. But it had it's own beauty.

 A few belongings in Cizhong..

Tibetan architecture - I love this photo contrasting the new and the old..

We visited the Linden centre in Xizhou ancient villge.  An example of a beautiful restoration, in a large original town of fresco painted houses, looking stunning against the golden rice fields. A centre now for visiting American tourists, offering cooking and painting classes. Hiring a bicycle from here would be a lovely way to spend a weekend.

Down the road, an entrepreneurial family offers their house for a visit. The contrast was immense. Home to at least six families...

 The once grand courtyard..

Fitted kitchens..

 Could have wandered around this village for ages....

Yunnan Say A Little Prayer

As the Yunnan borders onto Tibet, there are many similarities. We visited a few Buddhist temples.  Large and small. The large near Shangri-La, a homage to the Potala Palace. Still under construction!

View of the temple from ShangriLa

Covered prayer wheels..

Tibetan doors and windows..

The small temple of Damo high in the mountains, a genuine not-just-for-toursists -temple, the monks going in for prayer,

A little late..

The door shuts...

Glimpses of the warm glow of the interior, the sounds of chanting, the drums and the gongs. The colourful robes against the scenic frescos.

Young boys and old men. A discarded robe. A tarnished gong..

I was haunted by the prayer flags, ever present from Lijiang and around the Tibetan borders. Vast swathes of flags draped across trees, telegraph poles, in inaccessible places. It was as if there had been a party and the decorations left behind, never removed just added to at each new party or festival.

Across the glacier..

 They added a magical quality to the bleak beauty of a rainy mountain landscape.

And a fairytale grotto feel to a green leafy valley.

A rarely glimpsed view of the peak of the Meili Snow mountain at mid autumn festival, with prayer flags..

And then there were mystically offerings, hung in the trees...

Yunnan Harvest Festival

Harvest festival Starting in Lijiang and moving north on to Shangri-La, then across to Dali , we watched the various harvests coming in. Maize, every village we passed had the corn cobs out to dry and were stacking them in the courtyards and on the upper levels of the houses.

 sweetcorn and sunflowers

Some great scenes of villagers sorting through the cobs, and stripping the stalks. A communal event.

Chillis, red and spicy, hanging from every corner of every house in long trailing garlands.

Walnuts, in profusion. HeTao. Lone girls with back baskets picking the fallen fruit with gloved hands, to avoid the yellow staining. Sweet chestnuts were falling too.

Sat outside in the street after dinner in Tacheng and were offered raw chestnuts by the villagers as they sat around and chatted. Throwing the skins, like everything else, to the ground.

Near Dali the crops were mixed with tobacco, great leaves balanced in overloaded baskets, and unique buildings dotted along the roads, the drying sheds. a growing industry no doubt as in China as there seems to be no anti-smoking awareness yet.

Then across the plains and valleys, lemon yellow fields of rice, softly turning gold. The crops that were ready, fields filled with colourful minority villagers, baskets on backs. 

We stopped and joined in the threshing, beating staves of rice into a large rush basket to collect the grain.

Barley fields, near Shangri-la

Garlic planting