Sep 4, 2022 - Cloudy & Rainy
There was a bit of shower in the early morning. Qiao and I checked out from the hotel at about 10:00. Our plan was to stroll around the Jianchuan old town in the morning, visit the Jianhu Lake in the afternoon and then back to Shaxi in the evening.
We went to a famous local resturant (王记凉粉) for breakfast and then start wandering around the old town.
The Jianchuan old town was a lot larger than Shaxi, and of course, like most commercialized ancient towns in Yunnan, especially Dali and Lijiang, Jianchuan seemed to have been hit hard as well by the global sluggish economy.
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| clematis - traveller's joy |
Some of the big old houses used to belong to the old officials, gentries, rich people have been transformed into guest houses, other to museums but normally closed due to lack of tourists. A majority of locals currently are still living in the old town.Yet a number of the dilapidated houses interspersed among the residential area.
The old glorious hostel APLC, 甲马驿站 has already closed. While looking for a public toilet nearby, I noticed a tall old tree standing not far away. My intuition told me that there must be something special there. Walked up a bit, I found the Jingfeng Ge, 景凤阁, which was believed to be some Qing dynasty constructions.
Finished exploring around Jingfeng Ge, it started to rain. I sent messages and asked Qiao where she and her little one were. They were hiding from the rain in a memorial temple where we saw earlier. We ate some fruits, waited until the rain stopped.
The weather was making it difficult for us to decide our trip to Jianhu Lake. Since I did not want to spend another afternoon in the old town, as soon as the rain stopped, I urged Qiao to to be hurried. We needed to stick to our schedule. We called a taxi on didi, it costed less than 15 RMB to the supposed-to-be entrance of Jianhu Lake where several street vendors were selling snacks and water.
Having the little boy in company, I gave up hiking to the Haimenkou Relics, 海门口遗址 and instead focused on exploring the natural beauty of the wetland. The driver told us that it would not be nice to stroll around Jianhu on a cloudy day. Well, we did not have a choice on the weather, did we?
The birch forests by the entrance stretched out far several hectares. Walking among the roaring birches with wind speed in no less than 62~74km/h, fear I did not feel, but rather astounded by its amazing indescribable movement and gesture.
We ate some snacks for lunch in a pavilion where Qiao started to talk about her bitter past. Her story was similar to most poor Chinese women but in a different variation. I was about to give her a hug when she started sobbing, instead, I asked her 2-year-old son to give her a warming hug.
We continued our hike towards the lake which was not faraway, but under the strong wind, it still took quite a while.
The wind was so strong that I could barely open my eyes. Jianchuan is part of Dali. Its geographical link to Dali reminded me of Erhai Lake (洱海), simply in a smaller size. The first day when I arrived Jianchuan, I wondered why so many windmills standing at the top of the mountain ranges. Now I knew why.
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| The Jianhu Lake |
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| 剑湖 |
We decided not to take the same path back but another way leading to the main road. Thanks to the on and off sunlights, we got to enjoy the marvelous view of the swamps.
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| Coprinus comatus - 鸡腿菇, 毛头鬼伞 |
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| coprinus comatus |
Apparently the paths surrounding Jianhu Lake were still under construction. We had to head back to the main road after being interrupted by an arrogant truck driver who told us not to go to the other side of the road. I was not happy but after we discovered a large field of typha where we could take some nice "instagram" photos and videos, then we became content.
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| typha, 香蒲屬 |
We got luck that not until we went back to the street stalls, it started to pour. We ordered some unhealthy deep-fried fungi with sticky tofu, rested and waited about 30mins for the rain to stop. In the end, we walked about 15mins to the highway, took a minivan back to Shaxi.
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