We spent a week in the Southwest of China exploring Lijiang, the Tiger Leaping Gorge, and Zhongdian.
Lijiang is probably what Epcot Center was modeled after and is quite popular with Chinese tourists. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is nestled in the mountains and filled with cobblestone streets, canals, pagodas, shops, restaurants and thousands of red lanterns. It is the main home to one of China's minority groups - the Naxi people - who you could see dancing in the street squares each day. (Over 90% of Chinese are Han ethnicity.)
Lijiang is beautiful during the day but even better at night. The city lights up with red lanterns and the sound of Chinese techno music (with the occasional dose of Spice Girls or You Spin Me Round). I spent both evenings in Lijiang out at the clubs. The club scene was probably 80% Chinese tourists, 15% locals - still dressed up in work clothes (native garb) from the day - and 5% foreign tourists. It made for some very entertaining evenings.
Due to the crowds, we ended up sharing tables with Chinese tourists both nights and did a fairly decent job communicating. Some things are just universal - smiling, toasting cheers, and girls helping other girls get away from creepy guys on the dance floor. We also counted to ten in English and Chinese a bunch of times, probably the easiest conversation at 1 a.m. between drunken people who don't speak the same language.
The next hungover day was spent trekking in Tiger Leaping Gorge - one of the world's deepest Gorges and along the Yangtze River. We slept in a rather nice guesthouse after the first 5-hour day where we could shower and order cold beer and fried noodles. We met a load of interesting characters along the way - some mountain goats, peasants farming rice, hillside vendors trying to sell anything from Snickers bars to drugs, and a man who followed us around with a horse saying "Horse" in between spits, in hopes we'd get tired and hire his horse. (Speaking of spitting, it is extremely in fashion in China and the Chinese believe it's healthy. According to a survey, the two things Westerns are most disgusted about when visiting China are the eating of dogs and the spitting, so Beijing has been policing locals about spitting hoping they stop before the Olympics.)
One of the more, um, exciting things to happen was our bus ride from the end of the trail back into town. Apparently, China has been rapidly building highways in preparation for the Olympic torch rally, and due to the heavy rain, the hastily built highway along the cliff had a large hole in it. We all got off the bus and walked past this part, in case the bus fell off the cliff. (Although, according to the Swiss woman on our trip, this was nothing compared to Nepal, where the valleys are full of buses.) Another amusing thing was meeting my first large group of Americans at the guesthouse. They were probably in their late teens, and passed us on the trail while shouting "Woo-hoo!" (in between "Like, Oh My God!") as they climbed a huge pass. I've only met about 20 so far on my trip (and hundreds of Europeans). The others in my group looked at me and said, "Americans," to show me what they were talking about when they were explaining the Typical American Stereotype.
After the two-day trek, we boarded the bus further west to Zhongdian, renamed by the Chinese Government as Shangri-La to attract tourists (after the mystical city written about in the novel Lost Horizon.)
Zhongdian, while not officially in Tibet's borders, is primarily Tibetan so we got a taste for what the culture is like. The city is covered in prayer flags and we visited the biggest Monastery in the Southwest of China and saw plenty of mountains, rolling green hills, and yaks.
I read that Zhongdian has become kind of Disneyland-ish with the renaming of it, and locals are not allowed to speak of the Dalai Lama. Indeed, several little Tibetan girls were wearing long braided wigs and dressed in native outfits, running up to us saying "Hello Photo" over and over trying to earn a Yuan. In the spirit of Responsible Travel, we didn't take photos with them or pay them, because then they learn that they can make money and end up skipping school.
One of the interesting things about China is that the official religion of the Chinese Government is atheism. People are unable to hold government positions unless they are atheists, though the government has allowed people to practice religion if they'd like. I read only 5-10% of Chinese are religious, with the most popular religion being Buddhism and Taoism (and Confucianism, though that is more a philosophy), and also a few Muslim and Christians.
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