Dali-ying Around
In early mornings, the town shuddered to life. Women washed vegetables, laundry, and children in the murmuring streams. Grandmothers opened steaming tins of dumplings and set out large bowls of noodles.
Old Dali sits about fifteen minutes northwest of Dali City, a proper metropolis. Old Dali is a walled town: four gates, east, west, south and north, guarded the environs of the 8th century Nanzhao Kingdom capitol. Here, the Bai people resisted the Tang Dynasty to carve a distinct domain in central Yunnan.
Chinese tourists, Western gawkers and remnants of the Bai who would cater to the outsiders' needs now crawled about the North Gate, where we first entered the town. Young Bai girls in their shiny pink and white 'ethnic' garb waved colored flags to attract tour groups, and for a few yuan, they posed for photographs with, bless their hearts, the camera happy hordes of beaming Chinese couples in front of the 'preserved ancient town'.
Lined outside of the gates in neat rows are snack stalls: cobs of steaming corn, fried goat cheese twirled about sticks like cotton candy, and eggs boiled in soy sauce. Within the gates, the snack vendors dawdled, then gave way to curios crammed with junk that only a habitual pack-rat could want. Bamboo whistles mimicked unknown birds, furs of wolves and large cats hung limp, oil paintings of gods and goddesses in various states of undress idled, and those universal tourist trinkets: leather satchels, embroidered tablecloths and matrioshka dolls jostled for space on too-small tables.
Near the entrance, a gold-plated statue with one arm raised while the other handled a rifle saluted the government in Beijing – a public necessity that would repeat itself in most towns throughout the region.
Canals fed by waters from the Erhai Hu ('Erhai Lake') ran parallel left/right of the cobble-stone streets. Women often crouched and dipped wooden buckets in this natural plumbing system for their daily chores. In early mornings, the town shuddered to life. Women washed vegetables, laundry, and children in the murmuring streams. Grandmothers opened steaming tins of dumplings and set out large bowls of noodles. Aunties and mothers clickity-clacked their way to the muddied paths of the market for the daily provisions. The men lugged carts of stone and rubble to some always present construction site. If they're lucky, they sat in groups of fives and sevens on stone steps. They stared at the passer-bys, puffed on their pipes, or slammed round chess pieces onto epic battlefields within huddles full of mutterings and exclamations. Some smiled through their gapped teeth.
What was it like, to live in a fictionalized, a construction of a passed time? Can life move forward with eyes glazed by the past?
Dali's town library, like it's high schools and clinic and civic buildings, are reconstructed in the grand Ming architectural style. Curved and sweeping roofs peered over immense red columns that outlined immense doors. The doors enclosed immense spaces. In lesser countries, these buildings could have been used as palaces or temples.
But the present is a curious interloper to the nostalgia of the past. Through one of these heavy wooden doors within Dali's Cultural Center, hand me downs of American video games blinked and bleeped. Under a curved roof adorned by sneering dragons the jabs and kicks of Street Fighter II flickered.
This was Chinese tourism. This was China's version of Disneyland, where photo-ops with colorful ethnic minorities, memorabilia fated to the darkest corners of the attic, and a kind of fantasy land can be had for a few yuan. But behind the walls, life still goes on – twenty thousand very real lives lived for the sake of preservation.