Merrell/Chong Family travels: Dali-first hand experience with Chinese mass tourism

If you visit almost any highly rated tourist sites in China you are likely to encounter crowds of Chinese tourist and the typical Chinese tour group. These groups arrive in buses that hold between 20 and 50 people and come with a guide. The guide is equipped with a flag on the end of a telescoping pole so that all her clients can find and follow her and with a portable loudspeaker so they can all hear her. These groups arrive en masse with many sites having dozens of buses at any one time. The groups storm in and march to the best sites, see them briefly, and then move on to the next. The tours also focus on food and shopping. We saw these groups at many of the best known sites in China. The only exception was early in our trip when the unusual snow storm brought tourism to a stand still and gave us the amazing experience of having Nanxun and Moganshan buried in snow but devoid of tourists. However, we never experienced them personally. Typically we either visited sites on our own or if we couldn't do that we hired our own private guide as we did in Xian, Li river, and Dujiangyan. That all changed in Dali

We had taken a private van for 4 hours from Tiger Leaping Gorge to Dali. After arriving in Dali we spent a the evening walking around the Dali old town. See my comments on Old Towns below. Dali old town is bigger than most and surrounded by a medieval wall with gates but I'm not sure how much of it was actually old.

When we had checked into our hotel they asked if we wanted to arrange a tour of the big lake, Erhai, for which Dali is famous. I had heard that these tours were easy to arrange through all the hotels in Dali so I hadn't arranged anything ahead of time. They had a menu of options for the tour but none of us fully understood all the choices. The Mandarin in Dali was a bit confusing to the kids so I just signed us up for the most expensive tour when they said it included a boat ride on the lake, lunch and a visit to three sites. I figured we would spend the day on the lake cruising to 3 different sites while enjoying lunch. Sort of like our Li river cruise. Plus I figured picking the most expensive one would cut down a bit on the crowd size. I was wrong. Turns out we actually signed up for a mass market Dali tour.

Our hotel behind the corn fields but with a view of the lake

These trucks with 2 stroke engines and exposed belts are everywhere in rural
China. Get your arm caught in a belt and I'm sure it will rip it right off.

Flower gardens and pagoda in front of our hotel with lake Erhai in back

The next morning our inn keeper walked us a a half a mile or so where she handed us off to some women acting as a middleman. She walked us a few more blocks and then loaded us on a medium sized bus with about 40 or so Chinese tourists. The guide turned out to be this incredibly energetic woman. She started by taking attendance, as she would after every stop. Each family was called out in turn. When our turn came she didn't call out "Merrell" but instead called out "foreign friends." She seemed relieved when she realized we spoke varying degrees of Mandarin. Tour started with an hour long bus ride to the north end of the lake. The guide kept up a continuous stream of speech for the entire hour. She told jokes, quizzed the kids, and told stories about the area and scenery. First stop turned out to be building for a typical Bai lunch. The Bai are one of the 56 ethnic minorities recognized in China and are concentrated in Dali. Lunch was a big platter with about 10 different bite sized samples on it. These included small pieces of several vegetables. a very small piece of chicken and one piece of something that looked like SPAM. Along with this we got a bowl of broth and a bowl of noodles. Throw everything into the hot broth and let it cook for a few minutes and then eat.

Bai lunch.

Next stop was the pier where we all got on a big boat for our cruise on the lake. The boat had 5 decks and there were several hundred people waiting to get on. It was the second most crowded I've felt in China second only to Beijing train station during the New Year migration. Somehow we all made it on to the boat. First deck was a private space where you could rent a tea table with tea and snack for $20 per table for the duration of the voayage. Deck 2 was entirely made up of a performance space as we were going to be treated to a 10 minute performance during the cruise. Performance could only be 10 minutes as they had to do 8 or 10 performances in order to get everyone in during the time of the cruise. We were assigned to performance number 5. Decks 3 and 4 seemed to be entirely composed of private karaoke rooms! Don't know why you would pay for a sightseeing cruise and then do karaoke the whole way. Deck 5 was packed front to back and wall to wall with everyone on the trip. We quickly ran back down to deck 1 and paid for a private table by a window. Best $20 of the trip. The private room on the first deck also came with a guy who looked like a Catskills MC complete with bad toupe. He was apparently a calligrapher who would draw you a custom calligraphy to commemorate your cruise at Erhai but spent most of the cruise literally passed out at his table. We cruised across the lake to an island that had a few statues and walking paths, a restaurant, a hotel, and a shit load of places for people to take selfies with the lake in the background. These weren't just scenic locations for selfies. They were little docks and piers with decorated benches and tables at the ends designed specifically for selfies. We spent an hour there got back on the boat and headed back to the other side of the lake. Turns out we were only going to see one site on the lake. On the way back performance number 5 came up and we trooped up to deck two for our 10 minute Bai musical show accompanied by "3 courses of Bai tea" That was 3 dixie cups and 10 minutes of lip synching by some people in Bai costumes who looked bored to death. When we got back to the first deck someone had tried to usurp our $20 table but we sent them packing.

Bai three course tea ceremony with performances. See my 3 teas.

Official cruise calligrapher passed out at his table

$20 tea table with snacks

One of several "selfie piers" Check out the line waiting to take their selfie on the lake.

Turns out our next site was Xizhuo old town or "ancient village" on the lake shore. China is full of these ancient villages. Some are truly old. Some were old and have been retrofitted or modernized. Some are modern but made to look old. All of them have the same recipe. Picturesque streets and alleys that wind and twist around until you get lost. Jewelry stores with a guy pounding some silver on an anvil out front. Candy stores with some guys pounding nuts or taffy with a wooden mallet out front. Snack stalls selling things you can't always identify and cooked in unusual ways. Tea shops. The occasional western store like McD's or Japanese store like MiniSou tucked into an old looking building. Crowds of Chinese tourists wandering the streets. We spent another hour or so wandering this old town. Then it was back into our bus for a trip to the last site.

Xizhuo old town

Old Town snacks

These were actually pretty good. Like a stuffed pastry cooked between two
pans of charcoal. The upper pan is lowered on top to cook the top sides.

We drove further north and ended up at Tianlong ropeway. This was an old cable car that took us a few hundred feet up a mountain for a view of the lake and a brief walking tour of a small cave on top of the mountain. We finished up here with a Bai tea ceremony where 20 people were packed into a tea room and served several local teas accompanied by some very aggressive sales tactics by the nice ladies pouring the tea. They would have done great selling time shares in Ft. Lauderdale or Mexico. We avoided most of the hard sell by pretending we only spoke English and escaped without buying any of their tea, most of which seemed kind of bitter. Margaret actually made some noises about tossing hers out the window when they weren't looking instead of finishing it.

Erhai lake

After that it was back to the bus and back to Dali. I have to say we totally enjoyed the whole day. Our guide went out of her way to make sure we didn't get lost and at least kind of knew what was going on. The people on the bus were nice. It was cool to see a little bit of China the way all the Chinese tourists see it and Dali is so touristy I think you would have a hard time avoiding the crowds anyway. We finished our day with a great dinner near our hotel. Some of the food was ordered by Syd and some was us just telling them to bring us whatever they thought would be good.