JUNE 7, 1996 FRIDAY
Long, long trip to Red Mountain. 3 1/2 hours one way, on a very rutted road in a
rented Jeep. Four of us are packed in the back seat -
A few miles out of town we have a flat tire -
We drive through a long valley before we start climbing, up and up, occasionally through wooded areas of Larix potaninii, Abies forestii and some Pinus armandii. The larger trees, mostly Abies, are being logged at an alarming rate, but at least it felt like a forest.
We enter a zone of giant rhododendrons, a forest of them in full bloom with gnarled
bare trunks, a dense canopy of thick rhododendron leaves and tight round trusses
of white-
Our destination is a slope near Red Mountain itself at about 13,750'. It is lean
up here, a sree slope made reddish with a high iron content, looking quite barren
from a distance. We have lunch in a little depression next to a rocky slope, out
of the wind. I lean against a bank of dwarf rhododendrons just coming out of their
winter mode, with mounds of Diapensia purpurea var. rosea, Bergenia purpurescens,
Cassiope pectinata just starting to bloom, within my grasp as I eat the dried yak
meat that we ordered extra from the restaurant last night, the individual servings
of 3 minutes noodles that we have taken to eating on our outings, preparing it on
the spot with hot water from the thermos, the hard boiled eggs. The view is fabulous
-
The ride back is only slightly more comfortable. We see scattered Meconopsis pseudointegrifolia
in some of the lower meadows -
Dinner tonight is a 'hot pot', served from the center of our round table, with heating
coils below, a big pot with simmering broth set on it. The pot is divided, one half
of the broth is hotly spicy, the other is not. Plates of raw food are brought to
the table and dumped in to cook. It becomes a deep simmering stew of all kinds of
things -
JUNE 8
Back to Napa Hai today, but not to as high an elevation this time. On a dry brushy
slope we scramble to see Androscae bulleyana. Neat single rosettes of thick, sharply
acute leaves and single stems about 6-
Jack almost ran into a viper-
UNE 9
We are now in Dechen in a government run hotel, for foreigners. This area is 'closed' and does not see many westerners without the hard to get proper permission papers. This is another fascinating town in an incredible setting. We have driven from Zhongdian to Dechen, 180 K, through scenery that to try describe would be like trying to describe the taste of chocolate, or the smell of oriental lilies. Massive bold uprisings,: huge, barren, as we snake our way insignificantly through this dry land lay bare around us, but uplifted with a strength and force beyond our imagining, engulfing us in its power as we drive for hours in awed silence.
Dechen is nestled on a hillside, about halfway down to a deep valley. The hotel
is really very nice, my room has a double bed, a TV, a cabinet, and 2 impressive
chairs of carved, heavy, cherry-
The images of China are blurring, numbing. I guess that means I am being imprinted somehow. Yaks, Tibetan men and women walking down the road with their heavy loads. It seems like we are in the middle of nowhere, but homes and villages are tucked in everywhere. We saw many young monks today, in burgundy robes.
As I lay in bed, writing, I hear yak bells on the street below. I look out the window from my 4th floor room, and see a horse with a full load on his back, two young yaks and a scrawny brown dog eating out of the garbage can. There is TV noise coming from many of the rooms around me. This is a very noisy place. I think I'll make the long trip to the bathroom, then get out my earplugs and try to read or sleep.
As I lay in bed, writing, I hear yak bells on the street below. I look out the window
JUNE 10
Morning in Dequen, 7:00. Something is being broadcast from loudspeakers on the street.
I must find out what it is. (I find out later that it is their twice daily propagandized
version of the local news -
We walk through the town this morning while the car is being repaired. I buy a tall Tibetan hat of gold brocade with furry black ear flaps for a friend at home. It cost 50Y, about $6.00 American money. I want to bring home a Chinese garden tool, so I buy a weeder, for 3Y about 40 cents. This town is built on a steep hill, we get lots of exercise just walking around.
LATER
Today we stop at a viewpoint to see Mei-
This viewpoint is a Buddhist holy spot, with white washed small temple-
We are on the road again. The sky is clear now, a picture postcard of blazing white
peaks against deep blue sky framed by green hills -
LATER IN DEQUEN
Jack, Dusty, Sun, and I walk the town, looking at shops, find an old narrow stone
street to explore. The houses are set closely to each other, no room between them,
very nicely kept and the street is very clean. They are 2 story homes mostly, some
with balconies bordered with carved railings, often painted with colorful Tibetan
designs, as are the window frames. Along one side of the road runs a concrete ditch
with water running through. Along the ditch is an occasional wooden box-
I am curious about what the houses are like -
come back later to take some pictures. She is still there, standing near her doorway with a friend, both brightly clad, chatting away, as I suppose any long time friends and neighbors do, maybe telling her about the foreigners who were there earlier. She greets me as I pass.
JUNE 11
We take the long trip to White Horse Mountain, a pristine alpine area, with sharply
jagged uplifts and distant scree slopes. There are exciting plants here, though not
quite blooming. We are at almost 14,000'. It has snowed lightly last night up here,
and there is the lightest cover of snow on some of the rhodies, but it melts in the
mid-
Caltha scaposa grows here in shiny gold abundance, and a low growing pale yellow
anemone, like A. obtusiloba. A tiny rheum is in flower -
Caltha scaposa grows here in shiny gold abundance, and a low growing pale yellow
anemone, like A. obtusiloba. A tiny rheum is in flower -
At a stop on the way down to town, we follow a creek that runs through a rocky brushy slope. On a rock face at the end of a small boulder field is a surprise population of Paraquilegia, this one easy to approach, with no breathless climb to rock faces in the scree. What a beautiful plant! So I didn't miss it after all.
Tonight we have 'medicine chicken' in the 'hot pot' style. We are all sick with colds
and coughs. It is the Chinese version of 'Chicken Soup'. Every part of the chicken
seems to be in it, and lots of medicinal herbs. I eat my first, (and probably last)
chicken foot -
JUNE 12
This cold is really getting to me. I'm feeling weary and like I'm ready to go home. I'm waiting for my second wind.
We are on the way to Weixi, but the road that we had intended take, along the Mekong river, is impassable from recent rains, so we backtrack to Zhongdian.
It has snowed in the mountains overnight. We pass the exact spot that we visited yesterday, near the White Horse Snow Mountain. Today it is white with snow, inches of it, and the meadows that we explored in the brilliant sunshine yesterday are now covered with white. The sky is gray and heavy with impending snow clouds. Quite good timing on our part, I would say. We travel a long way through these snow covered hills. It is quite beautiful, and totally unexpected.
We spend the night at the same hotel in Zhongdian that we had stayed at before.
JUNE 13
We head to Wiexi today. We follow the Yangtze River for a long way, through some
very dry areas with dramatic rock formations, through areas that are subtropical,
from 6500' up to to 8500' and down again. Weixi is located in a beautiful valley
at about 7400'. We travel a long corkscrew winding road down into this valley past
the usual entourage of horses, goats, herds of pigs and piglets, cows, yaks, people
with big bundles, rice paddies, wheat growers, homes, curious wide-
Weixi is very near to Tibet, and not too many foreigners get the necesary permissions to come here. It is a strange town. It feels different somehow, as if everyone is more cautious, more suspicious, of us and of each other
IMAGES:
Thousands of white butterflies with black veining on their wings, fluttering across the road and on the roadside, for miles. One gets caught inside the car. It flutters away.
IMAGES:
Thousands of white butterflies with black veining on their wings, fluttering across the road and on the roadside, for miles. One gets caught inside the car. It flutters away.
The silent rhythm of the rice paddies as they undulate down the hillside, in varying shades of new rice green, following the contours of the land.
Mei and I share a room in this hotel in Wiexi. There is large, bright, living room area, a big window, and 2 bedrooms. The water works sproadically, but it is not hot. It is warm tonight and the window is open. Mei and I watch TV and talk. She tells me what is happening on the Chinese version of a soap opera that we are watching. I ask her if she has seen any American movies. She tells me that she has seen the Chinese dubbed versions of 'Pride and Prejudice' and 'Gone with the Wind'.
Mei loves to sing, and she has gone to join the young people at the karaoke club below us. It is very loud, and most of the singers are very bad, but it is obvious that they are having a wonderful time. Karaoke is very popular in China, and we have been kept up late more than one night listening to it emanating loudly from a nearby karaoke club.
JUNE 14
Today we drive to an area called Li-
Our next stop is a moist meadow with a meandering creek, small hillocks, and boggy areas with shallow pools reflecting the few small puffy white clouds above. It is a beautiful spot, but highly grazed. It is warm and sunny today. I would like to lay in the sun for awhile and let the cows and horses that are here graze around me.
Stellara chamaejasme is common, dotted densely in spots around this meadow, as is Iris bullyana, though not in bloom. Abundant also is the same small Roscoea (tibeticus?) we saw last week in the meadow in the Yulong Shan. A purple Pedicularis is in bloom. On a gentle hillside, under shrubs, Nomocharis is budding, but we don't know which species. Nearby are a few small colonies of a bright blue corydalis, it looks like C. pachycentra seen earlier, and a few isolated specimens of Omphlogramma vincaflora. A large herd of black pigs and piglets is grazing casually near the van when we get back.
Stellara chamaejasme is common, dotted densely in spots around this meadow, as is Iris bullyana, though not in bloom. Abundant also is the same small Roscoea (tibeticus?) we saw last week in the meadow in the Yulong Shan. A purple Pedicularis is in bloom. On a gentle hillside, under shrubs, Nomocharis is budding, but we don't know which species. Nearby are a few small colonies of a bright blue corydalis, it looks like C. pachycentra seen earlier, and a few isolated specimens of Omphlogramma vincaflora. A large herd of black pigs and piglets is grazing casually near the van when we get back.
he van we are traveling in was hit by a log truck today -
The door on my side of the van doesn't open now, I have to crawl over the drivers seat to get out.
JUNE 15
This morning we visit a Daoist temple. About 800 years ago, intricate carvings of Buddha and other religious symbols were carved into the side of this sandstone mountain on various levels, and later, the actual temples went up around them. We climb up and down many stairs as the attendant leads us through the different levels, unlocking the gates for us as we climbed through the temple area. It is an incredible place. As we hike the long path to the temple grounds we pass through shrubby areas including, among others, Lyonia, Lithocarpus, and Pieris.
Now I sit in my room in a hotel in the town of Jianchuan. It is a big town, somewhat
sub-
From my room on the second floor I look down into a courtyard of a Chinese garden, and I want to go to sit out there. The door to the garden, accessed from inside the small lobby of the hotel, is locked, and I ask in gestures if I may enter it. The young woman in the office seems reluctant, but obligated, to open them. The garden is in great need of maintenance, but is lovely nontheless. There are 2 low round concrete tables with 4 immovable concrete stools around each, tile and stone paths that converge from 3 sides to a circular center area, and a planter in this center area with some small tree that I cannot name. The paths are edged with neglected weedy pots of flowers, some of them are leggy chrysanthemums. There is a fountain with abstract Chinese style rocks, naturalized with plants and weeds. A portion of a wall and a locked gate are covered with rambling honeysuckle. There are many of the simple but beautiful dark gray pots that we have seen frequently and that I like so much, along the pathway, or on pedestals. As a backdrop there is a wide 3 sectioned wall, mostly of white space, each section trimmed with colorful Chinese design in the corners and across the top. The whole wall is topped off with the traditional Chinese roof with peaked corners.
But there are weeds everywhere and it is badly in need of care. I would like to take charge of it for a season. It's really quite lovely and a restful place to sit.
JUNE 16
We stay only one night at this hotel, a stopover. Today we head back to Dali, along
the Yangtze River. Just out of town we pass an area with many brick and tile makers
and we stop to look around. There are many of the huge earthen and brick domes here
that we have seen periodically throughout our journey -
In a big circular mud pit, a water buffalo is tied to a stake in the center. He has
something like blinders on over his face. A young woman, barefoot, clad in gray,
prods him with a big stick as he plods around in the pit, slopping around in a slow
circle as she guides him. I take some pictures of this intriquing scene. She is uncharacterisitcally
photo-
We continue on our way. We see many water buffalo today. They are incredible animals, massive, of huge bulk, supporting immense weight on such seemingly short legs, with beautifully shaped heads and horns. I take some pictures but miss so many, especially of the people, the faces, the expressions, the activities. But I will never lose the many mental images of pictures never taken.
IMAGES:
An old man with a broad straw hat walking beside a rickety wooden cart with big wheels, piled high with golden wheat, being pulled by a water buffalo.
In a wide wet ditch on the right, a slight movement on the surface catches my attention. A closer look and I see that there are two water buffalo there, their huge steely gray backs and heads with long swept back horns barely reaching above the muddy water, like hippopotami.
An old man sitting in a doorway at the top of a short flight of cracked gray
stairs, one dark pant leg rolled up to his knee, bright pink socks, wearing a Mao
hat. He has a long pipe hanging from the side of his mouth. He is scratching his
leg but stops at mid-
The look of the cultivated valleys from far above, in the morning light. The
unintended patterns the fields make from this angle, the new-
An old man with a broad straw hat, a scrawny manchu beard and rolled up black pants, barefoot, yielding a big stick, herding his pigs up the road towards us, trying to keep them to one side.
An old cemetery, the old lopsided burial monuments, quite overgrown with weeds, the immense and steely gray water buffalo lazing in the overgrown grass among them, almost hidden.
A middle-
Passing through a country town, on a narrow dirt road, and, on the left, 7 small black piglets come running out unsuspecting from the narrow space between two buildings. We think they are going to run into the street in front of us, instead they make a sharp turn as one and they are quickly up the stairs and through the doorway of the house next door, like a cartoon. We all laugh. Will the occupant of the house be surprised? Probably not.
Lunch today -
We are stuck in traffic in a small town on market day. There are so many people here,
so many vehicles, we cannot move. Trucks and bicycles and cars are jamming us in
on this narrow road. We cannot even see beyond the truck in front of us. Vendors
are lining the roads, selling anything and everything -
We are finally moving, after about an hour of barely inching along.
LATER:
Back in Dali. We are staying at the brand new hotel here. It is quite luxurious. The hot water and the toilets work perfectly, but somehow it lacks ambiance. We walk the market this afternoon. An old man sits on the sidewalk behind a pile of large tubers of some kind. We find out that they are freshly dug Paris, for sale at 15 yuan a kilo. He has two kilos worth and we buy them all, about 90 tubers, for about $3.60 American money. What a deal.
JUNE 17
Today, we revisit the Cangshan Range, for only a few hours. It is misty and overcast, but not raining. The Rodgersia we saw earlier on the trip, 3 long weeks ago, is now fully open, covering the hills with fluffy light pink blossoms. There is much variation in the intensity of the color. I gather some aconitum and roscoea selections in an open woodland beneath Pinus yunnanensis, and some interesting small roadside plants.
This afternoon we visit the famous 3 pagodas of Dali. The tallest one is 1000 years old, the other two are about 800 years. It is quite the tourist spot, with rows and rows of tables on wide clean concrete walkways with souvenirs for sale that one must pass to get to the temples, many with identical items made of Dali marble.
JUNE 18
Today we head back to Kunming from Dali It takes all day, and in some ways it feels good to get back, like coming home. Sun is very glad to be getting home to his wife and child.
JUNE 19 Weds.
Today I visit the Stone Forest with Sun. Jack and Dusty have been here before, so
I have a private tour. This area is one of the most famous sites in Yunnan, not a
forest at all, but rather a rare geological phenomenon, about 200 acres of fantastically
shaped jagged limestone pillars, with narrow pathways winding through, around, and
up the surrealistic rock formations. But it is jammed packed with people, Chinese
tourists mostly, a geological disneyland, complete with restaurants, hotels, shops
and shops of souvenier items, photo oportunities -
Lunch on the way -
June 20
Cleaned plants all day at the KBI, preparing them for the flight home and for the
agricultural inspection when they reach America. Jack, Dusty, and myself, Zhou, Zhou
hua, and 2 Chinese girls who work at the garden, worked all day. Sun joined us towards
late afternoon. It took from 10:00 to 5:00. We barely finished -
June 21
I spent a good deal of today by myself, wandering the streets of Kunming. I walk
through the nearby plaza. There are many old men here and some women, smoking cigarettes,
playing majong at low round tables. There is a long row of birds in ornate wooden
cages hanging side by side on a wire. This has been a common sight here and in parks
in other cities -
JUNE 22
Tomorrow we leave. I lay in bed. 7:40 A.M., wanting to go out and walk, but also
wanting to write. I am filled with thoughts and feelings, too many, really, to sort
out now, but to be processed with time. I wonder if I will see America differently
now. I think so. Better in many ways, worse in many. I have only scratched a tiny
scratch in the surface of what China is. We have seen a lot of city and country,
got an overview of people and landscapes in this part of Yunnan, traveled with an
educated man, met well-
LATER
Zhou takes part of today to bike around town with me. He helps me buy silk promised
for a friend at home. It is a perfect way to end the trip. He shows me some city
sights. We visit both of the 'two pagodas' -
LATER
I am ready to go home. I must be very hungry for American culture. I am watching 'Bay Watch' on the english speaking Star TV network as I pack my bags. I wonder if the people here think that this is what America is really like?
JUNE 23
I take one last walk around the plaza. It is early Saturday morning, and there is
much activity here -
LATER:
Sitting in the Kunming International airport, ready to leave. The flight is 3 hours late, so we wait a little longer.
7:00 flight delayed at least until 8:00 maybe longer. I pass the time talking to
a flamboyant red-
Still waiting -
Too tired now to think about writing, but I want to. I wonder how things will be different when I am back. It depends a large part on how I want it to be different. I am apprehensive. I don't think that I will know how this trip will have affected me for a long time yet.
10:05. No sign yet of any plane. I just took my notebooks to write something -
Applause from the window deck -
Plant hunting in China -
Collector's Nursery,16804 NE102nd Ave, Battle Ground, WA 98604, 360-