Day 111: Lijiang, Yunnan Province

We went out to the main part of the town to grab some lunch, and there was plenty to choose from; a lot of street vendors selling a smorgasbord of finger foods. We first got Yak meat on a stick, so good.

We spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the town. Dali is full of tourists; however, they are all Chinese, I rarely saw a westerner. Many of the Chinese people are so amazed by a tall westerner with a beard. The girls will walk by and keep looking at me, I will then wave and say, "Ni hao" (hello in Mandarin), and the will wave back giggling amongst their friends. The men usually come up and measure themselves against me, "wooow, hahaha." I will admit, the Chinese people are very short.

Joseph and I decided we were going to grab a couple beers then call it an early night; he wanted me to choose the first bar. How did I pick it out, the one with the best looking girls outside of it... The bar/club was pretty hilarious. There was this stage with this guy singing on it (terribly) and everyone had these hand clapper things (hard to describe, see picture) and had them clapping constantly. They had all these crazy shows going on through out the night. There was a special during happy hour and we got a big discount if we ordered 10 beers, why not?

Lonely Planet told use that the population in Dali was 80% women, and it wasn't joking, there are girls all over the place. Joseph told me this is the first time in the three years that he has been living in China that he has seen a group of girls at a bar sitting at a table without men with them. Looks like a perfect opportunity to brush up on my Mandarin. Eventually, we had a group of girls who were at the table next to us join us. Luckily, the girl who sat next to me spoke a little bit of English but the language barrier was still pretty bad. To illustrate how bad it was, I told her that I started my trip in China in Shenzhen. She had no idea what Shenzhen was. It wasn't until Joseph said Shenzhen with the proper Chinese twist that she understood. So yes, communicating with a Chinese person can be difficult. 

As you can imagine, we decided not to call it an early night. A good night with a good friend, locals, and a table of beer; what more could you ask for in China?