Eric's Beijing Diary

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This is pretty good stuff, you guys. Probably a good thing I don't live in this town. Dali has a lot of expat hangouts. In that respect, Dali is a lot easier to live with than Lijiang. This one is called "Hello Dali." It's run by an American lady who grew up in China. The main problem with Dali this year is that there was some Chinese movie in the past year that featured Dali. So swarms of tourists are flooding through Old Town. Most of them do not stop. They come riding through in trams and look around--just doing the tourist thing so they can say they've been here. But there are plenty of others, too. If you know the town well enough, you can find the places on side streets that do not have too many tourists. But it really does get tiring trying to avoid them. Dali is scenic, but a bit overwhelming because of all the tourists. Not like Lijiang, but getting that way. The other problem with Dali, is that the government has all but completely taken over the key tourist areas. Er Hai Lake used to be a place where you could get a ride on a little village boat or something. No more. And there is no real individual hiking on the mountain. You have to follow a tourist path, and it is not cheap. I met a mountain man from England who told me about a different route so I may try it sometime. But this place does not really lend itself to "hiking up in the hills" the way I like to do. Still, it is pretty, and the air is beautiful.