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 [原创]旧的云南泸沽湖游记，有点长篇大论 |
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TangTangTang
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加入时间: 2007/09/06
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作者：TangTangTang 在 行行摄摄 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
这是云南游记中间一节。写了英文，因为我打长篇的中文实在太慢。照片在flickr上，不知道国内的朋友能不能看。链接请加域名和extension.
flickr /photos/avisapiens/sets/72157594307457129/
Lugu Lake:
...We stay at Mr. Cun’s uncle’s inn. His name is also a very unique, Nakhi – only name, Shan, or Mountain. We tell Mr. Mountain that we want to go to Lugu lake and he hooks us up to a small group that’s leaving on the same day. Our driver was a Mosuo by the name of Alu. He is a very relaxed cool dude with a thick tongued accent, a Chinese version of a Hawaiian. The distance from Lijiang to Lugu was 200km, but it would take 7 hours to get there, because there are 5 mountains to pass. Under the gaze of the Haba Snow Mountain and Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, our little 19 seat bus snakes through turns after turns around the bodies of the mountains, often taking half an hour to go a ridiculously short distance, gaining or losing only altitude in the process. Shortly after our trip commences, a long line of stalled buses stop us. It turns out the rains from previous days has loosened the heavily eroded rocks and caused a small landslide. Rocks moistened from the rain pile onto the narrow road, their weight far exceeding what men could move by hand.
Everyone get off the bus, except for Alu and Joy. Joy is there as a counterbalance. We’ve been talking about driving in the beginning of the trip, and Alu appoints me to direct his steering. With steady hands, Alu squeezes the bus through the tiny gap between the rocks and the shoulder of the road. Beneath the road, a deep cliff beckons, water rushes through the canyon, fog hangs thick. Suddenly the shoulder gives way a little as the pavement and the hillside crumple, all the women scream. Alu, mildly annoyed, merely turns the wheel back and slowly, every so slowly, squeezing through the gap. We are on our way again. A tall guy from Nanking tells me my wife is very brave, I say that she just doesn’t know any better. In reality, probably both are true.
Half an hour later, at “18 turns”, with in reality just 9 hairpin turns, we see an older gentleman riding a motorcycle with a shovel on his shoulder. He is making his way up the twisties. A bulldozer follows closely. They are going to the landslide to clean it up.
Patiently, we roll over miles upon miles of mountain roads. The second mountain is nothing but carved stones, and they shake my kidneys. The mountains are truly massive beings, silently allowing us to get by. At one point we pass a simple concrete structure, looking like a school, or perhaps a danwei from the 60’s, with a basketball court near it. Alu says it used to be a jail before the roads got here. I can see why. Other than the view of the mountain and the roaring Jinsha river beneath, there is nothing else to do and nowhere to go, unless one is a mountain goat.
China is a slanted country, with the Tibetan Plateau, Himalayas and the Kunluns on the west side, and ocean on the east side. Water flows downhill so all the mighty rivers originate from the west and go east. Jin Sha river turns into Yangtze, and the Lan Chang river turns into the Mekong. Jin Sha (gold grains) river was now rushing to the sea beneath my feet, yellow, turgid, carrying with it millions of tons of water. I look upon the river, awed and unable to speak. I understand now why people wanted to raft down this dangerous stream and risk their lives. I’d want to do it, too, if I had seen this a few more times.
We wind through the mountains. Stalks of corn and a few banana plants grow on the steep grades of the mountain side. The Yi people walk among them and attend to them. At one point I see a man with a bull, his beast of burden, plowing a field severely graded, Herculean task for sure. I am told tales of the Yi people raising pigs on their land, and later not able to carry them down because of the steep grade, so they end up living with a whole herd of big pigs that are now doomed investment.
Driving in Yunnan is a challenge, to put it lightly. We drive on roads paved with rocks, the original route of the horseback traders who traversed these treacherous roads 2000 years ago, carrying with them spices, silks and chinaware between China, Yunnan, Tibet, India, and ultimately the Middle East. I am glad my trip no longer has to take a whole year like it did before.
As we drive, bottomless precipices line our right. The roads are narrow, rough, with no shoulders. When we pass trucks or slower buses, Alu crosses onto the oncoming lane and steps on it. The turns are impossibly sharp and heart racing. All the passengers in the bus gasp and sigh. Yunnan is no easy travel, so most of the people that come here are young and fit, and not uncommonly backpackers. The group on the bus is a hodge podge of youngsters, from Shanghai, Hong Kong, Szechuan, Nanking, and in our case, the US. We get along well and quickly start to chat and crack jokes. It feels like a party bus. This generation of Chinese enjoys its freedom and romantic pursuit. I am told that many backpackers go to Yunnan to escape the everyday and to fall in love, albeit it may be short lived love.
We stop at a small roadhouse in a provincial town. Food is served buffet style. We grab a spot to sit and eat quickly. It is tasty but clearly country food, inelegant and in exceedingly large portions. Somehow we finish it. This is, however, more country a spot than I’d usually care for. Pigs roam their sty and the bathroom is not up to large town standards. Joy and I stand at the side of the road and stretch our legs. I talk to the Nanking guy who is apparently making Lijiang a habit of his. He’s been here multiple times and thinks this is one of the best spots in China. I make a mental plan to come back, even though I haven’t even left yet.
7 hours of driving later, we are all fatigued, and then we get into Yi / Mosuo country. The Yis have a bad rap amongst the locals, Mosuos don’t like them and neither do the Nakhis. Apparently the Yis would extort you to pay an obscene amount of money if you ever damaged their property or hit their livestock by mistake. It’s a good thing that our driver is a local Mosuo, who, in his own words, can fight off “at least 3 or 4 Yis with no problem”.
Alu tells me of his friend who died of alcohol poisoning last year. Entertainment is scarce in these parts of the world. And though we yuppies keep arriving year after year, most of the locals want to get to where we are coming from. Education is mandatory but not always enforced, and young men often drink themselves to stupor or death. A small elementary school stands by the road, we are told it’s built by a Beijing Yi rock band “Made by the Yi’s”.
We pass through a Yi town, with its concrete and brick buildings with white tiles on the walls, it looks like just like any other medium sized China town, but the women wear large square hats and colorful skirts. Men are dark and short, the women often smoking a very slim pipe. They are extremely wary of cameras so we refrain from taking pictures.
After the town, we start to gain elevation rapidly. Soon we are at over 3000 meters again, air was thinner and the fog quite dense. The cliffs are now impossibly tall and imposing, there are only a few smaller Mosuo huts here and there. Alu drives carefully, and after innumerable peaks and valleys, we turn a corner and see Lugu Lake.
The sun is now out, and we are perched on top of a mountain. The view all of a sudden open wide, and I can take in miles and miles of panorama. I feel like I am in Switzerland, an incredibly blue lake, serene and shimmering, laid out before my eyes. I get out of the bus and take pictures. There is no car, no people, no airplanes, just wind faintly blowing by the ears, and larks chirping somewhere. The surrounding hills are no longer rocky. Their shapes and slopes are rather gentle, enclosed in a deep green brought about by the trees. Mosuos don’t practice slash and burn agriculture so the forests are fairly intact. The lake is adorned by 3 or 4 islands, all miniaturized and picturesque. The water is so blue that it hurts my eyes. Tiny specks of shadow float on the water, pig trough boats rowed by locals by hand.
We row boats to the islands. Nanjing guy goes skinny dipping. Joy and I have a little fight and do not participate in the group’s activities. We walk around the island feeling lost and isolated, the kind of the isolation you only feel when you are having a fight in exotic locales, the kind of isolation that feels so existential. But luckily one cannot stay mad in this beautiful environment too long, soon we row back to the main village. Everyone on the boat sings songs that I do not know words to. Sun rays reflect off the smooth water, mercurial and golden.
We settle down and everyone disperses. A group goes to see the dance party, on which the locals demonstrate their matriarchal social conventions and how they arrange for dates and their particular set of co habitation rules. Joy and I tend to stay away from the crowd so we head out to eat by the lake. It is now twilight and the sky was hued an intense shade of orange. We walk on the dirt road and turn into a small open air restaurant. We eat a local dish made from fatty pork. It is literally nothing but pork skin and fat. Sounds nasty but it gives me energy. On the high plateaus, I am constantly hungry and usually eat very large meals and still lose weight. The body is a curious thing.
Joy and I sit on the rudimentary wooden bench and eat slowly. Rays of late sunlight reflect off the water and shimmer. The water breaks into gentle small waves, fish occasionally splash out of the surface.
It is dark now and we leave the restaurant. The shore is lined by a water weed with delicate small white flowers, which the locals eat in a soup. I run my hand in the water, it is clean and cool. We walk by silversmith shops, handicraft stores, with their fur trimmings, yak skin throws, tribal pattern paintings, and inexpensive silver jewelry. Mr. Cun told us about the Big Wolf Bar, so we walk and sit down for a drink. Big Wolf is in and he’s dressed in their traditional attire. I order a local beer and Joy orders a jasmine beer from Kunming. We are sitting next to a tall glass window. The décor is quiet and dark, flickering candles giving everything an orange glow. Bundles of notebooks are set on a small table. Many many people have been here and scribbled down their thoughts, stories and grievances. I write a page about environmentalism, not sure if anybody reads. Two Cantonese women come in and talk to Big Wolf, loud and boorish, but Big Wolf was gracious and unruffled.
It is completely dark now. There is no street light here and light pollution is minimal. Backpackers walk by the window in 2’s and 3’s, the lake has disappeared in the dark. Willow trees sway gently. Once in a long while a car’s headlight pierces through the peace and blinds me for a second, then disappears, leaving a visual trail of red taillights. It is quiet and feels almost like midnight.
Then small raindrops start to fall. In the far distance, lightning bolts illuminate the sky. Thunders are so faint that that they are practically not discernable, their rolling fury merely faraway rumbles. Each time the lightning hits, Lugu lake is lit up and we see the calm, dark surface for a split second. I feel serene and surreal, as if in a Dali painting. The hours pass by slowly, intercepted by an occasional lightning strike. Wind is cooler now, but still comfortable and calming.
Finally we finish our beverages and step out. I call Alu and looks like the main group is now drinking at the dock. Joy and I leisurely walk to the dock and indeed, their laughter can be heard from quite a distance away. The pig’s trough boats are tied to the dock, and people are simply lying or sitting in the boats and drinking beer. It is now quite cold and everyone’s teeth chatter, but no one wants to leave. The boats are far away from the roads and the restaurants, hence it is very dark where we are. We pass more and more beers down the boats, singing songs and talk about the kind of stuff people talk about when they are half drunk and in good moods. The night passes slowly, but it has to end when it has to end. We hug, in a happy, loving, and intoxicated way that I haven’t experienced in a while, then part our ways. Nanjing guy tells me later that he went to a local hot spring, naked under the stars, sipping beers. It sounds like such a good time.
作者：TangTangTang 在 行行摄摄 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
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 [原创]旧的云南泸沽湖游记，有点长篇大论 -- TangTangTang - (12744 Byte) 2007-10-13 周六, 01:44 (2374 reads)
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