The Tea Horse Road Yunnan
Here’s a great article on the Tea Horse Road Yunnan by Debra Bruno and Anne-Sophie Markus with the Wall Street Journal. with photos by from the Wall Street Journal on Shaxi and mentions Old Theatre Inn. If you are unable to read the article online, we have included excerpts here. Enjoy!
Along the Tea Horse Road in China’s Yunnan Province
By Debra Bruno
Baisha Holiday Resort is housed in 800-year-old courtyard homes overlooking Jade Dragon Snow Mountain.
On the dashboard of our van, a solar-powered Tibetan prayer wheel spins continuously as we make our way through the bumpy roads linking Lijiang, Dali and Tengchong.
After our fourth or fifth near-collision, I begin to stare at that miniature golden cylinder. Maybe a little Buddhist intervention will save us from crashing into a truck laden with giant boulders or plunging off the road into the canyons below. We had come to see the northwest part of Yunnan, bordering Myanmar and Tibet, an ancient landscape that is rapidly changing. With the countless shops in fake-historic Lijiang selling identical Yunnan handicrafts, along with the rowdy backpacker scene in Dali, sections of Yunnan are being lost to the kind of tourism that involves busloads of passengers wearing matching baseball caps. Lijiang, “restored” in the ancient style after a 1996 earthquake, was exactly the sort of place we wanted to avoid. Having lived in China for almost two years, we had already seen “Impression West Lake,” Zhang Yimou’s over-the-top evening extravaganza in Hangzhou, so there was no need to take in “Impression Lijiang,” set against the backdrop of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. And if we wanted to fight crowds like those on the cable car up the mountain, we could stay home in Beijing and wander through the Forbidden City on a hot summer day. Shaxi, located roughly halfway between Lijiang and Dali, turned out to be the perfect antidote. It feels as removed from the modern world as Lijiang—where you can find McDonald’s, Pizza Hut and KFC—is immersed in it. A stop on the so-called tea-horse road (sometimes called the Southern Silk Road) for centuries, Shaxi today is placid and friendly, its quiet disturbed only by the occasional pigs or turkeys wandering through the cobblestone town square.
The rice fields of Shaxi Valley
Walking around, we could imagine what it was like to be among the traders of old. The roads linked China to Tibet, Myanmar and other parts of Southeast Asia, bringing Yunnan’s tea to the world in a network that “vastly predates the modern world,” says Ed Jocelyn, founder of Red Rock Trek, a tour-guide company based in Dali.
Anne-Sophie Markus for The Wall Street Journal The mountaintop Baoxiang temple in ShaxiThe Buddhist boot camp continued with a post lunch hike to Baoxiang, another mountaintop temple. Mist rising from a nearby waterfall cooled us as well as a colony of macaques, who eyed us for snack potential and, unimpressed, settled into the arms of a statue. The mist made it feel as if the religious site was suspended in midair, which added to the holy feeling even if it wasn’t clear which of the many deities could take credit. A few more hours of driving under the protection of our solar prayer wheel added yet another religious faith to the mix. As we dodged traffic and headed south, we saw minarets in the distance. Muslim towns are scattered across the plains, populated by the Hui, who were converted by the Mongolian invaders and played a critical role in trade as drivers of the caravans on the tea-horse road. In Donglianhua, a village about 35 kilometers south of Dali, we had a pork-free lunch in a courtyard home owned by the Ma family. The three Ma brothers, having made themselves into wealthy men in Thailand, eventually returned to Yunnan to pour money into restoring the village and the local mosque. As we wandered its grounds, we were greeted by the elderly imam, who showed us a stone tablet used in the past to call the faithful to prayer. Today, the call is piped through loudspeakers that enter individual homes, although while we were visiting, the only call we heard involved an announcement that someone needed to register his car. It was a rare touch of modernity in a place that seemed fixed in time, somewhere in the Ming dynasty.
The Tea Horse Road Yunnan: what you need to know
Getting There: The easiest way is to fly into Lijiang. Many Chinese airlines offer direct flights from more than a dozen Chinese cities, as well as from Hong Kong and Seoul. Other travelers prefer to fly into the smaller Tengchong airport in the south and drive north, although that requires a layover in Kunming.
Getting Around: For the best experience, it’s a good idea to hire a local guide who knows the area. Frank Hitman of Zouba Tours seeks out non-touristy experiences all over Yunnan. Another good choice is Ed Jocelyn of Red Rock Trek, who specializes in tea-horse road excursions. Mr. Jocelyn fell in love with western Yunnan when he was researching his book, “The Long March,” in which he retraces Mao’s historic trek.
Where to Stay: In the town of Shaxi, the Laomadian Lodge offers the feeling of being a trader on the ancient routes. A couple of kilometers or so outside town, the newly restored Old Theatre Inn is a guesthouse with rooms around a theater-temple courtyard and monthly performances of traditional music. Ten kilometers outside Lijiang, the Baisha Holiday Resort is housed in 800-year-old courtyard homes. Many of the rooms have stunning views of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. Outside Dali in the village of Xizhou, the Linden Centre offers a restored courtyard home with stunning views of the surrounding rice fields.
Where to Eat: Yunnan cuisine is as varied as the province’s terrain. In Shaxi, Xi Lu offers traditional food and nightly musical performances from the town’s residents, who play the erhu and other traditional string instruments, while young girls sing. Ou Yang Guesthouse also serves meals in a pomegranate-tree-shaded courtyard. (The restaurants are a short walk from the main cobblestone square; visitors should ask around.) In the Muslim village of Donglianhua, about 30 kilometers south of Dali, informal arrangements can be made for lunch at one of the Ma family courtyards. One of the homes is being converted into a guesthouse, but it wasn’t open when we visited.
The view from Shibaoshan