Xishuangbanna is the southern-most region of Yunnan province, bordering Myanmar (Burma) and Laos. Only a third of the population here is Han Chinese; the majority are Dai, Hani, Lisu and Yao people with their own cultures and languages. The area is also home to Burmese and Lao people, so the region has a strong multicultural atmosphere. The principal city is Jinghong and we arrived here last Wednesday on a flight from Kunming. Laid-back Jinghong is located on the northern bank of the Mekong River and has a distinctly South-East Asian feel to it – warm with attractive coconut palm lined streets buzzing with motorbikes.
We spent a few pleasant days here before striking out for the more distant villages. In Jinghong we strolled around the manicured Tropical Flowers and Plants Garden and walked across the suspension bridge over the Mekong River just a stone’s throw from our hotel. We also checked out the cafes around Manting Lu, quickly deciding that our favourite was the Mekong that provided both Asian and western food, and free wireless broadband internet at the open-air tables under the street-side coconut palms. On this trip we are carrying a micro laptop that weighs less than a kilogram; a barely noticeable weight in a shoulder bag compared with our previous brick. It’s a lot more convenient and enjoyable to fire up our own laptop at a street side café and connect to the internet wirelessly than to use the usually smoke-ridden internet cafes in most cities. I’ll never forget the internet café in Dunhuang in Gansu province; the air inside was so thick and blue with the cigarette smoke generated by the horde of puffing young men playing internet games that after half an hour I could take no more and was driven out dizzy and nauseous.
From Jinghong we caught a minibus to the village of Menghun about 80 km to the west. This dusty, smoky, rough and ready township has unsealed streets shared by people, trucks, motorbikes, fume-belching tractor carts and cattle. We checked into a spartan hotel on the main corner and found a café that served excellent food. It was Saturday night and our purpose for coming to Menghun was to attend the weekly Sunday market that our guide book raved about. But we were doubly lucky as it turned out that there was to be a special regional dance performance in Menghun that very night, and so at 8pm we joined the throng of what must have been the town’s entire population rushing up a track to a grassed area where a large stage had been erected. The crowd of about 2,000 listened patiently to the succession of long introductory speeches given by local town leaders. Then a line of about 20 people came onto the stage to receive awards of recognition, probably for their roles in organizing the event. Each of them was wearing a red paper flower the size of a cabbage on their chest. Finally the dancing got underway; this comprised performances by different ethnic communities in the region. It was a classy show, featuring dazzlingly colourful costumes that contrasted starkly with the drab and dusty surroundings in which it was presented.
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Next morning we were up early, mingling with the people from the surrounding hill villages bouncing into town on their tractor carts for the market. This was a colourful affair too, with the women dressed in their finest and ready to buy and sell, and to enjoy what was obviously the highlight of the week. We enjoyed it too and pored over the myriad of fresh produce and manufactured goods for sale. Around noon we caught a minibus back to Jinghong, from there catching another to Ganlanba in the south-east. The latter was a hair-raising trip; the road hugged the tight loops of the Mekong River below, the bus driver was a maniac, and the bus itself had shock absorbers that had long since absorbed their last shock. But we made it into Ganlanba unscathed and checked into a hotel recommended by our guide book, but which turned out to be the grottiest hotel we’ve stayed in. Our fault for not checking the room more carefully when we arrived.Ganlanba itself is an attractive town with palm-lined streets, even more laid-back than Jinghong, and its main tourist draw card is its Dai Minority Park that showcases Dai architecture and daily life. But the following morning we decided to avoid this touristy spot and to seek out a more authentic Dai setting well away from tourist buses and trinkets. So we took a motorized trishaw to the Mekong River where we caught a passenger ferry to the other side. From there we walked down a country lane that passed through banana plantations and Dai vegetable farms and after 30 minutes or so we found ourselves in a small village of rustic and pleasing to the eye Dai houses where the only visible concessions to the 21st century were solar hot water units and satellite television dishes. In the yards of several houses we saw large steaming cauldrons. At one house the occupants invited us in, sat us down in front of their cauldron and gave us a cupful of bubbling brown liquid drawn from it. It turned out to be sugar cane juice they were boiling down to make sugar syrup or crystals.
Mission accomplished, we retraced our steps back across the Mekong to Ganlanba and then back to Jinghong on a slightly better bus driven by a slightly better driver. We were ready to move on from Xishuangbanna and this afternoon we laid out our map of China to consider where we would head tomorrow. We narrowed the possibilities to two options, but Lee Tuan then vetoed the 26-hour bus trip along the Myanmar border to Ruili, leaving the 50 minute flight on Lucky Airlines to Dali our way forward. That decided, we ended our time in Jinghong with dinner at the Thai restaurant on Manting Lu before adjourning one last time to the relaxing Mekong Café for coffee and a slice of brownie and to check our emails.
