Recent content by lightm

May 28th: Being a tourist in my own hometown This is a new-ishly developed tourist site in the suburb of Shaoxing. An old fire station, built by Europeans apparently Inside display. Looks like similar mechanism to get well water. Town center A Taoism temple Free tea in the temple. It...

May 25th Saturday Early morning flight back home. Our airport is in Hangzhou, about 35 miles away from hometown Shaoxing. I stopped in Hangzhou to visit a friend. Below is the starting point of the grand canal. It goes all the way to Beijing, ranging 1100 miles, supposedly the longest...

Yes. I wonder how they like it. No doubt they took a HUGE hit during Covid.

May 24th Friday, car ride from Dali back to Lijiang. We visited the landmark of Dali: Three pagodas. It is very grand. I love it. The main pagoda was built during 800s, so it has been standing for more than 1000 years. It has withstand several earthquakes on record. The two other pagodas were...

Yes it is popular. People often go there if they visit Dali. If you want to have the best photo, you need to spend money in a coffee shop, restaurants, or hotels. These business places have the best perspectives for photos. You are asking really good questions here. I honestly don't know a...

May 23rd, Thursday, heading to Dali Dali is 174km (108 miles) south of Lijiang. It is built around a beautiful lake called Erhai. Thursday and Friday's tour is driving around this lake. This is in a town in Dali called Shuanglang. It is a beautiful town by the lake. In this photo local...

You technically can. People give you a stink eye. I have used cash twice. If you don't need change, then you are probably OK. If you need change, they often tell you that they don't have change and you are stuck... Occasionally business have change. Many big stores, especially stores in a...

Your Pu'er tea looks nice :-) I regret to say that my knowledge about tea is below average Chinese. I think it is largely due to politics. China is not in good relationship with many European countries or US, so these countries will advise their citizens not go there. According to some BBC...

I think one does need to be able to speak/read Chinese to visit there. I saw a big foreigner tourist group in the airport, so I think the best bet is to follow a tour group. There are MANY bars in Lijiang and I ran into foreigners quite a bit. Before Covid, or 12 years ago, when China was more...

It does stay very cool in the summer, especially with its high altitude. The town does not need AC. According to some conversation with the locals and observation, my guess is that the architecture is built throughout and has about 800 years of history. Some locals still live there, but more...

May 22nd Wednesday. Heading to Yulong Mountain (Yu = Jade, Long = dragon. So also called Jade Snow mountain). Lijiang has an altitude of around 2400 m (7874 ft). Yulong mountain is very close to Lijiang, with the highest peak being 4680 m. There is a cable car that can get you to almost the...

May 21st, Tuesday A 3 hour flight in the early morning got us to Lijiang around noon. This is a lovely hotel room. There are two main heritage sites in the city of Lijiang. We first arrived at the less touristy one, called Shuhe old Town. There are lots of coffee/tea shops, restaurants...

Tourism with my parents. Yes. I should have mentioned their puer tea. According to some Chinese medicine doctor, only pu'er tea is good for your health. Other tea is either bad or just whatever 🤣

May 21, Tuesday Me and my parents flew to Lijiang, a super touristy city in Yunnan province. Yunnan is in southwest of China, bordering at least Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos. It is a very beautiful province, rich in agriculture, tourism, ethnic diversity, and drug dealing... In recent years, it's...

May 19th, wandering around in the city park in Shaoxing I like this glass building, which is changing its lighting color. It is a coffee house/bar.