Shaxi
CHINA
Sadly, the Next Dali
By AARON
Monday, May 2, 2016
Have you ever had a friend who “liked that band before they sold out”? It happens a lot- a small band with a niche, loyal fan base hits it big and then everyone knows who they are. This can then result in the original fan base not feeling special anymore. They probably stop listening to the band and start searching for that next group or artist that no one has heard of.
Well the same goes for traveling.
A small, tiny town that no one has heard of becomes a mecca for a chosen few, only to “hit it big” and blow up into a major tourist destination that everyone knows about. So what do the original travelers do? They start looking for the next hidden gem that hasn’t been discovered yet. The city of Dali was the band that made it big, and Shaxi would become the next hidden gem.
We’ll get into Dali next blog, but Shaxi was recommended to us by a couple of travelers who had either spent extended time in China or were living there. Like any good hidden city, getting to it (at least via public transport) was a bit of a chore.
Saying goodbye to our hike in Tiger Leaping Gorge, we took a transfer bus with a family to Lijiang, followed by a bus to Jiangjuan, followed by a minibus to Shaxi. Throughout these transfers, cities got smaller (as did the buses), and trees and windy mountain roads started to replace the cold, concrete landscape that dominated so many of the towns we had visited. Our final bus driver even rapidly pulled over at one point to pick up what I felt was a pretty nice adjustable wrench lying in the middle of the road.
We arrived in the small town of Shaxi and it was everything that we had wanted in a sleepy, Chinese town – a small town square where indigenous locals rode their horses through the cobblestone streets. Quiet, sleepy shops and street vendors that offered food and wares, not yet inflated by the invasion of tourists. And nondescript streets that held Lyndi’s photographic mecca: beautiful red lanterns lining a narrow alley that lit up the night with a mellow glow.
Our first day was spent checking in to the Horse Pen 46 – the local hostel ran by Shirley, the multi-lingual local who got us hooked on “Duolingo” a language app that had obviously worked for her as she already spoke four languages fluently and was currently learning German.
Seeing as it was a Chinese holiday week, the kitchen, as well as other amenities of the hostel were closed, but Shirley provided a wealth of information. And BeerLao. After a long stint of drinking (sorry) crappy Chinese beer (I’m from Portland so the bar is set pretty high), we enjoyed the nostalgic taste of the country of Laos’ most popular beer. Maybe it was the nostalgia, maybe it was that Tsing Tao beer sucks, but Cal, Lyndi and I helped ourselves to more than a couple of BeerLao’s while at Horse Pen 46. And it was wonderful.
That night we learned that we could rent bouldering equipment from the hostel and head up into the hills for some climbing, so next morning we headed off on a 3-4 mile hike to get to an area outside of town known for rock climbing. Unfortunately it was short-lived for Cal, who was feeling bad, so Lyndi and I ended up climbing for a couple of hours, and then trekked back into town.
Working up a hunger from climbing, we found a wonderful hole-in-the-wall restaurant that cooked us up by far the best won ton soup I had, before Lyndi and I declared that night would be “date night” as we left a sick Cal at the hostel and proceeded to walk the streets and drink quite possibly some of the most potent liquor I had ever had.
Next morning we bade goodbye to Shaxi, but not before Lyndi decided to pull a “when in Rome” moment and bought as I wrote in my notes “shitty cheese”, while Cal got totally shafted and bought a stuffed dumpling with nothing stuffed inside. Mmmm, like eating a fist-sized blob of soft dough. (Disclosure: stuffed dumplings are awesome, but not when it’s a giant one not stuffed with anything.)
As we rode the bus to Dali, Cal with dry mouth and Lyndi depressingly holding a shitty wheel of cheese, we reflected on the short time we spent in Shaxi, treasuring it for what it was, because after talking to Shirley at the hostel, the Chinese government had “discovered” Shaxi as a tourist attraction and had already made plans to “concrete pave the sleepy river-walk” as well as make other “upgrades” to the town.
As we got closer to Dali, we would soon find out what “upgrades” like that would do to once small towns that found themselves in the tourist spotlight.
