Cizhong and the Lancang river

Day two of our trip within a trip. After leaving the mountains behind- if you looked out the back window you could still see them a bit but after a while the scenery out the right and below us became much more enticing. We were in this narrow narrow valley along a road carved into the side of the steep hills one one side of the valley (well, the steep hills are on both sides of the valley, the road on only one). Below was the Lancang river, aka Mekong river- like all the rivers up here, a brilliant blue colour.

So yeah, that's basically the scenery for the whole day, and most of the next day too! Simple but beautiful. There were villages up both sides of the valley, When we started the villages were all Tibetan, then from the third day onwards they were Lisu and Naxi. Apparently the poorer ones up higher in the valley tended to be Lisu, and the lower ones which had more arable slightly less steep terracable land tended to be Naxi.

These villages all could have been the 'real' Shangri la in my opinion. Forget Zhongdian, too cold and big there! Down in the valley it was warm, and we had our coats and gloves off.

The village we stayed the night at was quite a marvel. It is called Cizhong, and is Tibetan. It's claim to fame, like alot of the Tibetan villages we passed on the second day is wine!! They have been growing grapes here for 150years since the French missionaries were here, and making them into red wine. In Feilaisi we tasted Shangri la Dry Cab Sav, which was a quaffable drop :)- Sorry Alex, didn't pay enough attention to describe the nose to you, too busy quaffing to make sure we slept well in that electricity-less village, but the wine they make is a lighter style- like the french style.
In Cizhong they don't bottle the wine, just make it and sell it in containers. So here's where the story gets stranger, we bought our wine there, poured into a grubby looking lemonade bottle, from the local (ethnically Tibetan) Catholic priest! Catholics have always been into their alcohol!
Cizhong's other curiousity is its church- built in tradional Catholic style in 1867, rebuilt in 1905 after a fire, and has been in continuos use the whole time. It was a lovely cute little building, in a village of maybe 500 or so people, and on SUndays they ring the bell and everyone from around comes apparently- must be quite a sight on Sundays to see Tibetan herders and farmers singing mass. It was quite surreal actually.
The whole village was a delight, with the warm afternoon sun, still the last peek at the white snow peaks in the far north horizon, green terraces, grape vines, lovely wooden Tibetan houses, a big gum tree!, a blue river running down below, and us drinking red wine on a roof terrace.
Tasting notes on Cizhong wine: probably needed a bit of age, a bit too sweet, but no offensive flavours!
The people we stayed with had converted part of their house into a guesthouse for people who come through town wanting to see the church, although I don't think that can be many really! They slaughtered a chicken for our dinner, and we had butter tea, tsampa made from corn and reheated chicken for breakfast...only ate a piece or two of chicken for breakfast to be polite!

The rest of the Mekong valley was more of the same really- idyllic villages, beautiful scenery... We saw how people on the non road side of the river get across to the road- by a rudimentary flying fox. Looked bloody scary, and certainly hadn't passed any safety regulations.

On the third day we visited a Lisu village, that is inaccesable by road- we had to walk up a really steep hill to get to it. While I found the whole region idyllic, some development is a good thing when you saw how poorly people were living. A family invited us in, with a little 3 year old girl- but she seemed so young, only about 1 yrs old or something, and was still an unsteady walker. Their nutrition could not have been very good. Their house was almost pitch black inside, with wooden floors, but when the baby needed to wee, they lifted her up and let her wee on the floor. (They did take her 3 meters away from the kitchen though, but still...). There was animal poo everywhere outside the houses, dirt paths and dirt everywhere in the house.
Mum got on well with the little baby, and Yang, our driver gave the old man head of household news of outside world- he had gone to biuld the road from Zhongdian to Deqin. She was telling him about the new road from Lijiang to Zhongdian which was 4 lanes wide, and about many other roads. He seemed to have a bit of a road interest. Roads in that region had damaged the ecology, as the sides of the valley were so steep they caused rock falls and bits of the valley to slide/ erode away, however they had also brought some opportunities for prosperity to the people. The lower villages seemed to be doing quite well.

So that is basically our trip along the Mekong valley- after that we went into Weixi county which ran along another valley. We slept (night 3) at Tacheng, where there was no room at the inns due to a large delegation of Kunming electricity officials in town (presumably something to do with hydro electricity), and we nearly had to sleep in this decrepit, unused truck stop hotel that was absolutely filthy...but didn't. phew!