Jade Dragon Snow Mountain

China05_Lijiang04_JadeDragon from tgoodwin on Vimeo.











Headed out of Lijiang about 30mins bus ride to the base of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. Joined a horde and a half of tourists in the queue to get up the mountain. Was quite a process. Ticket, queue, bus to somewhere else, another ticket, queue, until finally on the cable car. Was worth it by then. The car took us up to about 4300m, then an exhausting walk (due to altitude and not unfitness of course) up to about 4506m. Everyone had cans of oxygen, as did we, which helped us get up. At the top was magnificent view of mountain, glacier and the area below. Something different for us - interesting considering we were in the tropical heat and humidity of Laos only on Sunday.

Naxi Ancient Music

And dinner beforehand consisting of Vegetable hotpot, potato cake, and fried Yak meat. Yak was very tasty. A little chewy, but pretty good. Flavour comparable to kidney maybe - not so strong though.

After feasting we headed into the old town to go to a concert of ancient Naxi music. They hold the show every night and half the musicians are as a

ncient nearly

as the music. Five of them

in their mid 80s. The man who put

the orchestra together in the 80s gave an interesting talk regarding the philosophy behind putting it together. It is apparently a fairly pure and untouched artform - rare in

China, which he remarked on. To western ears familiar elements

of Chine

se folk music a

re

there, but the exe

cution is probably more

raw than we might be used to hearing. Lots of clang, bang, plonk

, often sounding quite arythmical and some

very high singing by the Women. Very

interesting music to listen to. Also included a Naxi operatic number - a more comedic one. A great show.

China04_Lijiang02_02_music from tgoodwin on Vimeo.