Dali Bai Culture, 7/18

Today we focused on the Bai minority near Erhai Lake. Bai means white, so their costumes and houses are primarily white and most women wear the headdress daily. It represents the 'four views': wind, flower, snow, and moon. Like the Yi headdress, it also gives clues to a woman's marital status. Long tassels mean available and a boy can indicate interest by touching the tassel. If the girl likes him, all is well. If not, he must labor for the family for 3 years for free to atone. You would think this might inhibit the marriage rate! Like the Chinese, age is a good thing and an older woman indicates how old she is by wearing a darker headdress.

Making Chinese "pizza"

Our walk thru the Xizhou market was similar to others. We did see live roosters carried thru the streets, feet tied, upside down. It's not clear if they were dinner or alarm clocks. I bought a couple kinds of sugar, one similar to the palm sugar we got in Cambodia. Our local guide, 'Lisa', led us to an out of the way compound now housing 4 families, that was built in the 1300s. Some parts had bee  redone, but some of the original decorative carvings remained. We had an opportunity to make local pizza, both sweet and salty. Fortunately, I didn't get volunteered: it was a floury job. It looked pretty good except for all the lard involved, tho the lard flavor was only overwhelming on one small piece.

Maybe I should consider a job like this to control my weight...

Then we took a horse cart ride to the lake and from there, we had a boat ride to watch fishing with trained cormorants. The birds have rings on their necks to prevent swallowing large things and were fed treats when they caught a fish. They did not surrender the fish easily and had to be scooped out of the lake with a net. Most fishermen use nets, but the government encourages this to keep the culture alive. We got a chance to meet the birds up close before heading back. Our rower was an older woman who totally held her own. Looked like a great job to promote weight control.

Did I mention it rained today? Sometimes we were lucky and were inside or the rain stopped, sometimes not. I was not happy when it started up again while we were in the open rowboat, but it didn't last.

Our luncheon hostess

Catholic Church in Dali

After fishing, we went to lunch with a Bai family in Shacun village.  The food was wonderful, and we had a three course tea ceremony after. The three courses were bitter,then sweet, then sweet with spicy peppers, representing different stages of life.  Back in Dali, we walked thru the rain to visit a Catholic church. The outside was beautiful with under-eaves paintings that reminded me of Buddhist temples we have seen.