After deciding to stay on the bus at Tiger Leaping Gorge we continued to drive through to Lijiang which added another two hours onto our day. We had visited Lijiang in 2005 so was familiar with the general layout of the city. It was however, like all Chinese cities we had previously visited, so much larger than we remembered. Lijiang has as it's backdrop the impressive slopes of Yulong Xue Shan, usually totally capped in ice and snow, but looking devoid of both when we arrived in the city. We had seen it's icy slopes on the opposite side of the mountain though on the bus trip earlier in the day.
Lijiang's old town is the original capital of the Naxi people, a group of Tibetans who moved to this region of Yunnan in the thirteenth century. Today it is has become the model for the redevelopment of 'old' towns right across China. It is a very busy, though also very pretty, town now totally dependent on tourism.
We caught a taxi (7 yuan) from the bus station to the entrance square of the old town (Dayan) where I left Jerry with the luggage in Grass Market Square (close to
Baisha countrysidethe entrance)and began to search for a hotel room. Over an hour later I arrived back nearly in tears - I had been treated so rudely by most hotel reception staff - in fact at one hotel I was yelled at and nearly forcibly removed from the foyer. Other hotels wanted outrageous prices for rooms - far more than they were worth even in Lijiang. A couple of hotels had rooms they were prepared to offer me but I suddenly realised I probably wouldn't find my way back to them easily with Jerry. The old town is pedestrianised and is a mess of tiny interweaving lanes and canals. There are also over 700 hotels in these streets - most are within courtyards and all have entrance gates which nearly look identical.
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