Shangri-la

I arrived yesterday morning in the city formerly known as Zhongdian.  It won a contest a while back for the name of Shangri-la (xianggelila：香格里拉） the fictional mountain utopia from the book Lost Horizon, written in the 1930's by James Hilton. 

I took a sleeper bus from Kunming, leaving around 8pm saturday night and arriving around 9 the next morning.  I didn't get my ticket early enough to have my own bunk on the sleeper (surprise!) so I shared the loft in the back with three guys.  I got the spot next to the window however and the ride wasn't as bad as I'd dreaded.  The bus was much newer, faster, and quieter than the ones I rode back in 2001 and I slept well.

I'm here to look for buckwheat and you can imagine my elation when I saw fields of the stuff from the bus window.  I got into town and checked into a neat little spot called the barley guest house, where they have clean rooms, a washing machine, decent bathrooms, and wireless internet.  All for 25 RMB, or under 4 bucks a night.  Then I  met up with John Z who is here too, and had a chat and a brunch of dumplings outside the old town.  

I took a walk around the old town, climbed to a temple - not a big climb but I had to stop and rest because of the altitude - 10,400' compared to 6000' in Kunming.  Walked through some pastures, past crypts and old earthen walls, and along some crop fields.  They grow lots of rape and also vegetables here in town, and I saw fields of napa, celery, cabbages, cilantro, broccoli, mustard greens, garlic, scallions, and long greenhouses of tomatoes.  The preferred planting method seemed to be a layer of wood shavings and manure on the dirt, then a plastic mulch, then transplants.   I saw a woman pulling up the mulch by hand an then another pulling up cabbage roots one by one.   Lot of work.

There's a ton of construction here as well.  Lots of wood and stone, hence the availability of wood shavings I imagine.  Tibetan homes are huge and full of wood, from the beams to the shingles.