TIGER LEAPING TOAST

We are in Lijiang, in northern Yunnan, south west china. We went for a big walk for two days up Tiger Leaping Gorge. We were so lucky, the rain stopped the night before we left and the next morning was as fresh as Bizzy Bee - we were ready to walk! We took the bus to the gorge, bought the entrance ticket and then started walking up a little track with a French boy and his Romanian Canadian girlfriend. They were very interesting and Jimbino chatted non stop about books, psycology, Wales, mountains and Marx and only shut up for a really steep ascent when he had to catch his breath and concentrate on walking! It was a fantastic meader - we walked up to about 26000 m (ok - we started at 18000) and then along a rocky path on the edge of the mountain through water falls and up and down. Our two new friends had met in Iran - they were both travelling single in the same direction (europe - iran - uzbekistan - turkmenistan - tibet) so they hooked up. They were real fun! We strolled on chatting and laughing, stopping now and then to look at the raging water of the gorge below, the mountains with bikinis of cloud and grey glaciers or the pretty flowers and beautiful horses and goats by the path and many gigantic waterfalls along the way! It was like strolling in paradise. It was so nice to be chatting - I was distracted all the way by interesting conversation - normally when I am cycling I am quite bored most of the time! I wish i could meet some other cyclists like these guys - the road would be so much easier.

Anyhow, we came to a hostel around 6pm and drank lots of tea and eat some dinner and rented a dormatory bed forthe night. The people staying there were a big mix and some very interesting characters, a chicken farmer called Chicken, from Alabama with an accent like a sherriff in a John Wayne movie. Johney said: "Folk like that dont leave home often!" There was an interesting guy from Bruxxles who had lived in lots of French colonies and was real smart about politics - some boring English kids buying real estate in China - lynch the yangguedze (foreign devil) landlord!!!! - and an american dude who lives in south africa and has travelled a lot and laughed like a volcano and taught us Phillipino card games! He was hilarious. I stayed up late until the owners asked us to sleep and then I stumbled in the dark down to the dormatory by the conceiled light of the clouded moon sailing over the big mountains.

The next morning the clouds were having a market day in the gorge - patches of giant mountain appeared through a sea of white and then vanished again in a few seconds! Jimbino was quite spellbound and did some Chinese paintings with ink and brush which worked out well but only impressed him how hard clouds are to paint. He just can't paint clouds like those Chinese dudes - they are so good at it! We walked down the mountian after a tastey apple pie and rice porridge breakfast and then returned to our starting point the day before along the road at bottom of the gorge. Landslides had blocked traffic so it was quiet and easy going and we had to clamber over some impressively massive rocks, as we scrambled over them we watched the mountain carefullly for more lithic droppings. It was very impressive and mae one feel very small but full of life. We came eventually to the Tiger Leaping Gorge, the rock in the middle of the raging waters which the gorge is named after. Legend tells how the hunted tiger jumped onto a rock in the middle of the raging water and then to safety on the other side using this rock as a stepping stone, thus fleeing to safety in two giant leaps over the rushing apocalyptic crashing rapids. It is very hard to believe - unless the tiger had wings! Maybe in the dry season, but it would been impossible when we were there - the river was so fast and big and raging- before the gorge it is about 80 meters wide and is then squeezed to about 20m width by the narrow gorge and added to by the many mountain streams pour into it so it powers its way through like drain water in a torrential downpour! The water was roaring and crashing, blooming like a muddy brown flower exploding open and then shutting up again. There were white veins like the river was straining to the max and the water seemed to be like a bubbling and boiling monster cauldron but going too fast to get throthy! It looked like something in a Mad Martin canvas.
Triin and Jimmy were very impressed but suddenly discovered Johney had taken the rucksack with Triin's purse in so we had to hitch-hike back to Lijiang - the FIRST car stopped and the speedy Cantonese driver (who said he would never pick up a Chinese) zoomed us to Lijiang and left us near the hostel. Triin's feet were quite tired and blistered so we limped back home and that evening we met our first ESTONIANS of the journey! Triin could not believe it but they were not very cool - they played card games and drank beer and hardly raised their heads from the card table the whole time Triin told them about her adventures! She looked like she wanted to hug them all and she found it really hard to speak Estonian for the first time in 9 months but she said she would not talk to them for one minute in Estonia - they were the kind of kids she did not hang out with. It was funny. Anyhow, we did it - Jimbino said she wouldn't meet any other Estonians for the whole journey. Later they saw our street show and liked it and laughed a lot and we sang the Estonian song for them! Funny!
Heading for Sichuan soon!
Jazz workers plunge on!

DALI

The Jazz Workers are currently rinsing out in the streets of a littletown called Dali - in South Western China - the birth place to tea I hear! The mountains are big and the busking is bountiful and they found a very comfortable dirt cheap hotel where Jimbino spends all day finishing his old songs, Johney cooks coffee and practices bass and Triin draws, reads and sleeps a lot! The hotel has a huge coal heater with a mini industrial chimney (illustration by vegan right) and really comfy rooms for 1 dollar each!

The rooms have a fantastic view of the mountians on one side and of the lake and park to the East. Jimbino goes out early each morning in his new shepherds cloak made out of palm tree leaves - seriously neolithic - to buy some plastic bags of soya milk (Do Jiang), some bananas and some Yunnan peanut pancakes from street vendors, then after another lazy breakfast to the wild yells of old Chinese men playing loud games of croquet in the park next door, Triin and Jimbino may perhaps go for a walk on the mountain or a game of badmington in the park.

On their first such walk up the mountain - they set off for the summit, un-aware that it is 4000 meters high! Dali is at 1900 meters above sea level but still that leaves a long way to go! They started walking through a Chinese graveyard and up a very steep hill. It was quite tough work forTriin and my Jimbino's flip-flops were not happy. They came near the chair-lift and decided to try to hitch a ride - Triin climbed onto Jimbino's sholders and was trembling as the chair hit her in the chest. She managed to hold on and pull herself into the seat as she floated about in the air. Meanwhile, Jimbino had climbed up the pole and waited for the next chair to slip along. When it came within reach he threw himself at it and holding onto the side bar, twisted into the seat like a pirate attack! It was pretty scarey because the chair was waving all over the place and he suddenly found himself many meters above the ground! Only a few minutes later, he realised that there was a safety bar that you can pull down from over your head! Haha! He yelled at Triin to put her's down too! He also noticed that three seats behind them - about 40 meters away - two policemen were sitting - it was the most laid back police chase you have ever seen - all parties just chilled as they all chugged up the mountain at the same speed. They sat in the chair lift for about 20 minutes and found when they got off that they had only ascended 600 meters. They jumped off and hid from the Police in the monastery for a bit - they probably did not care but the monks were delighted to have visitors and behaved in very unholy fashion, touching Triin a lot, asking straight up for money and being noisy.
The peak was still 7 hours walk from there but the Chinese have built a beautiful cycle path into the some times sheer cliff edge along the length of the hills - incredible piece of work and what a view - a truely wonderful walk past waterfalls, huge canyons, wooded valleys, virtical cliffs with tiny little temples perched on them. To get up to one temple you had to climb a rough staircase with a sheer drop to one side and handles carved into the solid rock of the mountain to hold onto! Very hairy but quite impossible to attack - if that was the idea!!!

Photo of the temple on the cliff and the dragon pool

Jimbino took a swim in a freezing cold mountain pool - one of the seven dragon pools, where the 7 wives of the dragon of Erhai lake used to bath. Jimbino must have scared them away cos nonymphs came along to splash with him in the freezing cold waters!



Above: The biggest chinese chess set in the world on the mountains by Dali and a local temple!

They hung out with some rainbow family in Dali - there was a rainbow festival nearby but the Chinese police shut it down but lots of hippies are chilling in Dali in the meanwhile. They are pretty nice kids - very chilled out, almost rendering some frozen, but some are really cool and pleasant and have not succumbed totally to Nirvana! I guess there are more cool people among them than you find in your average collection of westerners in asia! We did a couple of shows for them and they were very enthusiastic but the guy whose bar they performed at (Dragonfly bar) and who had talked about 'supporting musicians' and promised the jazz workers a cut of the bar ended up giving us an insulting 5 euros each after a really hot show - and he did not even give us the full price for our cd! "Here's 2 euros 50 - OKEY?" he said walking away with the cd! It may sound stupid talking about money but he made us feel worth shit despite the fact that we need money to travel. His name is Brian and he is a cheap bastard! Thanks to him, for the rest of our lives we will be able to say after a low paid gig - well at least we earnt more than that stingy Brian gave us in Dali.
OK enough PR! We met a super cool rapper from Denver called Flesh (www.myspace.com/fleshinthesun) really great lyrics and dope rhytms, reminding me of Roby Wan Grip! I dug his stuff so bad! I hope we meet again!!! We soon leave for Li jiang - 2 or 3 days cycle north of here! lots of love the Jazz Workers

Photos left to right: morning after camping in a little temple
a church in china is a rare sight-Dali
chinese dude welding Jimmy's bike for 3 yuan