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