Home Stays with Mao

I am pleased to report that after the crushing din and hoards, China does possess a slice of heaven.  That place is Lijiashan.  Terraced gardens, mountain mist, ancient stone paths and Chinese hobbit houses built into a mountain.  It was a tranquil up and down Eden.  A maze of narrow paths twisting in and around hillsides like a landscape designed by Escher.  Lijiashan is forever stuck in time.  With the exception of a single power line, nothing here has changed since it was built centuries before.  Life remains simple, green and luscious.  We stayed in a cave house, one of the many homes carved into the land.  The family was generous and kind with a little daughter, a white poodle and a very devious orange tabby.  Food was simple and delicious.  I think I could have stayed here forever.  Learn to paint and master Chinese calligraphy.  Smoke opium with old men.  Wake at dawn and bathe in the rain. Spit and drink tea.  Write long poems on rice paper that I would dedicate to my cat.  Such is the nature of Lijiashan.  It is a place where you come to grow old but never really die.  You simply fade into the essence of the dream.  That night we all huddled in our communal long bed and listened to crickets serenade in the night.  When the dreaming came we all dreamed deep.   Morning came and the dance was over but the music still lingers on…

So we left our momentary bliss point and headed for the city of  Yan’an.  This is the birthplace of the People’s Party where Mao holed up (literally) in the hillside caves to muse away in his little red book.  It is the perfect terrain to hide from your enemies and see them coming from your mountainous vantage point.  As per any political mecca, there is a massive museum to indoctrinate you.  Mao’s “Library” is a building of epic proportions that looks like it was designed by  Kim Jong-il ’s personal architect.  The word “ostentatious” is too paltry to use as a descriptor.  As I am sure you are all aware,  Mao himself was responsible for Japan surrendering in World War II and he and Norman Bethune cured all disease from the peasantry.  Life in Red China was so wonderful that many “important military men from the USA” came to live and toil with the new world order.  You really could not leave this place without some Maomerbilia from the Red Party gift shop.  I was partial to the blue striped sailor shirt with Mao’s twenty-something Grinder profile pic emblazed in the front.  And there were many men along the strip that night who felt the same way.

Our hotel room was quite the experience.  The hallway down to our room was a kilometer long.  Seriously.  As in the hotel was an entire block long.  It was a good 15-minute trek to the reception desk .  Our room came with a window that was cemented in with cinder blocks with two fist-sized holes to allow ventilation.  Our bathroom was a lovely western style, which meant we had a sit down toilet in the shower stall – as per all homes in the west.  The tile work was decorative scroll of the English phrase “Sample Text” done in various fonts. The kicker was the stage platform in front of our bed with the display case of sexual aids.  Later, when we went for dinner there was some form of karaoke/bingo going on in the banquet hall.  We didn’t stay for the festivities but instead went down the street to a local establishment that served beer, stir fried broccoli and a fish soup that took hours to prepare (we think they had to go to the river to catch the fish first - or at least that was the beer rational we came up with).  Richard managed to avoid an awkard and potentially violent drunken brawl with some mafia types in a private room and I was afforded rock star status as one of six white women in the entire city.

Coffee and internet however, remain elusive...

Just your average duck our for his morning stroll

The Mao Bridge at night in Yan'an

My secret celebrity status finally catches up with me

Dragon Temple

Village Elder (or Opium Warlord) in Lijiashan

Our home stay host gathering our dinner (Lijiashan)

Posing at the Mao Museum while Simon takes a pee break

A welcome quiet dinner in Lijiashan

A Room with a View

Embracing my inner Mao

The artist in me sees the artist in you

One sexy ginger beast

The Throne Room in Yan'an