Lu Gu Lake - The Land of Women
I'm posting this because of a recent Facebook posting regarding LuGu Lake.
September 21, 1995. tape transcription from mini cassette 5, china 1995
After many long hours of riding on unpaved or semi-paved roads
through the mountains in the rain, and having to stop for a tire
change, we arrived at the overlook to Lu Gu Lake. Then we
stopped again at the toll gate entering the village, to buy
"tickets." The village had only been introduced to electrical
power, and therefore to television since July, not more than two
months earlier than our arrival. On the island that you can see
from the road, there's a red©roofed temple, which we were told
that we might visit later. Entering the town on our minibus, we
looped around on a dirt, or rather mud, road that went almost
exactly up to the shore of the lake. At the very end of the road
was our guest house, where our bus drove into the courtyard. The
building had carved wooden doors, brightly painted in primary
colors. We were ushered into the bare dining room, seating
ourselves at the plain metal table for a steaming hot lunch. It
was still raining when we finished eating, so the trip across the
lake to the Buddhist temple was cancelled. Given that the dugout
canoes that I saw at the shore were half©filled with water, I
can't say that I'm sorry.
So we switched to plan B, which was to visit in the home of
a Mosuo woman. We walked down the muddy road with our umbrellas
to our destination. Standing in the courtyard, our Mosuo-speaking guide explained that one section of the building was
known as the Flower House. It is where the young women, the
daughters of the family, receive their lovers. Opposite that was
the family temple, for these people are Tibetan Buddhists, or
Lamaists as the guide referred to them. There was a room with an
altar, and a pad for prostrating oneself in front of the altar.
Also in that section were some small guest rooms, sparsely
furnished.
Between these two wings is the part known as the mother's
room. It is the place where family ceremonies are held. We were
received inside by the mother of the household, and her daughter,
and the daughter's son of kindergarten age. The daughter's nine-year-old daughter was in school until almost the end of our
visit. We were offered seats, low benches and cushions, around
the fireplace in the floor of the room. A tiled altar was
against the wall behind it. On the altar was a bust of Chairman
Mao and several smaller items. We were offered plates of pumpkin
seeds and sunflower seeds, some apples, crackers, and small bowls
of wine made from oats and corn. Ears of fresh corn were roasted
in the coals of the fire and served to us. Two bare electric
bulbs hung from the ceiling, but were not turned on. A skylight
in the ceiling was covered with a translucent, parchment-like
skin. The fire and the skylight were the only source of light
while we sat in the grey afternoon asking a lot of questions.
The woman told us that she had only one child, her daughter,
because after the one birth she had some sort of sickness which
prevented her from having more children. In the Mosuo language,
there is no word for father. Men are called "Uncle," but now the
small children in the family know whom their father is. The
house had belong to the older woman's mother, and to her mother
before her, and three generations were living in it now. Neither
she nor her daughter had had the opportunity to attend school.
At one point in the conversation, she joked that she didn't even
know how to read the characters for "men" and "women" on the
bathroom signs, but she's glad that her grandchildren are able to
go to school now. A portable radio was hanging on a nail on the
wall. She had heard of the UN Conference on Women on the radio,
so she thought we must be very special people.
We asked her a lot of questions about the matriarchal
culture of her village people. When I asked if it was ever the
case that men forced themselves sexually on women, she said that
before the young man could come to visit the daughter, he must
visit the mother and she must give her approval. When we asked
about fighting and yelling and arguing, she laughed. She thought
that was a very funny question to ask about the relationship
between men and women. She said that there was no violence
between men and women.
The house had two big wooden pillars in it. We were told
that one was from the top of the tree, and represents the woman.
The other, from the bottom, or roots, of the tree, represents the
man. One of the ceremonies which takes place in the mother's
room is the passage to adulthood at the age of thirteen.
Depending on the gender of the child passing to adult, the
ceremony takes place around the appropriate pillar. After the
ceremony, the new adult wears a different style of clothing.
However, it's usually not until age 17 or 18 that young women
start taking lovers.
We were told the story of the creation of Lu Gu Lake, also
known as Mother's Lake: Once upon a time there was an orphan boy
who was mute. He was something of an outcast among the other
children, and they didn't share their lunches with him, so he had
nothing to eat. He wandered off by himself and discovered a
stream with big fish in it. He cut off the tail of the fish and
ate it for his lunch. He returned to the stream every day, and
the fish would always grow back its tail. He would repeat the
process and have his lunch. Finally, the others noticed that he
wasn't lean and sickly any more. He had gained weight and looked
healthy, with rosy cheeks. They followed him and saw what he was
doing. Then they pulled the big fish out of the river, causing a
flood which formed the lake. While this was happening, one woman
was feeding her pigs and the pig trough floated away on the lake.
So now we see the dugout canoes which are the same shape as pig
troughs.
When we left the woman's house, we walked back to the guest
house and finally unloaded the luggage from the bus and checked
into our rooms. These accommodations are what our guide, Ginger,
called "basic," meaning there are not only no private in-room
bathrooms, there are no bathrooms. There is no running water.
There was an old©fashioned pitcher and wash basin in each room
and a latrine down the stairs and outside the courtyard. The
other thing which defined these accommodations as very basic is
that there was no electricity. Probably there was electricity
some of the time, because there were light bulbs and switches in
the halls, but turning on the switch had no effect. Candles and
matches were supplied in each room. Also provided were heavy
comforters to be put over the wool blankets on the bed, because
there is no source of heat at night. At the high mountain
altitude, and with the rainy weather, it was rather cold.
In the evening, after our meal, a bonfire was built in the
courtyard. A group of Mosuo women and men started singing and
folkdancing, wearing the clothing customary to the area. Later
they invited all the guests to join them. After the dancing was
finished, there was a songfest, with the different groups of
guests, including Chinese students and other Chinese tourists,
being to encourage to contribute songs of their own.
(start of tape 6)Other people at guest house: one was a journalist, one was an
artist...unintelligible...(one was an engineer at Shenzhen).
They had gone horseback riding the day before, going out when we
arrived and they came back while we were still eating lunch,
because it was raining and it wasn't much fun. It's been raining
for most of this trip, as a matter of fact. We're getting kind
of water logged.
The next day we left, backtracking over the mountain road to
the town of Fighting River, which we had travelled mostly in the
dark two nights before, after having a Mongolian barbecue dinner.
This time we had lunch in the same restaurant. Then we took off
in another direction for another 50 km. of bad road.
We've come down (in altitude) quite a bit. We're on a better
road, altho there's been rockslides on the road. We're right at
the Yangtze River, it's 5:28pm After crossing the Yangtze, we
made one of our famous combination roadside pitstops and
photo-opportunies, in the rain, of course. But everyone agrees
that the roadside pitstops, even in the rain, are better than
using the outhouses where we've gone in some of the small towns.
Friday, September 22
We are in Li Jiang now. In the morning, we went to the Jade
Mountain Summit Monastery, where we saw the entwining magnolia
trees, which were saved from the Red Guard during the Cultural
Revolution, by the Lama throwing himself on it and saying,
"You'll have to kill me first before you cut this down!"
Leaving the monastery, we went to Bai Sha, which means White
Sands.This is where, at one time, was the old capital of the
area.The old house built by Mr. Mu, who became the power of the
area.In that house are frescoes that are 600 years old.There
are over a hundred figures in the paintings, and they show a
mixture of levels of religion, including Tibetan Buddhism,
commonly called Lamaism here, Taoism, Chinese Buddhism, and then
the Four Kings in the 4 corners and there were figures on each
side showing factions that they had split up into. It was
explained to us that the art style of some of the figures show
the different time, because the Sung and Tang Dynasties were
portrayed as fleshier, chubbier--they thought that was good-looking.
The one told us about it is himself an artist, and
he was there with his little girl, who was sort of hanging on to
him. And then we went into their studio, where they were doing
paintings of Dung Ba writing, which is the Naxi pictographs. He
was working there with several artists, painting some scrolls,
which, of course, our people bought. Mona bought one which is
the choreography of a dance.
Saturday, September 23
On the way back into town, (this was outside of town) we
passed an area and off in the distance saw some buildings, which
is Ginger said, where Little Swallow lived. Little Swallow is
one of the characters in a PBS documentary on Li Jiang. This is
the place that the 4-hour documentary was made. Little Swallow
was a blind girl who wanted to become a massage therapist in
order to earn money to go away to school. As a matter of fact,
working in our hotel were two young people who were blind,
working as massagists (masseurs?), and I had a massage from one of them
yesterday, before dinner. Apparently, there is a massage teacher
who is helping these people to become productively employed.
But before the massage, we went for lunch in the old town.
The name of the place was Din-Din. We ate on the second floor of
a room which was, for the most part, open-air and rather chilly.
It has been very cold here. We're at 8000 feet altitude, more or
less, and it has been raining, as usual. What they had was a
brazier, like a deep bowl with a lip. They put burning charcoal
in it and put it under the table to keep our feet warm, and help
dry out our shoes! I feel like I've been walking in puddles of
water within my shoes and that I'm growing webs between my toes.
Then we walked through the old town, did some shopping, of
course. A lovely old town with narrow walking streets, no
transportation driving through it, and canals, with bridges over
the larger canals. The smaller canals parallelled the street,
with little planks or bridges that go from the street into each
shop or home. Among the things that I bought were a Naxi vest
which buttons on the side, and a little jacket with pockets, to
wear like a blazer kind of jacket or suit jacket. Also, at the
monastery, I bought a wall-hanging which shows figures for
longevity and good fortune, and up above are eight buddhist
saints. It's on red velvet background with gold braid sown on to
make the designs and dragons on the side.
In this town, many of the women wear "Mao" caps, supposedly
because Chairman Mao came to visit the town at one point. So we
saw them wearing blue Mao caps and their blue vests, similar to
the one I bought, and a skirt, and wrapped around them a padding
to protect their backs, and then they carry baskets like that,
and carry umbrellas over all of that. I took a few shots on the
street, I hope they came out.
And so now, we're heading to Dali. A few comments on
Chinese society. It seems that no semblance of a classless
society has ever been achieved here, and now the privileges of
class are blooming strong again. For example, some sleeper cars
one the train are restricted to those who have position, for
example an academic position or other kind of important position.
An ordinary person, even if they have the money, cannot buy the
privilege of a soft sleeper. There is also still a heavy system
of guanxi, which is something like obligation with connections.
You use your connections to obtain favors and pay back favors,
and that's how things get done. Sometimes, according to Roger,
our guide in Chengdu and Sichuan province, the favors that you
have to provide somebody to whom you are obligated, is to find a
"beauty," in other words to find an attractive young girl for the
purposes of sex. So you also still have sexism alive and well,
along with the class privileges. The physicist that we met in Lu
Gu Lake, when we exchanged cards, was very impressed with the
fact that we were Ph.D.'s, that we had such a high level of
education. That's part of the stratification.
We just had lunch in a little neighborhood restaurant, Jian
Chuan, and took some pictures of the open kitchen and sat at
little tables with little benches, sort of your
local.........try again to decipher this phrase.
This trip is much different from my previous trips,
where we always ate in hotel restaurants and other kinds of fancy
restaurants. This is eating where the real folks eat. Last
night at dinner we had what we called french-fried potatoes, and
the flavor brought up the memory of when I was at Peterson
School, and we used to go to the Chinese takeout restaurant on
Bryn Mawr and buy a box of French fries, and pass the good-tasting french fries around and enjoy the salty taste/
Passing a brickyard where they have big stone ovens that are
making bricks and roof tiles, and some other kind of ceramic
shape, obviously also used in housing construction somehow.
We arrived in our hotel in Dali around 4:30 or quarter to
five in the afternoon. It's a charming hotel in the sense that
we're in an old-fashioned courtyard, with lovely designs on the
building. However, the rooms all open out on to an open©air
balcony, and, it is once again, icy, damp, cold, and there's no
heat in the rooms (sniff) and it's raining. Although the view is
nice, it's very uncomfortable. My shoes are soaked again. Last
night in Li Jiang, they gave us electric heaters, but there are
no heaters here, so we have electric blanket pads to go under the
sheets, so you're fine as long as you're in bed, but it gets cold
when you get out of bed. And it's raining, raining, raining....
We're going to have to cancel the trip to Tiger Leaping Gorge,
because the rain has washed out the road, making it dangerous to
travel. I'm not sure what's going to happen with our boat ride
on Erhou Lake, which we're supposed to do tomorrow. We will be
going to the place where they make batik. I'll talk more about
that later. Meanwhile, I've been spending the evening after
dinner...Oh we ate dinner at a place called Salvador's Dali,
which is sort of a cute little play on words...and then I've been
sitting in the room, writing postcards and watching Chinese TV.
My photos may be posted later. Meanwhile, for those who want to see what LuGu Lake looks like, go to
September 21, 1995. tape transcription from mini cassette 5, china 1995
After many long hours of riding on unpaved or semi-paved roads
through the mountains in the rain, and having to stop for a tire
change, we arrived at the overlook to Lu Gu Lake. Then we
stopped again at the toll gate entering the village, to buy
"tickets." The village had only been introduced to electrical
power, and therefore to television since July, not more than two
months earlier than our arrival. On the island that you can see
from the road, there's a red©roofed temple, which we were told
that we might visit later. Entering the town on our minibus, we
looped around on a dirt, or rather mud, road that went almost
exactly up to the shore of the lake. At the very end of the road
was our guest house, where our bus drove into the courtyard. The
building had carved wooden doors, brightly painted in primary
colors. We were ushered into the bare dining room, seating
ourselves at the plain metal table for a steaming hot lunch. It
was still raining when we finished eating, so the trip across the
lake to the Buddhist temple was cancelled. Given that the dugout
canoes that I saw at the shore were half©filled with water, I
can't say that I'm sorry.
So we switched to plan B, which was to visit in the home of
a Mosuo woman. We walked down the muddy road with our umbrellas
to our destination. Standing in the courtyard, our Mosuo-speaking guide explained that one section of the building was
known as the Flower House. It is where the young women, the
daughters of the family, receive their lovers. Opposite that was
the family temple, for these people are Tibetan Buddhists, or
Lamaists as the guide referred to them. There was a room with an
altar, and a pad for prostrating oneself in front of the altar.
Also in that section were some small guest rooms, sparsely
furnished.
Between these two wings is the part known as the mother's
room. It is the place where family ceremonies are held. We were
received inside by the mother of the household, and her daughter,
and the daughter's son of kindergarten age. The daughter's nine-year-old daughter was in school until almost the end of our
visit. We were offered seats, low benches and cushions, around
the fireplace in the floor of the room. A tiled altar was
against the wall behind it. On the altar was a bust of Chairman
Mao and several smaller items. We were offered plates of pumpkin
seeds and sunflower seeds, some apples, crackers, and small bowls
of wine made from oats and corn. Ears of fresh corn were roasted
in the coals of the fire and served to us. Two bare electric
bulbs hung from the ceiling, but were not turned on. A skylight
in the ceiling was covered with a translucent, parchment-like
skin. The fire and the skylight were the only source of light
while we sat in the grey afternoon asking a lot of questions.
The woman told us that she had only one child, her daughter,
because after the one birth she had some sort of sickness which
prevented her from having more children. In the Mosuo language,
there is no word for father. Men are called "Uncle," but now the
small children in the family know whom their father is. The
house had belong to the older woman's mother, and to her mother
before her, and three generations were living in it now. Neither
she nor her daughter had had the opportunity to attend school.
At one point in the conversation, she joked that she didn't even
know how to read the characters for "men" and "women" on the
bathroom signs, but she's glad that her grandchildren are able to
go to school now. A portable radio was hanging on a nail on the
wall. She had heard of the UN Conference on Women on the radio,
so she thought we must be very special people.
We asked her a lot of questions about the matriarchal
culture of her village people. When I asked if it was ever the
case that men forced themselves sexually on women, she said that
before the young man could come to visit the daughter, he must
visit the mother and she must give her approval. When we asked
about fighting and yelling and arguing, she laughed. She thought
that was a very funny question to ask about the relationship
between men and women. She said that there was no violence
between men and women.
The house had two big wooden pillars in it. We were told
that one was from the top of the tree, and represents the woman.
The other, from the bottom, or roots, of the tree, represents the
man. One of the ceremonies which takes place in the mother's
room is the passage to adulthood at the age of thirteen.
Depending on the gender of the child passing to adult, the
ceremony takes place around the appropriate pillar. After the
ceremony, the new adult wears a different style of clothing.
However, it's usually not until age 17 or 18 that young women
start taking lovers.
We were told the story of the creation of Lu Gu Lake, also
known as Mother's Lake: Once upon a time there was an orphan boy
who was mute. He was something of an outcast among the other
children, and they didn't share their lunches with him, so he had
nothing to eat. He wandered off by himself and discovered a
stream with big fish in it. He cut off the tail of the fish and
ate it for his lunch. He returned to the stream every day, and
the fish would always grow back its tail. He would repeat the
process and have his lunch. Finally, the others noticed that he
wasn't lean and sickly any more. He had gained weight and looked
healthy, with rosy cheeks. They followed him and saw what he was
doing. Then they pulled the big fish out of the river, causing a
flood which formed the lake. While this was happening, one woman
was feeding her pigs and the pig trough floated away on the lake.
So now we see the dugout canoes which are the same shape as pig
troughs.
When we left the woman's house, we walked back to the guest
house and finally unloaded the luggage from the bus and checked
into our rooms. These accommodations are what our guide, Ginger,
called "basic," meaning there are not only no private in-room
bathrooms, there are no bathrooms. There is no running water.
There was an old©fashioned pitcher and wash basin in each room
and a latrine down the stairs and outside the courtyard. The
other thing which defined these accommodations as very basic is
that there was no electricity. Probably there was electricity
some of the time, because there were light bulbs and switches in
the halls, but turning on the switch had no effect. Candles and
matches were supplied in each room. Also provided were heavy
comforters to be put over the wool blankets on the bed, because
there is no source of heat at night. At the high mountain
altitude, and with the rainy weather, it was rather cold.
In the evening, after our meal, a bonfire was built in the
courtyard. A group of Mosuo women and men started singing and
folkdancing, wearing the clothing customary to the area. Later
they invited all the guests to join them. After the dancing was
finished, there was a songfest, with the different groups of
guests, including Chinese students and other Chinese tourists,
being to encourage to contribute songs of their own.
(start of tape 6)Other people at guest house: one was a journalist, one was an
artist...unintelligible...(one was an engineer at Shenzhen).
They had gone horseback riding the day before, going out when we
arrived and they came back while we were still eating lunch,
because it was raining and it wasn't much fun. It's been raining
for most of this trip, as a matter of fact. We're getting kind
of water logged.
The next day we left, backtracking over the mountain road to
the town of Fighting River, which we had travelled mostly in the
dark two nights before, after having a Mongolian barbecue dinner.
This time we had lunch in the same restaurant. Then we took off
in another direction for another 50 km. of bad road.
We've come down (in altitude) quite a bit. We're on a better
road, altho there's been rockslides on the road. We're right at
the Yangtze River, it's 5:28pm After crossing the Yangtze, we
made one of our famous combination roadside pitstops and
photo-opportunies, in the rain, of course. But everyone agrees
that the roadside pitstops, even in the rain, are better than
using the outhouses where we've gone in some of the small towns.
Friday, September 22
We are in Li Jiang now. In the morning, we went to the Jade
Mountain Summit Monastery, where we saw the entwining magnolia
trees, which were saved from the Red Guard during the Cultural
Revolution, by the Lama throwing himself on it and saying,
"You'll have to kill me first before you cut this down!"
Leaving the monastery, we went to Bai Sha, which means White
Sands.This is where, at one time, was the old capital of the
area.The old house built by Mr. Mu, who became the power of the
area.In that house are frescoes that are 600 years old.There
are over a hundred figures in the paintings, and they show a
mixture of levels of religion, including Tibetan Buddhism,
commonly called Lamaism here, Taoism, Chinese Buddhism, and then
the Four Kings in the 4 corners and there were figures on each
side showing factions that they had split up into. It was
explained to us that the art style of some of the figures show
the different time, because the Sung and Tang Dynasties were
portrayed as fleshier, chubbier--they thought that was good-looking.
The one told us about it is himself an artist, and
he was there with his little girl, who was sort of hanging on to
him. And then we went into their studio, where they were doing
paintings of Dung Ba writing, which is the Naxi pictographs. He
was working there with several artists, painting some scrolls,
which, of course, our people bought. Mona bought one which is
the choreography of a dance.
Saturday, September 23
On the way back into town, (this was outside of town) we
passed an area and off in the distance saw some buildings, which
is Ginger said, where Little Swallow lived. Little Swallow is
one of the characters in a PBS documentary on Li Jiang. This is
the place that the 4-hour documentary was made. Little Swallow
was a blind girl who wanted to become a massage therapist in
order to earn money to go away to school. As a matter of fact,
working in our hotel were two young people who were blind,
working as massagists (masseurs?), and I had a massage from one of them
yesterday, before dinner. Apparently, there is a massage teacher
who is helping these people to become productively employed.
But before the massage, we went for lunch in the old town.
The name of the place was Din-Din. We ate on the second floor of
a room which was, for the most part, open-air and rather chilly.
It has been very cold here. We're at 8000 feet altitude, more or
less, and it has been raining, as usual. What they had was a
brazier, like a deep bowl with a lip. They put burning charcoal
in it and put it under the table to keep our feet warm, and help
dry out our shoes! I feel like I've been walking in puddles of
water within my shoes and that I'm growing webs between my toes.
Then we walked through the old town, did some shopping, of
course. A lovely old town with narrow walking streets, no
transportation driving through it, and canals, with bridges over
the larger canals. The smaller canals parallelled the street,
with little planks or bridges that go from the street into each
shop or home. Among the things that I bought were a Naxi vest
which buttons on the side, and a little jacket with pockets, to
wear like a blazer kind of jacket or suit jacket. Also, at the
monastery, I bought a wall-hanging which shows figures for
longevity and good fortune, and up above are eight buddhist
saints. It's on red velvet background with gold braid sown on to
make the designs and dragons on the side.
In this town, many of the women wear "Mao" caps, supposedly
because Chairman Mao came to visit the town at one point. So we
saw them wearing blue Mao caps and their blue vests, similar to
the one I bought, and a skirt, and wrapped around them a padding
to protect their backs, and then they carry baskets like that,
and carry umbrellas over all of that. I took a few shots on the
street, I hope they came out.
And so now, we're heading to Dali. A few comments on
Chinese society. It seems that no semblance of a classless
society has ever been achieved here, and now the privileges of
class are blooming strong again. For example, some sleeper cars
one the train are restricted to those who have position, for
example an academic position or other kind of important position.
An ordinary person, even if they have the money, cannot buy the
privilege of a soft sleeper. There is also still a heavy system
of guanxi, which is something like obligation with connections.
You use your connections to obtain favors and pay back favors,
and that's how things get done. Sometimes, according to Roger,
our guide in Chengdu and Sichuan province, the favors that you
have to provide somebody to whom you are obligated, is to find a
"beauty," in other words to find an attractive young girl for the
purposes of sex. So you also still have sexism alive and well,
along with the class privileges. The physicist that we met in Lu
Gu Lake, when we exchanged cards, was very impressed with the
fact that we were Ph.D.'s, that we had such a high level of
education. That's part of the stratification.
We just had lunch in a little neighborhood restaurant, Jian
Chuan, and took some pictures of the open kitchen and sat at
little tables with little benches, sort of your
local.........try again to decipher this phrase.
This trip is much different from my previous trips,
where we always ate in hotel restaurants and other kinds of fancy
restaurants. This is eating where the real folks eat. Last
night at dinner we had what we called french-fried potatoes, and
the flavor brought up the memory of when I was at Peterson
School, and we used to go to the Chinese takeout restaurant on
Bryn Mawr and buy a box of French fries, and pass the good-tasting french fries around and enjoy the salty taste/
Passing a brickyard where they have big stone ovens that are
making bricks and roof tiles, and some other kind of ceramic
shape, obviously also used in housing construction somehow.
We arrived in our hotel in Dali around 4:30 or quarter to
five in the afternoon. It's a charming hotel in the sense that
we're in an old-fashioned courtyard, with lovely designs on the
building. However, the rooms all open out on to an open©air
balcony, and, it is once again, icy, damp, cold, and there's no
heat in the rooms (sniff) and it's raining. Although the view is
nice, it's very uncomfortable. My shoes are soaked again. Last
night in Li Jiang, they gave us electric heaters, but there are
no heaters here, so we have electric blanket pads to go under the
sheets, so you're fine as long as you're in bed, but it gets cold
when you get out of bed. And it's raining, raining, raining....
We're going to have to cancel the trip to Tiger Leaping Gorge,
because the rain has washed out the road, making it dangerous to
travel. I'm not sure what's going to happen with our boat ride
on Erhou Lake, which we're supposed to do tomorrow. We will be
going to the place where they make batik. I'll talk more about
that later. Meanwhile, I've been spending the evening after
dinner...Oh we ate dinner at a place called Salvador's Dali,
which is sort of a cute little play on words...and then I've been
sitting in the room, writing postcards and watching Chinese TV.
My photos may be posted later. Meanwhile, for those who want to see what LuGu Lake looks like, go to
Labels: China, LuGu Lake, matriarchy, matrilineal, travel