Dali: Ancient and not so ancient pagodas

February 14, 2008

On the hillside a few kilometers outside of Dali are some interesting tower-shaped pagodas, a group of three and another situated alone, which are some of the oldest standing structures in Southwest China. The single pagoda is awaiting restoration and can not be accessed; the more well known Three Pagodas are located in an enclosed park. We spend quite some time looking for the road leading to the Three Pagodas which are visible from a long way off, not realizing you can only approach them through the park entrance. But our roamings up and down side streets which lead nowhere is interesting in itself.

The park entrance fee is 12 Euros, by Chinese standards an exorbitant price for a park . However, the recently-opened park has been laid out on a grand scale and encompasses not only the three old pagodas but also Chongsheng Temple.

Temple sounds like one building, but this is a series of many pagodas reaching up the mountain side, their bright orange roofs making a stunning contrast with the blue, cloudless sky. The temple buildings are new, based on the original, and are a mixture of museum and place of worship. Even if these aren't ancient stones, you get a feeling for the Chinese sense of heaven and earth in its architecture - wide spaces, stairs leading up to temples, temples in tiers going up the mountain side, and all this topped by mountain peaks and the sky.

As the translation didn't make too much sense to me I asked my friend David, a Chinese scholar, for some help. He suggested this as a possible translation: (The world of) flowers and grasses is without selfishness. The world of humans is not without appreciation (of this).

Today we discover where the western tourists hang out. There are some pleasant cafes which offer Chinese and Tibetan food as well as western fare and good Yunnan coffee. In the old days this was almost the only place in China where homesick ex-pats and globetrotters could get scrambled eggs or banana pancakes. By now the cafes have become more sophisticated and have chocolate fondue, café latte, pizza and dry red Yunnan wine on their menus. And what's more, they are very popular among young Chinese. It's definitely not an exclusively western scene any more.

On the way to the park and on the way back we ride through streets of the old town. They are a bit removed from the main drag where there are tourist shops to the right and to the left, a commercialized part of town which soon becomes tiresome.

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