Scooter Tour to Shuhe Ancient City

Today I decided to rent an electric scooter and go on an independent exploration of some popular and less popular spots in the area. My host had hooked me up with a rental place that delivered the bike to our hillside residence, and supplied me with a list of six places I should visit in order, which was really helpful.

My first two stops were local parks created around reservoirs. While the first one was closed over the holidays, the second one was quite nice and I went and walked around for a little bit. When I turned back to head toward my scooter to continue my journey, I was intercepted on my way by a woman and her daughter.

The woman approached me in good English, saying that her daughter was extremely curious about foreigners and if I'd like to join them for their picnic. Honestly, I think the daughter was just a pretense, and it was actually the woman who was curious, since the daughter was aged four and didn't even look at me 👀

I joined them at their picnic in the park, where I was invited to share homemade rice candies with them, and was given several things as gifts - mostly fruit to take with me, and some things to eat with them. They shared some photos with me about how they spent New Years Eve the previous day, and I was able to share a few photos with them as well about how I had spent it.

The encounter didn't last very long as the kids were getting giddy and wanted to go, and soon I was on my way to the next stop on my list - Shuhe Ancient Town. Lijiang actually had three different ancient cities, the original one close to my place, Shuhe, and Baisha.

At Shuhe, I was pretty disappointed. It wasn't in a good state, many stalls were vacant (for longer time, not just the holidays), and the overall ambiance just didn't vibe well with me. I went to the tea horse museum to learn more about the significance of the tea trade in the region for silk road trading, but only the name on the outside of the building was in English - everything else was in Chinese.

I continued on to Baisha after a quick and boring lunch, hoping for a nicer place.Read more