A Breakfast Fit for Emperors

(Abby)

Today, we woke up to one of the best breakfasts we all have had since our entering China. This Old Theatre Inn really knows how to provide superb service to its guests. Ola, Mr. and Mrs. Li, and I had a hearty “Hiker’s Breakfast” consisting of French toast, an egg, fruit, and excellent coffee. Nik had the “Hearty Breakfast” consisting of toast, eggs, fruit, and tea. The bread was very hearty and the French toast itself was rich and decadent. We will all be ordering this meal again tomorrow morning before our departure to Lijiang.


The Hiker’s Breakfast was also very fitting for this morning because we would be venturing to Mt. Shibaoshan to visit some temples and cave grottos, as well as hike along the old Teahorse Trail. The temple we visited was very beautiful, but not exactly unlike all the other temples we had seen. The defining characteristics of this temple, however, were the local inhabitants that resided in this temple’s mountains. As soon as we loaded off of our bus, monkeys started descending everywhere from trees and from behind rocks. Our reverberating voices drew them out of their abodes and were on the lookout for people to get food from or perhaps grab someone’s bag. There were so many of them that we had to take a detour up a different, steeper trail to avoid their mischievous antics. On this trail, our tour guide, Evan, seemed to simply bound up these severely inclined slopes at an impossibly fast speed. I then remembered that this man was from Tibet and was used to trekking through lands 3,700 meters above sea level. Consequently, this hike to the temple 2,200 meters above sea level was a piece of airy cake to him. I was slightly jealous of him when I wasn’t trying to heave oxygen down my trachea.

After visiting the temple, our van took us another 500 meters up the mountain to visit the cave grottos. These grottos house stone carvings that were carved into the side of the mountain back in the Tang Dynasty. Time has given them a weathered and mysterious aura to them. Evan also made fast friends with another group of Chinese tourists, which wasn’t surprising considering he is a very swell guy. Actually, all of our tour guides have been able to make fast friends with almost everyone they cross paths with. The people here really are very nice and pleasant to be around.

Our next adventure of the day was to hike down the old Teahorse Trail. This trail was used by travelers and their horses to transport tea as well as other goods up and down the mountains for trading and distribution purposes. In all, we hiked about four miles in total and crossed a couple of rickety bridges to reach the bottom of the mountain. As usual, we caused some stirring at the gate when we passed as the guards migrated to the windows to get a better look at us. We as a group have learned to greet this people with a friendly smile, a wave of the hand, and a “nihao!” to break this awkwardness, and to which we receive a smiling wave back and a “ hello hello!”

We then proceeded to walk through a peaceful Bai people village where a lot of new construction was going on. New houses seemed to be going up left and right, but many still use traditional dried mud bricks to build them. The intricacy of these was amazing as well. There is so much detail in the architecture here: swirling, robustly colorful designs paint the outside of houses, engravings decorate roof tiles, and grand courtyards with many flowers and delicate trees greet guests as they walk through the home’s front gate. The careful details and grand architecture people put into their homes here makes western homes look monochromatic and a little plain.

We left the village at 2:30 with appetites to eat a cow, which many of us did! We went back to Shaxi Village to find a restaurant our hotel recommended called Woodfish. This restaurant was advertised as being the best western restaurant around, for an American man, Tom, and his Chinese wife run the establishment. Unfortunately, Tom was not in the house to tell us his tales, but we were so busy eating the food that we didn’t mind one bit. The restaurant consisted of one room that furnished one four-person table and four bar stools. A third of the room was also devoted to a kitchen space where we could watch Tom’s wife prepare our food. Mrs. Li, Ola, and Nik had authentic beef hamburgers with savory fries, Arlen had beef and rice, and I had a BLT with egg. The bread we consumed was homemade and very hardy and very good. China is not known for its bread and we had yet to consume a good piece of it while here, so this meal was a real treat for us.

Afterwards, we all ventured back to the Old Tree Café, which we visited yesterday to grab some real coffee for how can three American teenagers survive without their coffee fix!? We ordered a wide array of drinks ranging from iced lattes to pineapple mint juices. Some of us even went back for seconds. For a remote village, Shaxi sure knows how to make a good cup of coffee.

After a quick rest back at the hotel, at which time I wrote up to here on this blog post in the setting sunlight, with my feet propped up, looking over the canola flower fields, we ventured back to Shaxi to try another western vegetarian restaurant called The Hungry Buddha. Let me tell you what a wonderful experience we all had at this establishment. The restaurant is set up so that you are seated at a bar that encompasses the middle of the room around the chef’s cooking space. We ordered authentic Italian pizza off a sassy menu that had a section titled “Wi-Fi” to which the caption was “do you really need it?” Well folks, we didn’t as the waitress and her visiting friend, Emi, started chatting with us.

We found out that Emi had a tea company in Beijing and was married to an American professor. She even offered to take us all out to dinner while in Beijing and bring us samples of her tea. Who knew we would make such a friend like this in the middle of the countryside! We were all so grateful to her, yet we were not sure how to repay her. Mrs. Li suggested that we could teach her a poem to which Nik and Ola started reciting Hamlet’s “to be, or not to be?” soliloquy. Quick witted Emi laughed and offered us more coffee by saying “to drink, or not to drink?” in order to continue our conversations late into the night. We politely declined, but did participate in the dessert sampler that offered tiramisu, chocolate mousse, lava cake, and a banana sorbet. As we took part in this delicious end of the evening, the chef performed a magic trick for us where he switched to cards that were placed under two eggs to appear in the other’s place. We were all so amazed that we hardly noticed the beggar that had slipped into the room and situated himself in between me and Nik, which startled us very much when we turned to each other to laugh at the amazing show. After the man was ushered out, we sadly had to leave to depart back to our hotel, for we had requested 45 more minutes for the driver to pick us up by. This night was a night that all of us were going to remember for the rest of our lives.

Zai jian for now!