Where China Meets India: Burma and the New Crossroads of Asia by Thant Myint-u

Author:Thant Myint-u
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Non-Fiction, bought-and-paid-for, History
ISBN: 9780374299071
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2011-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

From the bus station a taxi had taken me to the edge of the ‘old town’. Taxis and most other vehicles were not allowed in. To one side of me was a four-lane street with lots of traffic and modern shops, most of them selling car parts and construction equipment, and to the other was an unbroken row of small chocolate-coloured wooden buildings, all in a traditional Chinese style, with shutters and decorated roofs. A cobblestone road led though a big ceremonial gateway and then into a maze of more wooden buildings. Every few feet there were lampposts with hanging red lanterns and old gas lamps. It was easy to imagine Mongol horsemen suddenly appearing around the corner, fresh from battle with Teutonic Knights.

Old town Lijiang is a reconstruction. In February 1996 an earthquake measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale destroyed much of what was there, killing 200 people and injuring 14,000 others, many seriously. Nearly 300,000 people were forced out of their damaged homes. Hundreds of aftershocks followed. Landslides destroyed more homes in the mountains nearby. Lijiang had to be rebuilt and the flimsy concrete towers that had sprung up over the 1980s and early 1990s were replaced with sturdier lower-rise buildings and more traditional single-family dwellings. With help from the World Bank, the old town was restored, with new old-looking streets, bridges and canals. In 1999, Lijiang ‘old town’ was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The boom in domestic tourism soon followed.

My hotel was in a quiet alley, but steps away there were legions of Chinese tourists, strolling up and down the high street. The old town had been rebuilt as a sort of movie set cum amusement park, like Dali, a place for Chinese visitors to walk around, eat, shop, and feel like they were in a strange and distant place. The high street was at least a mile long, lined with dozens of souvenir shops. At one end of the high street was the ‘Old Stone Bridge’, reconstructed, so the tourist pamphlets said, at the very place where the Mongols had tethered their ponies and pitched their tents. Right next to it was an enormous wooden watermill. There were other, smaller watermills elsewhere, as well as many canals, some substantial, with a footbridge to cross, others no bigger than a drain. The water was sparkling clean. Actually everything was spotless, including the several public toilets, and even the wood on the buildings looked like it had been recently varnished. In keeping with the exotic look, the salespeople, nearly all women, wore the Naxi costume, a sort of bright blue smock with black cloth shoes and a cap, like a coif in a Flemish painting. There were shops selling locally made paper, silver, leather goods, and the tea, yogurts and cheeses that were the specialities of Lijiang.

For the first couple of days in Lijiang, my walks were essentially confined to the ‘old town’. The high street led to a central plaza, from which there were a couple of other big streets and lots of little alleyways.

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