South of the Clouds by Bill Porter

Author:Bill Porter
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781619026667
Publisher: Counterpoint
Published: 2015-10-25T16:00:00+00:00

The Stone Forest of Lunan

It was only 125 kilometers southeast of Kunming and was already becoming a major tourist destination. But its fame was not recent. Over 2,300 years ago, Ch’u Yuan, China’s first great poet, asked, “Could there be a forest of stone?” A thousand years later, another poet answered, “Why not a forest of stone?” Were they just being cute, or had they heard about the rock formations outside the town of Lunan?

Either way, Yunnan’s Stone Forest had been on the itinerary of Chinese travelers for at least three hundred years. Nowadays thousands of people visited every day. In terms of size, the main concentration covered an area of twelve square kilometers, or two hundred acres, which meant it was not too big to walk through in a few hours. Most tourists only came for the day and limited their exploration to the central part near the entrance, then headed back to Kunming.

Since I hoped to see more than the part near the entrance, I checked in at the hotel just outside the front gate then hired a guide to lead me through the maze and to tell me stories. My guide was a young Sani girl, and she was dressed in traditional Sani attire. The first thing she did after leading me into the forest of limestone pinnacles was to teach me how to use a leaf to make music. She reached into a bush and plucked a leaf the size and shape of a tea leaf. She said the thinner the leaf, the better. Camellia leaves, she said, were too thick. Then she held the leaf against her rose-red lower lip and blew. I watched with rapt attention, then I tried it. Or at least I tried to try it. The only sound I got was more of a sputter than anything resembling a musical note. Maybe I needed a thinner leaf, or maybe softer lips.

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