postscript

My last night in Lijiang was actually a very interesting one. I walked around feeling a bit lost for a while, had some tea. Then I was walking through the main square in old town and I saw Naxi dancing. Naxi dancing generally involves a large number of old ladies, and a few old men, in traditional costumes, dancing around slowly in a large circle, while one of them stands in the middle, bobbing up and down holding a portable cassette recorder that is blaring out Naxi music.

The dancing this night was not being put on for the tourists. A young man played a traditional flute, while about 40 young blokes (probably 16-30 years old) dressed in street clothes (baggy jeans, sports jackets) danced a Naxi traditional dance. This was not the typical sedate dancing displayed by the Naxi ladies. These guys shouted and sang and turned and kicked as the music from the flute got faster and faster. They were pulling people in out of the crowd to join in, most of whom were cute, young, Chinese females. And me.

One of the guys in the circle had beckoned to me to join in, and in an attempt to defeat my downer mood, I accepted. The dancing was similar in style to the Mosuo dancing, so I was able pick it up pretty quickly. He said to me "Hello" "What is your name?" and "Do you speak Chinese?". He spoke these sentences very fluently, but it turned out they were the only things he knew how to say in English. We danced energeticly until I was completely exhausted. It turned out he was a 21 year old mechanic and afterwards he took me out to a karaoke bar where he bought me beer, sang cheesy love songs and professed his undying love. The words "I've always wanted to marry a foreign woman" and "you can have as many children as you like because you're not Chinese" did not particularly help his cause.

Got about two hours sleep and then caught the bus to the airport the next morning. The flight from Lijiang to Kunming and from there to Bangkok, was uneventful. Unfortunately at 10pm a Thai Air employee informed me that my flight to Melbourne had been cancelled due to lack of numbers, and that I could take a flight tomorrow morning, which would go via Sydney. Before going to the airport motel for the night, I had to make a very difficult phone call. "Um, Scott. You know how I'm supposed to be home at midday tomorrow, well it's going to be midnight instead..."

I've been home around 9 weeks now. The first six weeks involved frantic wedding planning and getting to know my fiance again. The wedding day was fantastic. We had an absolute ball. Two weeks honeymoon in Cairns. And now back to study, back to our home and back to our cat, who brought a dead bird into the house last night.

signing off....
Laura did Yongning.