Dali in 1995: A personal 'Heaven on Earth'

That initial journey involved heading out by sleeper bus from Kunming on a long, slow journey to Xiaguan or “New Dali” on the southern shores of Erhai Lake. Road travel was the only option in 1995, with expressways still in the planning stages. For many hours the bus followed a two-lane highway, busy with lorries and buses. Still, it was a beautiful journey as we wound through mountainous countryside, passing adobe brick-walled villages and fields of corn, vegetables and rice alongside considerable pig rearing.

The journey followed historic routes such as the wartime “Burma Road” to Xiaguan, where I would overnight. This administrative center for the Dali county-level city has developed into a major transportation center. In 1997, an airport opened, followed by extensive expressway and railway construction connecting to Kunming, Lijiang and other cities such as Baoshan and Ruili bordering Myanmar. Such infrastructure development has facilitated ease of access across China, greatly stimulating tourism while encouraging the opening of high-end hotels and related visitor facilities.

None of that existed as I headed north on a small bus from Xiaguan following a former “Tea Horse Trail” toward older historic Dali. Streams from the 4,000-meter-high Cangshan Mountain gushed beneath the road and flowed outward toward Erhai, one of China’s largest freshwater lakes. At 40 kilometers long and 6.3 km wide, it glimmered under the morning sun.

With buses not allowed inside the older city, the journey terminated close to fortified South Gate. In 1995, only limited sections of the once encompassing 8-km Ming Dynasty wall remained intact, but in 1998 much was carefully restored. Renovation was partly spurred by the 1999 Garden Expo in Kunming, which would bring a considerable influx of visitors both to the regional capital and Yunnan’s developing tourist destinations such as Dali.