Our\nNaxi driver from Lijiang to Dali was assigned this leg of our China trip\nbecause he has to see a specialist about a headache. En route he picks up a\nfriend who gets off at the airport road south of town. Attempting to explain the\ndetour, our driver settles for steering motions and mouth noises like a\nwhistling engine. We can\u2019t tell whether his friend with the small briefcase is\ntraveling to Kunming on business or is supposed to pilot the plane. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Carolyn\nand I nod as if we understand. He goes back to driving. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In\nDali, we meet our local guide Peter at the side of the road, called on his cell\nphone by our driver. As we look out from the ancient bell tower halfway through\nthe city tour, Peter points out our next stop, a brand-new temple to Guan Yin,\nthe Buddhist goddess of mercy, a favorite of the local Bai people. Yet another\ntemple, in the long line of temples we have visited on our month\u2019s tour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Carolyn\u2019s\nfocus is off to the right, on a knot of people clustered around cooking fires\nnext to a squat, ornate building. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWho\nuses the new temple?\u201d she asks Peter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe\ngovernment built it for tourists.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s\nthat?\u201d she continues, gesturing toward the picnic scene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cLet\u2019s\ngo, then,\u201d says Peter. He is into customer service. There are plenty of other\ngovernment stops to keep the tour supervisors satisfied. We descend the steps\nof the bell tower and clamber over a stone wall into an open space fronting a ben\nzhu<\/em> (local god) temple. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Twenty\nor so women from a neighboring village are cooking chicken and fried dough\nsweets in woks perched on stones over wood fires. Peter talks to them, then to\nus. They are here for the day, he says, to pray for the health of the children\nin their village.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Three\ncolorfully-painted gods swathed in vermilion cloth fill most of the back wall\nof the tiny temple. One by one the women enter, standing to dictate their\nmessage to an elderly man sitting by the door. He brushes ink characters onto a\nyellow square of paper and hands it to an attendant. As each woman kneels before\nthe central image, the attendant burns their prayer in a candle, sending it off\nwith wood clackers, beneath temple walls and ceiling blackened with smoke. <\/p>\n\n\n\n They\nare older women, grandmothers of the village, perhaps great-grandmothers. One\nof them smiles at us over her sizzling wok of frying chicken, offering a\nplateful of fried dough and rock candy. She\u2019s pushing the frybread but we pass,\nopting for the rock candy. Peter downs our portion of frybread. <\/p>\n\n\n\n She looks\nhappy. So are we. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We\nhave been welcomed by a community, simply because we left the tour.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Our Naxi driver from Lijiang to Dali was assigned this leg of our China trip because he has to see a specialist about a headache. En route he picks up a friend who gets off at the airport road south of town. Attempting to explain the detour, our driver settles for steering motions and mouth […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal-essays"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pahwNU-7Y","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesbrueggemann.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesbrueggemann.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesbrueggemann.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesbrueggemann.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesbrueggemann.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=494"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesbrueggemann.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":495,"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesbrueggemann.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494\/revisions\/495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesbrueggemann.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesbrueggemann.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesbrueggemann.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}