Shaxi

Shaxi was once a very important market town on the Tea and Horse Trail that linked Tibet and India with South East Asia and saw goods like tea, salt, horses, hides and medicinal products being traded. We'd never heard or read about the place before but the owner of the Higherland Inn said that we had to see it.

Getting there is an adventure in itself and probably the main reason for it being well off the Chinese tourist radar. It's a 3 hour bus ride from Dali and then a cramped 40 minute minibus trip along a ridiculously bumpy mountain road. There was a lot to look at along the way but the first for us was a new form of motion sickness treatment. It seems to be in the preliminary stages of testing but goes something like this:

1. Experience feelings of nausea
   
2. Peel and eat a large orange
   
3. Shove large pieces of the peel as far up each nostril as possible
   
4. Breathe deeply through your nose

Even though the technique's conclusion was the polar opposite of the intention, it's visual impact was outstanding.

Shaxi is a quaint traditional village set in a beautiful agricultural valley of buffalo's, bright yellow rape and Bai women engaged in a mix of foraging and farming. The people were all amazingly friendly and even though we tried to stop him, the owner of our guesthouse (Ou Yang) treated us as if we were foreign dignitaries. His niece visited us on our last evening and while Jackie and her engaged in English and Chinese lessons I got an impromptu but surprisingly formal cooking lesson.