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 noises like a whistling engine. We can’t tell whether his friend with the small briefcase is traveling to Kunming on business or is supposed to pilot the plane.
Carolyn and I nod as if we understand. He goes back to driving.
In Dali, we meet our local guide Peter at the side of the road, called on his cell phone by our driver. As we look out from the ancient bell tower halfway through the city tour, Peter points out our next stop, a brand-new temple to Guan Yin, the Buddhist goddess of mercy, a favorite of the local Bai people. Yet another temple, in the long line of temples we have visited on our month’s tour.
Carolyn’s focus is off to the right, on a knot of people clustered around cooking fires next to a squat, ornate building.
“Who uses the new temple?” she asks Peter.
“The government built it for tourists.”
“What’s that?” she continues, gesturing toward the picnic scene.
“Let’s go, then,” says Peter. He is into customer service. There are plenty of other government stops to keep the tour supervisors satisfied. We descend the steps of the bell tower and clamber over a stone wall into an open space fronting a ben zhu (local god) temple.
Twenty or so women from a neighboring village are cooking chicken and fried dough sweets in woks perched on stones over wood fires. Peter talks to them, then to us. They are here for the day, he says, to pray for the health of the children in their village.
Three colorfully-painted gods swathed in vermilion cloth fill most of the back wall of the tiny temple. One by one the women enter, standing to dictate their message to an elderly man sitting by the door. He brushes ink characters onto a yellow square of paper and hands it to an attendant. As each woman kneels before the central image, the attendant burns their prayer in a candle, sending it off with wood clackers, beneath temple walls and ceiling blackened with smoke.
They are older women, grandmothers of the village, perhaps great-grandmothers. One of them smiles at us over her sizzling wok of frying chicken, offering a plateful of fried dough and rock candy. She’s pushing the frybread but we pass, opting for the rock candy. Peter downs our portion of frybread.
She looks happy. So are we.
We have been welcomed by a community, simply because we left the tour.