Sichuan-Tibet Episode Two: Mama Naxi and the Sexy Tractor
For a woman who claims the honor of being your mother in China, Mama Naxi doesn't disappoint. Short, fiery, and with a voice that could break a pane of glass, Mama Naxi is the proprietor, cook, maid, travel agent, caretaker, security guard, and all-around presence at her eponymous guesthouse, located in Lijiang's Old Town.
Michael and I spent a half-hour walking through the Old Town, unsuccessfully looking for a guesthouse I had stayed at a year before. Feeling lost and sick of lugging our packs around, we asked three young Dutch women for a recommendation, and with flawless English they told us Mama Naxis was the solution to our problem.
Within minutes, Michael and I were seated with the Dutch girls around a table in Mama Naxi's courtyard, being served tea and snacks of Naxi bread with oil and tomato. In a staccato burst of pidgin English, Mama said, "You stay dinner. You like food. Mama feed you. You sign here. You pay for room tonight." Baba Naxi, Mama's doddering husband, merely slouched and grinned at us.
(photo by Flickr user Martin Callum)
And so, in Lijiang, a small town located in a remote Yunnan valley, felt just like home.
The Naxi, like Dali's Bai, are a Chinese ethnic minority based entirely in Yunnan Province. Lijiang is their crown jewel; a beautiful UNESCO heritage town of traditional architecture, cobblestone streets, and narrow creeks.
Unfortunately, one cannot enjoy Lijiang's beauty in silence. Virtually all semblence of ordinary life no longer exists there, or has shifted to the bland, adjacent "new town". Lijiang exists solely for the purpose of serving Chinese mass tourism. Each shop, tea house, coffee shop, clothes shop, or restaurant has the same Disneyland feel- whatever locals do live in Lijiang never seem to appear.
Dali's old town has pockets of authenticity. Lijiang's doesn't. At every corner, Chinese tourists and various backpackers navigate through the sea of umbrellas, consulting Lijiang's pretty but useless wooden street maps. Town squares feature Naxi women in traditional dress leading the tourists in a dance, or Naxi men mounting horses for photo ops with wide-eyed Han children. Everything seems scripted.
And yet...despite my revulsion at its fakeness, Lijiang remains a very pleasant place. More than any other place, Lijiang represents a break from China. There are no car horns, crazy taxi drivers, filthy sidewalks, or terrible smells. The food, albeit overpriced, is reliable and familiar.
And there's always Mama Naxi. I spent a day in the courtyard just watching the daily hum of activity. Mama truly never rests. From early in the morning (when her voice acts a human alarm clock as Michael noted) to late at night, Mama never stops running her business. The dozens of backpackers who stay at one of her buildings (there are three in Lijiang) all feel catered to by Mama or a member of her staff, younger Naxi women with the same inherent hospitality.
Each night, Mama and her "family" prepare a massive dinner for guests, a bargain at 10 RMB per head. Seated around a table, we were handed friend eggplant, steamed rice, potatoes, pork with vegetables, corn-style bread, and other Naxi and Chinese dishes faster than we could finish them. At Mama's, nobody is allowed to leave the table hungry. In fact, guests had to beg her employees off from slapping more rice in their bowl. Backpackers with food comas then staggered away from the table, unable to contemplate food until Mama cooks them up a pancake the following morning.
(photo by Flickr user edward.lei)
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Someone once said that wherever you are in the world, no matter how remote, you will find an Irish pub. Even Lijiang has one, albeit one that bills itself as an Irish/Naxi bar, surely the only one in the world who can claim that distinction. The unlikely watering hole calls itself Sexy Tractor, an odd name for what amounts to a no-frills establishment. John, an Irishman in his late 30s who co-owns the bar, keeps it simple. A sofa was created from empty bottles of Tsingtao. The liquor space was a wooden cabinet John threw together in an afternoon, and the bar has an atmosphere more akin to your buddy's condo than a place of business.
We went to John's bar each night, sometimes arriving before any other customers. He usually sat with his feet up on a barstool, fiddling with his iPod. His Naxi girlfriend of three years had told him to get lost a few months earlier, so John was waiting for the right moment to shut the bar down and hit the road. In China, foreigners face enormous difficulties in owning a business, so John prudently put the bar in his girlfriend's name. Alas, things didn't work out and now John faced the dissolution of a bar he put together so carefully.
What are you going to do? I asked.
"I don't know. I might just drink all the alcohol meself, then I'd like to ride my bicycle. To Thailand."
So I'm afraid that before long, Lijiang will be missing one if its few authentic businesses. But for now, foreigners and Chinese alike still trickle into Sexy Tractor night after night, enjoying John's special mojitos as well as bottles of cold Tsingtao.
On one of the walls, a sign sternly reminded Mama Naxi's guests to come back by 1 am. After all, you wouldn't want Mama to worry about you, would you?
