Travels Through Dali With a Leg of Ham

Drive through the countryside to Master’s Well Village • Visit the home of a local salt maker • Shelter under a makeshift cover and watch how salt is extracted from a well and then crystalized, using a traditional process unchanged for centuries • Watch how the salt is prepared for market • Taste the final product, a salt with a sweet aftertaste referred to as tu yan (土盐) • Visit a local farm and see ham in its different stages of curing • Visit the local market and whet your appetite for dinner • Admire the skills displayed as the ham is scorched, cleaned, and cut.

Pass the turnoff for Master’s Well Village and continue further north to Shundang Village, another of the eight famed salt villages • Admire the Qing-era fortifications that protect the path leading into the village and marvel at how different Shundang is from Master’s Well • Now home to very few, the abandoned old village is a great place to explore as you wander past traditional tombstones and down long-forgotten lanes • Leave behind the covered bridges of Yunlong and continue on to Shaxi, once a bustling trade town on the Ancient Tea Horse Road.

Step into the home of Mrs. Shi Fumei, a local cheesemaker, to learn how the region boasts its own unique cheese culture, and how to cook your own over a wood-fired stove • Wait for your delicious cheese snack to cool as you chat with Mrs. Shi while she stitches cloth shoes • Pray for fertility in the Shibaoshan Grottoes where Jianchuan’s earliest craftsman carved, in sandstone, the popular sculpture Ah-Yang-Bai • Visit Stone Dragon Village, where “those who can walk, dance; and those who can talk, sing” • Meet the region’s folk music king and watch a captivating musical performance full of longing and lust, wantonness and excitement.

Drive from Shaxi towards Dali Old Town, stopping on the way for a traditional Bai three-course tea ceremony • Feel removed from the rest of China’s tea culture as you reflect on your life with a bitter, sweet, and lingering tea • Visit the old town of Xizhou and learn about traditional Bai architecture • Try Xizhou baba, a local snack, before getting hands-on and making your own Xizhou baba with the locals • If time permits, visit local artisan Mr. Yang, a wool felt painting master as we enter his 150-year-old courtyard home and learn local techniques for this traditional craft.

Drive to Weishan, a town home to mainly Yi and Hui ethnic groups (~1-hour drive) • Meet Madame Chen, a lady in her 80s who reigns over the most famous pickle ’empire’ in the region • Head into Madame Chen’s central courtyard and watch her staff prepare vegetables for pickling • Look above the workers’ heads at the rows and rows of meter-high jars, filled to the brim with vegetables in pickling liquor • Enjoy lunch at South Street restaurant • Tantalize your taste buds with a cross-cultural culinary experience at Gil’s Casa Bai.

Rise early to watch the sunrise over Erhai Lake • Spend the morning enjoying Dali’s dynamic interwoven streets • Transfer to the airport and check in for your flight to your next adventure.