Okay so the Chinese New Year holiday finally got the better of us and in the absence of a sleeper bus to Shangri-la we turned down the 8 hour daytime coach and instead headed to Lijiang early.
... that's a keeper! The family aren't going to believe who they got a photo with. Some aliens.
In the river basin of the Erhai lake (5th largest in China), Dali dates back to the beginning of UNESCO status... when everything got swapped out for factory-made handicraft huts and the Han people moved in to sell barbeque food on sticks.
This Yunnan hub could be one of many middle size Chinese cities: a couple of odd looking skyscrapers; a couple hundred malls and a modernized old town (which means they swapped absolutely everything for grey concrete blocks and stuck a few traditional doors on here and there). It feels a world apart from Harbin - less endangered, more relaxed with, dare I say it, easy going taxi drivers.
Otherwise entirely anonymous, in the back of a print shop on Wulurmqi Lu, Steve Burrito makes the best underground burritos in Shanghai. Actually he makes the best burritos in Shanghai. He offered us an off-menu special last weekend and we gorged until bursting point on ribs, rib tacos and rib burritos. Want to go? Ready when you are.
Harbin, famous for well below zero temperatures and an ever expanding ice festival is essentially a run down town in Heilongjiang province full of Russian whole stores, northern-china sausage and cold noses.