Traditional Culture Encyclopedia - Travel guide - What about the people who opened B&Bs in Yunnan 20 years ago?

What about the people who opened B&Bs in Yunnan 20 years ago?

Six homeowners in northwest Yunnan will tell you

-Fengwujunyu-

This winter

"Dear Inn" makes B&Bs are attracting attention again

Find a beautiful place

Open a B&B

Live a life of "pure heart and few desires" from now on

In Lugu Lake and Mogan Mountain?

Before these scenic spots became popular

The earliest trend of homestays was Yunnan

30 years ago

< p>The B&B is still beautiful

You can be the boss

But it is

Like a person drinking water, he knows whether he is warm or cold

1

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Dali: Nima’s cheap hotels and pool parties

In 1984, Dali officially opened to the outside world. In the following years, Lijiang and Shangri-La also opened their doors one after another.

In the 1980s, the domestic tourism market was not yet established, but European and American backpackers who wandered around Southeast Asia were not afraid of Yunnan’s difficulties and came early. Therefore, whether it was the earliest accommodation in Dali or later in northwestern Yunnan, the accommodations that originally served travelers all had a strong "foreign flavor". Opening a hotel to receive foreigners requires a foreign-related permit. In the early days of opening up, it was very difficult for private individuals to run foreign-related hotels. When foreigners come to Dali, they have to stay at the state-owned Dali Second Guest House on Huguo Road.

Nima is from Dali. He became a member of the tourism service industry as early as 1986. Photography/Guan Haitong

At that time, foreigners lived on Huguo Road, so he opened a cafe called Tibetan Café on Huguo Road. At that time, most of the wine, coffee, cola, yogurt and other drinks provided in the store were still rare in Dali, and there were no even purchase channels.

Every once in a while, Nima has to take the foreign exchange voucher and ride for 18 hours to the Youyi Store in the provincial capital to purchase goods.

Soon after, hotels and cafes gradually appeared on Huguo Road, and foreign travelers gathered. Huguo Road became what was later commonly known as "Foreigner Street".

After ten years of immersion in the tourism industry, Nima was able to afford a piece of land on Wenwen Road and built the MCA Hotel.

Although MCA is called a hotel, it is more like an international youth hostel. It has cheap and safe beds, a large public space for socializing, and an iconic large swimming pool in the middle of the hotel. You can take a dip. But unlike ordinary youth hostels, MCA also has a gallery with a rich artistic atmosphere. The full name of MCA was originally called "Mekong River Basin Culture and Arts Center".

In 1995, the travel market in Dali was still dominated by foreign backpackers. At the same time, the domestic pioneers who "lost etiquette and sought the wild" were also ready to make a move.

At MCA, Nima is most interested in throwing pool parties. Picture/Photo provided by Nima

In 2000, Nima’s cafe moved to Renmin Road. Picture/Photo provided by Nima

At the pool party, everyone drinks, sings, chats, and when the mood strikes, they dive into the swimming pool. People often miss the MCA Hotel back in the day, mostly because of this unique pool party.

The young man playing guitar by the pool may be named Xu Wei; the one holding the camera may be Xiao Quan, who has taken pictures of Sanmao; and the person clinking glasses with Nima may sometimes be Artist Ye Yongqing. This pool party continued until MCA was converted into an expensive boutique B&B in 2015. Writer Tujia Yefu and director Zhang Yang, who later became "New Dali natives", were all frequent guests at pool parties.

2

Lijiang: Lao Xie and backpackers in Wandou Youth Hostel

Lijiang Lao Xie and Nima are completely different: Nima defines himself As a simple scholar and artist, Lao Xie likes to tinker alone in his youth hostel with various tools.

In 2000, Lao Xie, a Moganshan native, and his partners opened a truly franchised international youth hostel (YHA) in Lijiang Old Town, called Lijiang Old Town International Youth Hostel. He made the public space of the youth hostel very large, with enough space for communication; he built a Haizi book bar by the running water behind the house to enhance its literary and artistic atmosphere; he hung Yunnan straw hats on the ceiling to integrate local culture. When a traveler asks him why he hangs a bamboo hat on the ceiling, he will say that it is not a bamboo hat but a pot lid: "Eighteen Yunnan monsters took off their bamboo hats and used them as pot lids."

Early Travel in Lijiang People like to hang out in Lao Xie's YHA, and their status is similar to that of Nima's MCA.

The ancient town of Lijiang 30 years ago was not so noisy. Photography/Guan Haitong

For most travelers, everyone knows the ancient city of Lijiang because of the 1996 Lijiang earthquake. People easily say that Lijiang was "shaken out by an earthquake." The Naxi people healed from a very specific kind of grief. They renovated their houses, widened the main roads, and replanted willows along the river.

Around 2000, Lijiang slowly regained its vitality.

Lao Xie’s first YHA and later Lijiang Lao Xie’s Car and Horse Shop were both located in the Mixi Lane area of ??Lijiang Ancient Town. There are more old houses there than on the main Xinhua Street, and the winding paths are like the layout of Lijiang in the old days.

In those years, Lao Xie’s YHA was also crowded with foreign backpackers, so some people called Misi Lane Lijiang’s Foreigner Street.

Wandou entered northwest Yunnan not much later than Lao Xie, but he always considered Lao Xie to be his predecessor. Photography/Guan Haitong

In 1999, Wandou, a fellow traveler from Zhejiang and Lao Xie, headed for Shangri-La along a road that is now basically abandoned. Shangri-La was still in Zhongdian at that time. The last pass when this road reaches Zhongdian is called Fengfeng Slope. Bendou climbed over the frozen slope, and the alpine meadow of Xiaozhongdian came into view. To this day, Wandou still remembers the beauty of that time, and recited the scene in Zhongdian described by Ms. Liu Manqing during the Republic of China:

Suddenly he saw the vast expanse of the dam, the wind was clear and the moon was bright, the sky was full of fragrant grass, and it was covered with yellow flowers. Herds of cattle and sheep, four-pronged curtains?

This trip made Wandou decide to give up his job in Hangzhou and come to Shangri-La. When Lao Xie from Lijiang opened a YHA, he only found a storefront in Shangri-La and opened a bar called "Zhongdian Travelers Club". Zhongdian Travelers Club is often imagined by Bendou as a place of freedom. Unlicensed cars are everywhere on the street, and those early travelers who entered Shangri-La gathered here; in front of the bar, a horse-tethering post had to be designed, because Tibetan youths would come to the bar on horseback and bullocks to try the new food.

By the time traveler Qiao Yang entered Zhongdian in 2002, Wandou had already opened a youth hostel next to Dukezong Ancient City in Shangri-La.

Shangri-La is a Tibetan area with high altitude and low temperature.

Qiao Yang’s most profound impression of Bendou was his endless trips to the boiler room to boil hot water. Enjoying a refreshing hot bath in the YHA is a satisfying luxury experience, not to mention the harsh environment in Tibetan areas. Although Wandou, Lao Xie and Nima's hostels were opened at different times and have different styles, they all have the same goal. They all started serving backpackers when local travel first became popular.

3

Shangri-La: Pema Duoji uses the hotel to connect its beauty

Qiao Yang is a good Sichuan girl, but she likes to call herself Mr. Qiao. Mr. Qiao is also a "pioneer" in the tourism service industry in northwest Yunnan.

In 2002, she was the first person to open a bar in Feilai Temple, Deqin. The name of the bar was "Ji Migratory Bird". The entrance of the bar is facing the 13 snow-capped peaks of Meili Snow Mountain without any obstruction. Feilai Temple quickly became famous for its magnificent snow-capped mountain scenery and became a distribution center with complete facilities. Mr. Qiao hid in a more remote foggy top and opened a migratory bird hotel.

In addition to running a hotel, she also likes to hang out in Shangri-La County. In addition to her passion for taking boiler hot baths in the YHA in Wandou, she is also a frequent guest at the Songtsam Holiday Hotel in Kena Village next to Songtsanlin Monastery on the outskirts of the city.

Snow-covered Songtsam Green Valley Picture/Songtsam Hotel

Most of the employees of Songtsam Hotel are locals. They themselves are the carrier of the culture here /Songtsam Hotel

This hotel is not expensive. It started selling for 80 yuan a night, but later doubled it, and it only cost more than 100 yuan. The owner of this shop is called Pema Dorje. At that time, he was still a documentary director. When the BBC filmed "South of the Clouds", he was a participant. The price of Songtsan Holiday is not high. The newly built Tibetan-style buildings are solid and heavy. The Tibetan-style furniture, carpets and Buddha statues collected by Pema Dorje from various places are warm and textured. The staff are humble and enthusiastic. Qiao Yang feels particularly good.

Also feeling very good was Li Zekai, the little superman of the Hong Kong business community. When he and a group of celebrities came to Zhongdian, they met Songtsan. He was particularly surprised that such a beautiful place to stay was only priced at 160 yuan a night, and that was in RMB. Superboy was even worried that his master would not be able to survive, so before leaving, the group bought up all the crafts in the store to show their support.

This is the history of the famous Songtsam series of hotels.

Since the Songtsan holiday in 2000, Pema Dorje has been walking on this road for 17 years. Many people say that the Songtsam series of hotels he built are "the best in the country"; in a sense, he himself is already one of the leaders in the domestic B&B industry. But people like Qiao Yang who liked Pema Dorje in the early days were not because of his vast mansions, but because of his magnanimity. Being open-minded means not hiding anything. Whatever I have, I enthusiastically show it to you.

Photography of the Tibetan-style interior space of Songtsan Green Valley/Shen Weixin

In 2009, Qiao Yang was building her migratory bird hotel on the foggy top, and Pema Dorje had already moved Songtsan A series of hotels were built on a hillside not far from the foggy top. That village is called Gujinong Village, a Tibetan village with only five or six households. Pema Dorje built the house in a down-to-earth manner as always, choosing the site and designing it himself, and then letting local craftsmen use traditional Tibetan architectural techniques to complete the house one by one. Even at the construction site, Pema Dorje is completely open to Qiao Yang and curious people.

When Qiao Yang had nothing to do, he went to the construction site of Pema Dorje. If he saw any construction problems that he didn't understand, the workers would stop and explain them to Qiao Yang in detail. After Songtsam's Shangri-La Circle Hotel was built, these wonderful mountain residences located in the countryside were distributed in every county in the Greater Shangri-La region.

Travelers were surprised to find that there are several impressive mountain hotels hidden in various secluded rural corners of Diqing Prefecture. But Pema Dorje said: “No, I am not building a store.

I just hope to use these wonderful hotels to connect Shangri-La together and rediscover the beauty of Shangri-La. The place where I got up from the hotel may be the "Navel of the Earth" in Shangri-La. Perhaps the beautiful Shambhala can be discovered through the "Navel of the Earth" (the legendary utopia written in the novel "Lost Horizon"). "But obviously Qiao Yang knows the "Navel of the Earth" better than most of the guests.

Now she is the travel product manager of Songtsam, and she spends half of the month there At Songtsan's newly opened hotel in Lijiang, he explained to guests how to enter the "navel of the earth" through the route that Songtsan connected with the hotel and the mountain residence, and enter the Shangri-La travel world created by Pema Dorje

In the remaining half month, she will return to her new destination: her new home on the Erhai Lake in Dali.

4

Shuanglang: Jiaming stays. The spiritual sustenance here

Dali’s Erhai Lake is in a sense the “rediscovery” of Dali travel in recent years.

The double corridors of Erhai Lake have now become one of the most concentrated places for B&Bs in Dali. 1. Picture/Visual China

The bustle of Shuanglang today is like the light photography in this night/Chen Liang

When Jiaming lived in Shuanglangkai in Haiti in 2007, it was still The first accommodation place opened by outsiders in Shuanglang. At that time, Jiaming could not have imagined that within ten years, or within five years after 2012, there would be more than 2,000 accommodation places crowded by Erhai Lake. .

Compared with seniors like Nima who know their destiny, Jiaming is just a young man born in the 1980s.

Before starting life in Haiti, Jiaming bought a replica of the North Face in Silk Street, Beijing. I was very satisfied with the jacket and traveled everywhere in it. In those years, Jiaming had little experience in the world and was always a junior wherever he went. Later, Jiaming wanted to settle down and open a YHA in Xi'an, so he went to "Create the Domestic Youth Hostel Model". Studying at YHA in Lijiang Ancient Town. After studying, Jiaming took a trip to Dali. This trip to Dali completely changed Jiaming's life: he fell in love with Dali and stayed.

Jiaming. The inn was named Haiti because of his spiritual sustenance: Jiaming’s friend Liping opened a highland on Cangshan Mountain where there was no road access. At that time, the two corridors were also inaccessible and equally pure and beautiful. , a place on the edge of Erhai Lake, with the highlands and Haiti facing each other in the distance.

Later, the accommodation by Erhai Lake was called a B&B.

Before 2012, I stayed in Shuanglangkai B&B. The shopkeepers, like Jiaming, described Shuanglang Town as a remote fishing village back then: It was a beautiful rural scene with very little arable land. The local Bai people lived by fishing and lived in poverty. People are generous, have faith and have spiritual sustenance.

In addition to those who like Shuanglang and decide to stay here and open a B&B, there are some people who just want to live in Shuanglang, such as Shanghai painter Shen Jianhua and famous director Zhang Yang. Dancer Yang Liping was an early life artist in Shuanglang. In 2012, Shen Jianhua, Yang Liping and others launched a rural album called "Shuanglang Shuanglang". He is one of the main contributors. In 2010, Zhuoma and her husband Hongdian also opened a B&B in Shuanglang. Zhuoma was also willing to contribute his professional skills and was responsible for a large number of editing of the first and second issues of this album. Everyone carefully recorded the community ecology near Erhai Lake and left behind the beauty of the moment.

This year happened to be the year when Shuanglang began to undergo fission: Capital took note of the trend, and they felt that the B&Bs on the Erhai Lake might become a new hotspot for Dali travel. So starting in 2012, more and more real estate developers and investment bankers were handing out business cards to these early newcomers.

Some B&B operators on the Erhai Lake are no longer pursuing lifestyle, but are engaged in pure investment behavior.

In recent years, more than 2,000 B&Bs have crowded into Erhai Lake, and people have begun to classify the people in Erhai Lake. People say that the owners of B&Bs on Erhai Lake are a group of urban middle class. With poetry and distant feelings, they have set foot on Erhai Lake under the trend of fleeing from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

5

In the B&B business, you know your own situation.

In the song "It's better to go all the way west to Dali", travelers flocked to Erhai Lake. Housing prices here are high, but it’s still hard to find a room. Dali has returned to the center of a top tourist distribution center due to the rise of homestays on the Erhai Lake.

Erhai does look a bit like a "middle-class" living situation. But there are many B&B owners on Erhai Lake who are disgusted with this definition of "middle class". Yuan Xiaobing, the owner of Erhai Wake Up Bed and Breakfast, is quite disdainful of being "middle-class" and said: "Where did I come from? I have been an in-depth investigative reporter for more than ten years, and with only 300,000 yuan, I pieced together everything. A B&B opened with a partner”

Jiaming’s Haitian Life closed its doors completely in 2016.

Photography of a closed Erhai B&B/Chen Liang

In the past ten years in Erhai, Jiaming has witnessed beautiful rural scenes, and has seen the quiet ancient town turn into a noisy construction site. He has experienced all the common troubles faced by B&B residents, and has even had lawsuits with landlords and back-and-forth with relevant departments. On October 25, 2016, the relevant departments issued an official document stating that Haiti Life had "privately set up hidden pipes to discharge sewage directly into the Erhai Lake" and ordered rectification.

Half a month later, the exhausted Jiaming closed the door to his life in Haiti and stopped the sewage treatment system he had bought for more than 100,000 yuan.

Yuan Xiaobing lamented "the destruction of the rural scene." After the capital came in, the double corridor that he regarded as a "beautiful rural scene" was no longer so pure. Farmers who received high rents began to live a life of fine food after the outbreak. They suffered a lot because the rents in the early days were relatively low. The fellow villagers raised the rent for various reasons. The album "Shuanglang Shuanglang" that recorded the native culture of this fishing village has long been discontinued, and there are several more bars with flashing neon lights in Shuanglang Town.

All the sensuality, dogs and horses, do not belong here, but they are in the ascendant.

After the closure of the B&Bs on the Erhai Lake, only locals were left here Photography/Zhang Lutang

After April 7, 2017, all B&Bs on the Erhai Lake were shut down. The owners were not particularly worried at first and put a seal on the room themselves. The seal said "Protect Erhai Lake and close down on your own." They all thought that this might be to meet the temporary needs of the administrative department, but nearly half a year later, there seems to be no hope of reopening the B&Bs on Erhai Lake.

The conflict facing the owners of Erhai B&B is obviously not the difficult landlords. The abundant income brought by Erhai B&B during its boom has disappeared for half a year. Yuan Xiaobing drove a brand new land cruiser and bought a house in the mountains and rivers. When the inn goes bankrupt, all income stops, but the mortgage and car loans will not stop because Erhai wakes up and goes bankrupt. This former media person who seems to have lived a middle-class life seems to have returned to the uneasy life of a "pseudo-middle class". There are many Erhai B&B operators who are even more miserable than Yuan Xiaobing. No one knows when these B&Bs will open or when they will suddenly close down.

One day in August, the sunshine in Erhai Lake was as clear as ever. The owners of B&Bs that were still closed were silently drying their sheets on their balconies. Some people say that this is a longing for business soon. Some people say that this is their surrender to the world.

In the past 30 years since Dali opened to the outside world in 1984, travelers of all types have passed through one B&B after another to wash away the dust on the road and rush to the next journey. The host of the B&B cleans the guest room and puts on clean sheets to welcome the arrival of the next group of travelers.

You say that owning a B&B is a luxury, but people who open B&Bs are aware of the hardships.

Text丨Yuan Luan

This article is selected from "The Age of Authentic B&B"

Editor丨Yixiao