大理：一苦二甜三回味

Dali is a small place, but it has a very big mountain and a very big lake.

The mountain is called Cangshan, and it has nineteen peaks.

The lake is called Erhai, and it covers two hundred and fifty square kilometres.

Erhai is the second largest highland lake in China.

The old town sits right between the mountain and the lake.

The owner of my guesthouse isn't from Dali.

He used to work in Shanghai, twelve hours a day.

One year he came to Dali and stayed a week.

After he got back to Shanghai, he kept thinking about Cangshan.

The next year, he moved here.

I asked him: don't you miss Shanghai?

He said: sometimes.

But now I can see Cangshan every day.

He said: there are a lot of people like me in Dali.

Local people call them new Dali people.

In the afternoon, I walked around the old town.

There are a lot of shops on both sides — tea, clothes, coffee.

I said: this isn't what I expected.

The owner said: what did you think Dali was like?

I said: I thought it would be quiet.

He said: the old town is lively; the lakeside is quieter.

The next day, I cycled out to Erhai.

On one side of the road was the lake, on the other the mountain.

I rode for two hours.

An old man was sitting in a doorway, and he invited me in for tea.

He said: when we Bai receive a guest, we serve three courses of tea.

The first course is very bitter.

The second has brown sugar, sesame and walnut in it — very sweet.

The third has Sichuan pepper, fresh ginger, cassia bark and honey.

I drank the third one.

My mouth went numb and sweet at once, and the taste kept shifting.

I said: what is this taste?

He said: this is called huiwei — aftertaste.

He said: one bitter, two sweet, three aftertaste.

I said: how old is this tea?

He said: over a thousand years.

He said: back in the eighth century, people here were already drinking tea like this.

He said: in 2014, the state listed it as intangible cultural heritage.

In 2022 it went onto the UNESCO list.

I said: a cup of tea?

He said: a cup of tea.

After the tea, he pointed at the lake and told me something else.

He said: there used to be a lot of guesthouses along the lake.

He said: more and more opened, and the water got dirty.

I said: and then?

He said: on 31 March 2017, the authorities announced an inspection.

Every business along the lake had to close within ten days.

Over a thousand guesthouses, restaurants and bars — all shut in ten days.

I said: ten days?

He said: ten days.

After that, the lakeside emptied out overnight.

I said: do you think that was right?

He didn't answer straight away.

He said: after they closed, a lot of people had no work.

When I was small, you could drink the water in Erhai.

Later you couldn't.

These last few years it's been getting better again.

He said: making the water good takes many years.

Making it bad only takes a few.

I looked at the lake.

The water was clear and the sky was blue.

The lakeside was very quiet that afternoon.

In the evening, I went back to the old town.

The streets were still full of people, still lively.

But now I know Dali has two faces.

One is the old town at night.

One is the lakeside in the afternoon.

Both of them are real.

When you go somewhere, do you want to stay on the liveliest street, or far out by the lake?