A maniac, maniac on the floor...

Last night was fascinating. I danced in the town sqaure with ~500 Tibetans for a good hour. Every evening around 7pm, a signifigant portion of the town turns out to dance together in a big cirlce. Really, it was tibetan sqaure dancing and involved four different choreographed seqeunces which you figure out by following a woman on the inner egde of the cirlce. I had a lot of fun and at 8pm the crouds dispersed and I headed back to the inn with my friends.

Later, I ended up in a bar in the basment of a very old tibetan house. It was actually a very amazing place becasue I feel it is the beggining of a youth culture in Zhongdian. It felt kind of like I was seeing some underground music scene before it became commercialized and fed to the masses through some giant record label. It will probably be short lived though. I think I've just hit the crest of the tourism wave as it washes through China. Yangshoe, Lijaing, Dali, were all cities that at one time were like Zhongdian as it is now, old, real, and a little ugly. Even Zhongdian is in the throws of selling its soul for an old style mall endorsed by coca cola. This is most evident in the name change from Zhongdian to Shangrala and the amazing amount of renovation that is happening all across the old town. Every third building is having signifigant construction done on it and I beleive that the town's hostorical look, culture, and feel, may have 1 year left at the most. Even now its obscured by new tourist oriented shops opening up all throughout the old town. I feel lucky to have caught the Zhongdian before it changed completely.

I will be heading for Deqin tommarow morning, and after that I will be in villages that are only connected by small foot trails. For this reason, internet access may go from difficult to find to non-exsistent. That could last up to a week unless I decide to turn around and head back to Zhongdian.