Six homeowners in northwest Yunnan 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 beautifulYou can be the boss
But it is
Like a person drinking water, he knows whether he is warm or cold
1
p>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 wandering around Southeast Asia were not afraid of Yunnan’s hardships and came early to hear about it. Therefore, whether it was the earliest accommodation in Dali or later in northwest Yunnan, the initial accommodations for 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. Foreigners who come to Dali 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 the 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: "The eighteen strange people in Yunnan took off their bamboo hats and used them as pot lids.
”
Early Lijiang travelers liked to gather in Lao Xie’s YHA, and their status was similar to that of Nima’s MCA.
The ancient city 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 Lijiang earthquake in 1996. People easily say that Lijiang was " shaken out by the earthquake." Healing from this very specific grief, they renovated their houses, widened the main road, 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 Old Town. There were more old houses than the main Xinhua Street, and the streets were winding and quiet. It has the layout of Lijiang in the old days. In those years, foreign backpackers gathered in Lao Xie’s YHA, so some people called Mixi Lane the Foreigner Street of Lijiang.
Wandou entered northwest Yunnan later. Lao Xie is not too late, but he always considers Lao Xie to be his predecessor. Photography/Guan Haitong
In 1999, Lao Xie's Zhejiang fellow traveler Wandou headed for Shangri-La along a now-abandoned road. . Shangri-La was still in Zhongdian. The last pass when the road reached Zhongdian was called Frozen Slope. To this day, Wandou still remembers the alpine meadow of Xiaozhongdian. Beautiful, and reciting the scene in Zhongdian described by Ms. Liu Manqing during the Republic of China:
Suddenly I saw the vast expanse of Guangba, the wind was clear and the moon was bright, the sky was filled with fragrant grass, covered with yellow flowers, flocks of cattle and sheep, and four 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 "Zhong." "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, there must be a design Horse-tying posts, because Tibetan youths would ride horses and bulls to come to the bar to try something new.
By the time traveler Qiao Yang entered Zhongdian in 2002, Wandou had already opened a youth restaurant next to the ancient city of Dukezong in Shangri-La. It’s a hotel.
Shangri-La is a Tibetan area with high altitude and low temperature.
Qiao Yang’s most profound impression of Wandou was that he kept going to the boiler room to boil hot water. . Enjoying a refreshing hot bath in a YHA is a satisfying and luxurious experience, not to mention the hostels in Wandou, Lao Xie and Nima, which have a harsh environment. Different, but with the same goal, they have been serving backpackers since the local travel became popular.
3
Shangri-La: Pema Dorje uses hotels 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 "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-heated baths in the YHA in Wandou, she is also a regular guest at the Songtsam Holiday Hotel in Kena Village next to the Songtsan Lin 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, and 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 handicrafts 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 let local craftsmen complete it one by one using traditional Tibetan architectural techniques. 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. Pema Duoji said: "No, I am not building a hotel. I just hope to use these beautiful hotels to connect Shangri-La together and rediscover the beauty of Shangri-La. The place where I built the hotel may be Shangri-La's 'Navel of the Land', 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 is more interested in the "Navel of the Earth" than most residents. "More clearly in my heart.
Now she is Songtsam’s travel product manager. Half of a month, she stays at Songtsam’s newly opened hotel in Lijiang, explaining to guests how to connect hotels and mountain residences through Songtsam. line, walk into the "navel of the earth", and walk into the Shangri-La travel world created by Pema Dorje.
In the remaining half of the month, she will return to her new destination: her new home on the Erhai Lake in Dali.
4
Double Corridors: Jiaming’s spiritual sustenance to stay here
Dali’s Erhai Lake is, in a sense, the “rediscovery” of Dali travel in recent years ".
The Shuanglang of Erhai Lake has now become one of the gathering places for B&Bs in Dali. Photo/Visual China
The bustling level of Shuanglang today is like the light photography in this night/Chen Liang
When Jiaming lived in Shuanglangkai in Haiti in 2007, he was still a foreigner. The first accommodation in Shuang Nong Khai. At that time, Jiaming could not have imagined that within ten years, to be precise within five years after 2012, there would be more than 2,000 accommodations crowded along the Erhai Lake.
Compared with seniors like Nima who know their destiny and age, Jiaming is just a junior born in the 1980s.
Before starting life in Haiti, Jiaming was very satisfied when he bought a set of replica North Face jackets on Xiushui Street in Beijing and traveled everywhere in them. In those years, Jiaming had little experience in the world of martial arts, so he was always his junior brother wherever he went. Brother Jiaming later wanted to settle down and open a YHA in Xi'an, so he went to study at the YHA in the ancient city of Lijiang, which "created the domestic youth hostel model." After studying, Jiaming took a trip to Dali. This trip to Dali completely changed Jiaming's life pattern: he fell in love with Dali and stayed.
Jiaming’s inn was named Haiti because of his spiritual sustenance: Jiaming’s friend Liping opened a highland on Cangshan Mountain where there is no road access. The double corridors at that time were equally inconvenient and equally pure and beautiful. One is on a high mountain and the other is on the edge of Erhai Lake. The highlands and Haiti are far apart from each other.
Later, the accommodation by Erhai Lake was called B&B.
Before 2012, the shopkeepers of Shuanglangkai B&B, like Jiaming, described Shuanglang Town as a remote fishing village back then: It was a beautiful rural scene. There is very little arable land in Shuanglang. The local Bai people make a living by fishing. They are poor, but they 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, some people just want to live in Shuanglang. Shanghai painter Shen Jianhua, famous director Zhang Yang and early dancer Yang Liping were all early life makers of Shuanglang.
In 2012, Shen Jianhua, Yang Liping and others launched a rural picture album called "Double Corridor, Double Corridor". Former media personality Dolma is one of the main contributors. In 2010, Zhuoma and her husband Hongdian also opened a B&B in Shuanglang. Dolma is also happy to contribute his professional skills and is 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 by 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 the Erhai Wake Up B&B, 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 Haitian 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