www.gokunming.com/[...] - 2009

www.comedali.com/tnew/show/id/2746 - 2017

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Railway_High-speed

I am really looking forward to this segment of the CRH to open soon.

yeh it will speed up the unification homogenization of the culture. good for some, money money money. bad for others, dilute dilute dilute. great for the factories in guangdong that churn out real ethnic handicrafts as seen sanya, shanghai, beijing, and all great tourist spots in between. how many locals still in lijiang? same is happenging to lhasa already

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oh well

Compared to what it was 10 years ago, Dali is basically already destroyed.

There never was a "Dali", that wasnt detroyed or somehow freaked out. People were complaining about the destruction of Dali in 70's when the mile long, and centuries old, graveyards along the slopes of Cangshan were wiped out. A bit later construction of new roads wiped put a lot of "Dali" - even the oldest 9th C wall was demolished for roads. And so on. Joseph Rock didnt like the place in the 1930's, it just didnt give good vibes - basically you stayed there overnight and moved on. Before that an earthquake and a fire wiped out and did the destruction of Dali. Oh well, before that the Panthay rebellion and revenge on it wiped out Dali to the extent its said Erhai was red of blood. And so on.

Its said there were so many ghosts around at times on streets of Dali, you even heard them in daytime. Some houses were empty for decades due to "ghosts". Where Dali McDonalds is now btw, is an old ghost house.

Point is anyway theres never really been a static "Dali". Dali has always been in some kind of change, theres always been a shadow of destruction over Dali, and furthermore, there has always been some negative energy around there, be it mass-tourism, potheads, or streets in knee high blood. It may speak for itself that the patron deity of Dali is the furious tantric deity Mahakala, 大黑天 ("Big Black Sky"), a destructive and at times evil incarnation of Shiva.

Its ironic in a way, that so many people seek refugee in the abyss of Dali.

@ Peter: True, but true of every place else too - just a matter of the rate of change, as is the flipside idea of 'tradition'. The other flipside (this is an odd, 3-faced coin) is that of 'progress', which just means change that is believed to be 'good'. But the owl of Minerva still only flies at dusk - at least if it doesn't gets its wings burned off.

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