On the Road to Lugu Hu

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OK, given the time I had left, I had to make a choice about where to go. I could go to Tiger Leaping Gorge, Lugu Lake, or go ahead and head east. I decided to go to Lugu Hu (lake is Hu in Chinese and it sounds better, so I’ll call it that from here on…), since it looked very pretty in the pictures I had seen and they have an interesting culture, the Mosuo people, apparently the last matriarchal society that exists in the world.

There is no real marriage, in the Western sense of the word. If a woman and man love each other, the man sleeps with her at her house and leaves before morning. Children are raised in the mother’s family, with one of the older ladies assuming the role of head of the household (or clan, as it were, since households can become rather large). If either the woman or man decides to break off there relationship, there is no “divorce”, rather, they just stop the nightly arrangement. In addition, if the woman wants to, she can have boyfriends come over, too. This last part of their culture is apparently creating a tourist draw from men who think that they can cause a Mosuo woman to want them to be a boyfriend. It seems to me the only thing that would do is create a rather obnoxious group of tourists for the locals to deal with.

Anyway, I met a man named Saad (pronounced Sai-eed) in the Lijiang hostel and we went to Lugu Hu together. He has quite a story, as he left Iraq 29 years ago, when Sadaam Hussein was killing some of his friends and family members. He obtained asylum in Sweden and has been living there ever since. He now works as an interpreter. He is a nice man and is very considerate of others.

My friend, Saad

We caught the bus and met our other companions for the journey, three Chinese couples who were very nice.

Meeting new friends on the "bus"...

This gave us enough people to enjoy regular Chinese style meals, ordering a number of dishes and sharing them all.

Our group did things together, which was a lot of fun...

The road conditions on the way to the lake were horrendous…It was an 8 hour ride, with roughly half the trip on unfinished road (not dirt, but more like rough cobblestone). Many places were being worked on, which meant one lane was closed:

You don't want to be in a hurry on the road to Lugu Hu...

More traffic fun...

Of course, you never knew what you’d see on the road, which made it interesting:

Why did the pig cross the road?

Who needs a pasture?

Next post will be about our activities at Lugu Hu.