Dali

Dali is located in a fertile plateau between the Changshan mountains and Erhai lake: thanks to its position, at an altitude of 1900 meters, it has a good climate. It hosts a local ethnic group named Bai whose language belongs to the Tibeto-Birman family. As Lijiang there are a modern and an old town that are about 20 kms far. Dali old town is surrounded by wall and has a gate at each cardinal point. The downtown Dali has a regular plan formed by parallel and perpendicular streets: some of them are still paving with stone, but most of them are now asphalted. This folder contains images of the city downtown Dali, Erhai lake, the beautiful Changshan mountains and the famous three pagodas. In Dali, on the 24th day of the sixth lunar month, the torch festival (Hua Jie) takes place with spectacular parade. Walking in the city center during the day you can see busy Chinese buying long wooden poles and pine resin, which is essential for the perfect performance of the festival. At night the show starts. Chinese seem to get crazy and wander bringing their torch all around the city center; the ones who have a trading activity such as a restaurant put the beacon on the footpath in front of the shop as sign of good luck for business. This is a sort of game where Chinese are involved: the funniest part is to throw the pine resin on the torch flames to make it higher and brighter while people are passing nearby: the result is a great fright but actually no danger occurs.

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