Nujiang Country Life  (click on any of the pictures for a bigger view)

As the balustrade at the bottom of the photo suggests, this waterfall is not truly in a wilderness area. More difficult to see is a small pavilion at the top of the falls, which forms the mid point of a bridge across the pre-falls river. The falls is the centerpiece of a small park that also contains a Taoist temple and a tearoom. Some parks in China are overrun with souvenir stands and snackbars, but other, like this one, are more or less nature reserves, preserved much as they have been for hundreds of years.

We made one expedition into the mountains, with, I will confess, a vehicle and a guide. Both proved to be more or less useless; the vehicle being a broken down miniature minivan (you could have easily driven it inside of any standard American minivan) and the guide being more interested in getting us back to town by the end of the day than in getting us into the wilderness. But he was able to take us up pretty high, although the snow capped mountains in the background are considerably higher.

On the other hand, this is what we saw looking down. We had the unnerving sense that we were looking out of an airplane window; it was that high and that steep. It is almost impossible to see, but there are actually farm buildings on the land that juts into the river.

The river you see above runs through all of Nujiang. In many places it is much wider than in the previous photo, and often unnavigable. But people live on both sides of it, and need to cross. What you see here is the basic, death defying solution. To find out more, see the next page.