Dream Trip 2008: September

Great Travel Moment

Five elder Naxi women in their traditional outfits singing outside a Lijiang cultural center with a backdrop of the carvings of one of the oldest pictographic characters. Lijiang, located in the Yunnan Province in China is home to 26 ethnic Chinese minorities. Through my travels here, their rich and primative lifestyles astonished me. Whereas much of the now modernized country of China believes lighter skinned and thinner women represents beauty, in Lijiang, the darker and plumper women are so preferred that they have a saying to refer to these beauties, "Pong Jin Mei" translates to "Fat Golden Sister".