In the Lijiang old town, I shopped at a kiosk featuring art and fabric of the central China Miao Tribe. Silver is thought to provide protection.
 

Lijiang is lit by lanterns each night, and the lights of the carnival-like streets reflect in the street-side canals.

 

Above is the the very nice Chinese grad-student Liyun Zhang, who sat beside me on our excursion the day before, kindly explaining to me aspects of Chinese language and symbols. She asked that our photo be taken together before I left (I felt very honored).

The meeting ended -  there have been 65 talks in the four meeting days. A group of us went to the Black Dragon Pool (Yuquan)- a beautiful lake made from a spring beside an old chestnut tree.
This also is the source of one of the rivers that flows into the town. I strolled with Sylvain and Lek..


Here is Lek and Pierre are going through the entrance gate of the reserve, with some Naxi women strolling by.
   
The gate entrance fascinated me, since it seemed essentially a gateway to nature - as felt by the lush green open space so strongly framed by the pagoda, so as to say - come in!

 

The Five Holes Bridge across the pool. The Dongba pictograms form the last living hieroglyphic language in use, and some are pretty funny. There is a Dongba (Naxi cultural) Research  institute and an area featuring the elements of Taoism. The Shield at the institute entrance features a frog, considered to be a powerful being.



   
Dragon God Temple built in 1737. Sylvain and Lek together with the crocuses in bloom.


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That evening, as  a relief from the hotel food, some of went out for pizza at a restaurant, which also featured a "snack" of dragonflies, that we (I) could not resist trying. Well, let's say eating dragonflies was the basis of some challenges that evening. We now believe that fried dragonflies are a "new food" aimed at helping China with protein in thin times. How do they taste? Well, they taste about as good as you might expect oil-fried chitinous exoskeleton insects to taste - and they had sharp pointy bits. 

One alluring town attraction was being able to buy a tiny candle-boat to launch down the canals. Here some kids are purchasing and launching their own.

For completeness, here are English excerpts from our hotel guide as to what can and can not be done
and a rather inscrutable (elucidating) tee-shirt product warning label. But, I have to add - _many_ more Chinese can speak good English that the other way around.