The day I arrived in Dali, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to get away from the town and see something, do something, or just get out and enjoy the warm sunny weather (something lacking elsewhere in China in February), but otherwise had very little idea what I was looking for or what exactly the area had to offer.
I decided to take off walking and explore, and because it is so close and so big that it is absolutely impossible to miss if you head off in an Easterly direction, I elected to head toward Erhai lake, 4 kilometers east of Dali.
I walked for a while, eastward on Renmen street, until I reached the end of the road. From there I headed north, for I figured that I would eventually find a road that would take me further eastward to the lake.
I know now that I would have, eventually, come to a very nice paved road that would have led me directly to the Caicun village (the village situated on the lake, directly East of Dali). However, I didn't have the patience for that. As soon as I came across a simple dirt path heading eastward through a rice field, I was off on it.
This next part is what I like best about Dali: I walked on a dirt path across a rice field--a very ordinary rice field outside of a very simple village in China's "wild west", and the people more or less continued along with their work as if I weren't there, although occasionally someone would look at me curiously and send me a friendly "Ni Hao!". If I were elsewhere in China, the workers would stop what they were doing and come over to gawk at my blonde hair and big nose.
After I had travelled a short ways down the trail it suddenly came to an end and--there were these people with shovels. The trail was actually being constructed as I was walking across it. The people were very nice and let me pass, and after a very short walk down an even simpler path, I was in Caicun village.
I walked around the village for a while. The housing appeared sturdy and adequate and the people looked healthy, but its far less developed than what I've seen in Eastern China.
The lake itself is gorgeous. First of all, the water is actually blue (Dali is also free of the industrial filth of Eastern China) and surrounded on all sides with hills and mountains.
I tried to find the ferry to take me across the lake to another village. It turns out that the ferries are very irregular and the only practical way to cross the lake is to charter a boat. I decided that could wait until another time and caught a horse-drawn carriage back to Dali.