Yunnan ham = Chinese prosciutto (Looks uncannily like a Dutch masters’ still life doesn’t it?)

Southwestern Chinese towns have been cosmopolitan for millennia. Trade routes across the continent zig-zagged through the region, and left traces of cuisines from thousands of miles away. Lijiang in Yunnan province was a popular stop-off point for Tibetan, Sichuan, and South Asian travellers passing through on the Tea & Horse road.

The best food in Lijiang comes from its street corners and small restaurants. Here’s a selection from some of my favorite vendors.

Lijiang baba is a portable snack of fried bread, either plain or flavored with onions and herbs. You can easily stick a half-dozen in your saddle-bags, and you’ll be ready for anything.

Baozi are those ubiquitous Chinese buns, filled with delectable meat and spices. They’re a staple of northern diets. See the steam coming from these? This shop makes them fresh, all day long.

Baked lijiang baba on a pile of black “rice sausage” and grey bean-jelly – both typical Naxi delicacies. You’ll see them all over town.

Ok I admit it – I never tried these eggs. Covered with mud and rice husks, they were just too hairy-looking. I shot these at my favorite local restaurant.

These guys are making one of my favorite snacks: a “Lijiang hamburger”, made especially for the tourist trade. Here they’re toasting the bread on a small griddle.

And here’s the “burger”. There’s no meat in it – just jellied noodles, coriander, and plenty of chilli pepper & garlic. Most tables in Lijiang have chili pots on them, just like those in Sichuan.

Another treat that delicious but isn’t exactly local are these fishes-on-a-stick. I highly recommend the chocolate flavor.

Fresh from the hive to a street corner near you. With a climate similar to that of northern California, in Lijiang everything’s fresh from nearby fields, all year round.

Healthy biscuits from street-side bakeries. Low on sugar, and packed with peanuts and sesame seeds, they’re a great way to fuel explorations of nearby towns like Suhe and Baisha.

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Image from my Calendar Girls series

Ten days ago, I went from being a size L/XL to a Medium overnight.

It’s easy: catch a plane from anywhere in Asia to a western country, particularly an Anglo-influenced one like the US/Australia. It’s a shock as soon as you step into a new, more western mix of humanity: everyone around you is HUGE, compared to what you’ve gotten used to in Asia. The mind has to readjust to new version of normality.  A new template. This new version’s often taller, and is always wider.

This holds true from clothing sizes to bra sizes [more on those later on].

Last weekend I met an old friend Sydney’s Chinatown. We’d met during my time in Korea, and hadn’t seen one another in four years. “You look tired,” he said, a polite reference to how I’ve aged during my early 30s. [He'd aged too, but I didn't say anything; I'd forgotten how forward Korean men were about appearance.] We walked through a warren of alleys dotted by fluorescent-lit signs of estate agents and restaurants, the bilingual traditional Chinese-English signs more familiar than those in our present west Sydney neighborhood.

As we speared meat into a reasonably-authentic Korean barbeque, he looked over at me and said: “How come you haven’t changed, but your husband got a belly now?”  It was probably because I’d spent most of this year in Asia. Australia is as car-mad as America. Australian food, while as fresh and healthy as anything I’ve had in California, is in Texas-sized portions as in the States, with a similar emphasis on meat & dairy.

Numbers can do wonder for one’s self-confidence – and for clothing companies’ bottom lines. Take vanity sizing: since I began leaving the US frequently for the past 12 years, I’ve noticed that american sizes have been creeping downward as our waistlines fill out. This adds more confusion to already-baffling international sizes. When asked “What size are you,”by a salesperson,  my answer is: “It depends”.  It ranges from size 4-8 (U.S., depending on the brand) to size 38 (European) to XL (Vietnam/Thailand).

However, in urban Asia, sizes are also increasing along with a more modern lifestyle. This is particularly noticeable in China, a vast country where those with northern ancestors can be significantly taller than southerners. In a Kunming department store, I saw a row of festive brilliant red bras, of a hue I’ve never seen in a Western lingerie shop: they looked like a celebration waiting to happen under conservative clothes.

A closer look at them revealed that yes, indeed, some Chinese women even wear my size. So I bought a Chinese-red bra as a souvenir of the nation’s time of transition. And to make some more memories once I got back home.

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From a trip to Blackheath last weekend to visit their art studios. Dusk dropped quickly under a huge sky, at a lookout point on the way back to Sydney. R. snapped this photo of me against gravel and scrubby springtime trees.

Umbrellas in Asia are for much more than just rainy days. They’re used to block sun, rain, drips from overactive air-conditioners, and even prying eyes. There are UV-blocking umbrellas for summertime, and huge, super-sturdy typhoon-proof versions too.

My favorite umbrella is from [of all places] a tiny shop near Rome’s Termini train station, from my trip last year. It’s got a super-powerful handle, hot-pink details, and cheery-looking chartreuse bandages printed all over it. When its  metal spokes broke in Lijiang last month, my friends said: “Get a new one!” But nowhere in China would anyone sell anything remotely like my umbrella. Are you crazy? Hello Kitty, puppies frolicking in flowers, or lacy designs are fine. But bandages?! Why would ANYone walk around inviting bad luck by printing references to flesh wounds on their umbrella?

But the bandage design was exactly what I wanted. I was despondent and stubborn, a familiar state to anyone who knows me well.

That is, until I met the Umbrella Man.

I noticed him one afternoon outside my favorite dumpling shop at the edge of Lijiang’s Old Town. He and the local seamstress had set up shop – a pair of tiny workbenches with tools, umbrella-parts, and a foot-powered sewing machine – on a busy streetcorner.

“How much to fix this?” I asked him in passable mandarin, my aluminum umbrella spokes dangling. He gave it a quick perusal. “Ten kuai,” he said [around US $1.60]. Two hours later, after he fixed the spokes then broke and finally fixed the handle, he handed back my little piece of Italy.

Thanks to Lijiang’s Umbrella Man, I’m protected from Sydney’s scorching sun this summer, whether we’re going to the Blue Mountains or to  the beach.

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