The Best Time in Northwestern Yunnan
 From Lijiang | Nov 3, 2006 10:11

Endangered Plant/Gonggashan | Sichuan | Dec 8, 2006 09:10
The vendors and guides on and around Hailuogou glacier sell a small plant. Its name is Cong1 Cao3. The vendors usually keep it in a little box and the guides keep it in a cigarette box. It can be as long as a cigarette, but usually shorter and less thick. It has a thin skin of dark brown covering a lighter interior.
Cong cao sells for about 5rmb dried and 20rmb fresh.

Please don't buy it.

It's sold under the pretext as being the best thing around for mountain sickness.
First of all...you're not really that high at Hailuogou. Second of all, if you're with a tour, chances are you won't be up there that long anyway.
And lastly, it's expensive and it won't work if you already have a headache.
This plant only grows above 4000 metres. It has no leaves, no fruit, no seeds. It propagates underground. It looks like a piece of thick brown grass.

On Gonggashan,it's becoming scarce.

Getting Train Tickets When They're Sold-Out | -General- | Dec 7, 2006 23:37
Last summer, I had difficulty on several occasions in trying to purchase train tickets on short notice. On one occasion, I was in Baoji, Shaanxi trying to get to Kunming. I was told there were no tickets, so I bought a ticket to Chengdu instead.

Right before leaving, I began talking to some train employees - a woman and a man. They told me it was easy to get a ticket to Kunming. The only question was, when did I want to go? These two kind people traded my Chengdu ticket for one to Kunming. I gave them a good tip (though they initially refused twice), for I was very thankful.

If you're in a pinch and really need a ticket, try talking to some train employees who are off-duty, or who don't work the ticket lines. The ticket workers are often too harried to have the patience to decipher English or poor Chinese speaking.