A Music Festival and More Rapeseed Flowers

Sunday was my (hopefully last) performance at the Gaoligongshan music festival. Whereas at the other performances all the acts were from schools in the area, yesterday there were only a few school performances and several professional ones. The last three times I performed the thing I dreaded the most was the cold. They were evening performances, and it was winter. This time, though, everyone was overheated and got too much sun. It was midday, and it is spring. Furthermore, the sun here is quite strong as we're close to the tropics (25N) and at elevation (over 5,300 ft); some of the other performers from elsewhere in China commented on how they weren't used the Yunnan sun.

The music festival is timed to coincide with the rapeseed flowers. Right down the road from the concert venue (a large courtyard), there is a "viewing platform" from which you can look out over the valley. If you didn't believe me last time about the miles of rapeseed, now you can see it for yourself.

Looking northwest from the viewing platform.

Terraces in the distance, a small village in the foreground.

One of my favorite performances was a group singing traditional music, and dressed the part.

Perhaps the most visually appealing was a sleeve dance by one of the local middle schools.

On Saturday, two other fellows and I walked down the main road a little ways and down into a field of flowers. As spectacular as the views from the platform were, I enjoyed being down in the fields much more. Here are some of the (many) pictures I took. Sorry if you're bored with rapeseed already. I'm not!

The pink building just peaking up over the trees in the upper left hand corner is the school.
The students' dorm is left most and the top of the teaching building is just visible to the right.

It's hard to capture with a camera just how much the flowers glow in the sunlight...

Then we happened upon some water buffaloes!

The baby. I was quite impressed with (and also sort of sad about) the complex rope binding.
It connected the baby to the mother and the mother was lead by their minder.