Hello, Dear Travellers!
Welcome to my beautiful homeland, Yunnan!
This is Elena from Yunnan. I have been a profeesional private guide throughout Yunnan since 2009. I offer tailored tours to Kunming, Dali, Lijiang and Shangrila, as well as to Dongchuan Red Land, Yuanyang Rice-Terrace Fields. My focus is to take people to places where it's authentic to absorb the traditional local culture, enjoy beautiful scenery, try wonderful local food, and intereact with beautiful people along the way. Every day is such excitement!
I grew up in some deep mountains in Yunnan. My mother was planting rice when i was on the way. She couldn't wait to go home but gave birth under a big rock, by the patty fields. My childhood was lots of fun in the wild mountains. But every time when I looked up and saw the white clouds above the blue mountains, there is an urge from inside, the longing for going beyond, and see the unknown world.
So i studied very hard in school, and finally became the first university student throughout my little town. And i was feeling so much gratitude towards my humble parents, who supported me all the way through, which was unbelievable for a country family at that time.
After getting an English-Teaching degree from Yunnan Normal University, amazingly, I was sent to Thailand and started teaching Mandarin there. From 2012-14, I was spending lots of time in the tropical bushes, meditating with monks and fellows from different parts of the world. Beside Thailand I also traveled a bit to some other interesting countries in southeast Asia, such as Srilanka, Myanmar, etc..
While being a guide, living in the most beautiful Northwest Yunnan, i have been learning also as a person who stands on my own feet, facing mental/physical issues from different aspects of life, and went through difficlut times searching for the way out of my isolated world where i was so afriad to face the world outside, until i finally met my teacher, who is so kind and wise, and willing to live with us, and help us seeing, facing and solving our own issues. We live together as a community around my teacher now in Dali, me, my teacher's family, and my teacher's other students and their children. We focus ourselves in building a cultural/art community, which shows the Middle Way of being, that was described by Confucious around 500 B.C., and practiced by generations.. So as we are learning, we share such possible ways of living with people who come across. We offer Caligraphy lessons, which was an meditative art for ancient Chinese scholars; We offer accupuncture treatment, to help people who have muscle pains, headache, and who have difficulty to sleep; Moreover, we read the ancient saintly people's scripture everyday, and we share books of ancient version; we have cultural space and bookstores where you can soak yourselves in, and start a conversation which might light up each other's eyes..
Meanwhile, am still continuing with the YunnanToursByLocal, arranging tours for clients from different backgrounds with different needs, sending people excellent and suitable guides and drivers with different transportation, and get busy on the road from time to time..
We Look forward to seeing you here!
With a smile,
Elena
