Lijiang - Forgotten Kingdom

Forgotten Kingdom by Peter Gullart:

" The concept of time in Lijiang was totally different from that in the West. In Europe, especially in America, the greater part of time is devoted to making money, not so much to sustain life in decent conditions as to accumulate more and more comforts and luxuries. The rest of the time which remain unoccupied, is "killed" in a manner which has become routine and rigid. ... In the beautiful valley of Lijiang, then still untouched by the complexities and hurry of modern time, time had a different value. It was a gentle friend and a trusted teacher, possessing, there, a magical property which not only I but others had noticed. Instead of being too long it was too short; the days passed like hours and the weeks like days; a year was like a month; and my ten years spent there went by like one. It was not true that we were so busy that we had no time to perceive all the beauty and the goodness that was in that blessed valley. There was time for both. The people in the street interrupted their bargaining to admire a clump of roses or peer a minute into the clear depths of a stream. Farmers paused in their fields to gaze at the ever-changing face of the Snow Mountain. A flight of cranes was breathlessly watched by the market crowds and the songs of birds was commented upon by at length by busy Minkia carpenters who leaned back on their saws and axes. The groups of applecheeked old men, with flowing beards, laughed and joked liked children as they descended the hill, with rods in hands, for a fishing trip. A factory closed for a day or two as the workers suddenly wanted to have a picnic by a lake or on the Snow Mountain. And yet their work was done and done well. "