Exploring Kunming

So I’m learning that I might have been a little overcautious (me???) in arriving relatively early in the registration period: I definitely didn’t miss anything, and I’ve had lots of time to get established, but I’ve also had what will be 5 days with nothing really to do, and still little to no command of language. So there has been a lot of basically stalling. I’ve read a bunch of Mark Twain, quite a bit of Lonely Planet, done a surprising amount of internet surfing, learned to use Skype like a pro (can I just say that I’m totally blown away by it? My first call was from Shanghai, China to a cell phone at the time located in Pinedale, Wyoming, and it cost me two cents a minute. Absolutely unbelievable until today), played a little tennis, watched a lot of TV—kung fu movies are the normal favorite—and had many exciting and fun but draining conversations with my host family. Not bad, but I’m ready for school to start.

However, the other thing that I’ve started doing in my copious free time (is this the first time that’s been used non-sarcastically?) is exploring Kunming. Brief background: Kunming is a city of somewhere between 1 and 6 million; the capital and hub of Yunnan Province, in southwestern China. It’s at an altitude of around 6000 ft but is quite far south (I’d guess about even with Hawai’i, but I’m not sure), which means that has a really mild climate. According to Lonely Planet it wasn’t really a big city until around WWII, when it was a stronghold of Chinese Nationalist troops against the Japanese. This is where the Burma Road ended, if that rings any bells. Lately there’s been a huge wave of building (in China?!? sorry), coupled with the destruction of some old architectural treasures, most notably the old Mosque and the Bird and Flower Market. Sounds like a pretty big bummer actually.

But there’s still lots of cool stuff left! I’ve gone on a few walks around town, and seen good stuff. Yesterday I went to Green Lake Park, which consists of a big lake covered in lily pads (the green) with lots of islands and bridges connecting them. Really pretty, and full of tons of people. Kids running around, elders strolling, musicians practicing (I’m pretty sure it was practice), people of all ages chatting, playing games, and drinking tea. I liked it a lot:

I took a sort of wrong turn leaving the park, but it worked out ok because I stumbled into this really cool neighborhood of tiny narrow streets between old brick buildings. It felt completely removed from the huge modern city surrounding it, and much more foreign. There were people chilling in the streets, and lots of stalls selling different types of food: my favorite had about six kiddie pools of assorted sizes, filled with fish! I know that live fish are preferred here, but I assumed fish tanks. Probably silly, come to think of it. Other highlights were the chickens—on top of the cages holding the birds was a board with lots of feathers on it. Either a demonstration of the possible options, or maybe they pluck them while you wait? And then lots of really pretty assortments of vegetables and fruits. Plus, uber-cute children in the streets:

Today I went to Yuantong Temple, which is the biggest Buddhist temple in the city:

It’s on the order of a small cathedral in Europe, except that instead of one building there’s several surrounding a central pool and one in the middle of it. The pool itself is filled with hundreds of goldfish, turtles of all sizes, and giant frogs at least a foot long. Those last ones threw me a little—they look just like the turtles at first, and then suddenly you realize that’s not a shell, and those eyes are too big…

(Sorry, no frogs in this one)

I liked the temple a lot. It was really nice because it was so colorful! Unlike dour old churches, all the buildings here were bright colors: turquoise, blue, and red, with lots of gold around as well. And each of the buildings had a huge statue of Buddha inside. I was impressed too because it was definitely still a worship area—probably more faithful than tourists. There was one place where people would light sticks and candles, and then each door had a place to kneel in front of it. The other cool thing was how completely removed the place was from its surroundings: outside was a huge, bustling street, but inside it was all serenity, and it backs up against the zoo so there was a forest of sorts surrounding it. Very nice. One last item of note is that they were expanding it! There were people at work building what looks like will be a new gate in front of the main area, and they’re doing it by carving the structures out of wood, essentially by hand. Novel. And I like that they are doing a more or less traditionally, even in such a modernizing country.

More temple.

And so ends another super long post. I decided after last time that I was going to go for more, shorter posts, but that seems to have failed. Oh well. Yell at me in the comments :-P. One more picture, of the street right in front of my university: