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This weekend featured two very different but very good days, which combined to give a view of China from two directions.On Saturday, I went to Xi Shan, the Western Hills, with two of my friends from Frisbee. This was the Rugged Western Traveler day: they both are super cool and pretty hardcore. Speak Chinese, have been living here for several years—actually they were friends in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, for a year or so before coming to Kunming and both complain that Kunming is “too easy” to be the real China, given it’s nice weather, mild pollution, friendly authorities, and many English speakers. The traveler method involves exploring random places ‘off the beaten track’ as well as big sights, being really smart and aware, talking to locals in their language, use public transportation, but always sticking together and talking as a group of three Americans.
After taking two local buses to the foot of the hills, which stick up on the western side of Dianchi Lake (Kunming is on it’s north end), we hitched a ride up in a minibus and started hiking. It was pretty nice: the mountains are incredibly steep and spectacular, and are forested thickly enough that it was possible to hear the absence of city/people noise for the first time since I’ve been here. Unfortunately it was a bit hazy, so pictures of the view wouldn’t turn out, but the sight was pretty incredible, looking out 3000 ft above a huge lake. And the hiking was great! We got out into woods, and it felt like we'd left the city (we had) and it was really quiet--no people noise at all. What!!?--and natural. That was nice, and needed after a month (officially, today) here.
My comments about silence aside, for the most part the mountains are populated. There are temples and pavilions scattered all through them, which made good exploration targets, as well as a cable car and the tomb of Nie’er, the person who composed China’s National Anthem. He was Kunming ren, so at some point they created a masoleum for him. This is the March of the Volunteers, so it was done in the ‘concrete masses’ style:
My comments about silence aside, for the most part the mountains are populated. There are temples and pavilions scattered all through them, which made good exploration targets, as well as a cable car and the tomb of Nie’er, the person who composed China’s National Anthem. He was Kunming ren, so at some point they created a masoleum for him. This is the March of the Volunteers, so it was done in the ‘concrete masses’ style:
The other main population in the hills is balloon game vendors. For some reason, the leisure of activity of choice in the Xi Shan seems to be popping balloons with airsoft guns. Scattered all across the mountain faces were people with sets of 50 balloons taped to a sheet and four or five airsoft rifles which could be used to pop them balloons for a nominal fee. It was quite the deployment: we were on fairly out of the way trails, some of which probably didn’t get more than a few other users during the day, and still every hundred yards or so there would be a balloon popper. I’m not exaggerating by much: I think we probably saw upwards of thirty over the course of our hike.We hiked around to a couple of temples, then found our way to a town in a saddle between two peaks, where we had a lunch of miantiao. These were I think my first noodles in China, so were sort of overdue. They were fine and came with a spicy pickled vegetable, which was quite good. Plus it was a good house restaurant experience.
After that we hiked all the way down the mountain on a combination of very steep roads and wonderful backwoods paths. We stopped to see one of the temples, which was huge and amazing: perfectly tranquil, with incredible carvings and statues.
So that was fun. Then once we got to the park we met up with a friend of hers and her son. The son was 14, and thus had studied a fair amount of Yingyu in school (he spoke it better than the teacher). We bonded over the fact that we both had played Red Alert 2, which made me happy :-). The four of us then set about doing a more thorough tour of the park than I had done by myself. This included some museums about bronze work in ancient Yunnan (which I could now understand..) and lots of walking on small out of the way paths. It turns out it’s a really beautiful and serene park, with some wonderful corners where all you can see are trees and sky and all you can hear are some trickling streams and a bamboo flute off in the distance. That was a sort of surreal ‘this is China’ moment, actually.
We finished with the park by about noon, but little did I know that the day was actually just beginning. We took the bus back to the house of the friend and her son, where we had tea. This apartment was a pretty good example of something that I’ve noticed several times now: the run-down, not particularly nice, kind of dirty apartment building that suddenly yields to spotless, incredibly tastefully decorated, bright, airy actual apartments. My house isn’t quite this: the building isn’t that bad, and the apartment isn’t that good. But most of the other places I’ve been have been just beautiful.
Anyway, we had pu’er cha, which is a Yunnan specialty. This meant we got to try out their cha table, which was an amazing piece of knotted wood with different levels carved into it to put cups and plates on and drain excess water from. It also meant that we got snacks: all sorts of
We had one more stop left, and that was dinner. Over the course of the day, it came out that I had not tried Guoqiao Mixian, ‘Across the Bridge Rice Noodles.’ When I was reading about this place, I got the sense that these were a huge deal: they’re mentioned three or four times in the Lonely Planet, even getting their own gray box. But since I’ve been here I hadn’t seen that much evidence of them, and my host family made no mention (I suspect that they don’t like noodles. That works fine with me). So yesterday I got to try them out.
After that we hiked all the way down the mountain on a combination of very steep roads and wonderful backwoods paths. We stopped to see one of the temples, which was huge and amazing: perfectly tranquil, with incredible carvings and statues.
Like all good temples, Taihua has a fish pond.
Worship.
When we finally made it to the bottom, we hopped back on the bus and returned to town. This was one of the best “traveler” days I’ve had so far: saw great sites, walked through beautiful forests, ate in somebody’s front yard, and had good conversation with two nice and interesting friends.
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Sunday was the local day. A friend of my host mom’s (the same one who hosted the big party a few weeks ago) took me on what I thought was a morning trip to the park, but turned out to be much, much more.
We met at the bus station outside my school and took the bus to Jin Dian (the Golden/Bronze Temple that I went to the week before last). On the way we had some pretty good conversation: she’s an English teacher, but doesn’t actually speak very much, so we had a good combo of Chinese and English. I like her a ton: she’s really nice and was excited to show me all sorts of Chinese Wen Hua, which was great. Plus she just has an air of an older woman who’s perfectly in control—kind of ladylike, maybe?
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Sunday was the local day. A friend of my host mom’s (the same one who hosted the big party a few weeks ago) took me on what I thought was a morning trip to the park, but turned out to be much, much more.
We met at the bus station outside my school and took the bus to Jin Dian (the Golden/Bronze Temple that I went to the week before last). On the way we had some pretty good conversation: she’s an English teacher, but doesn’t actually speak very much, so we had a good combo of Chinese and English. I like her a ton: she’s really nice and was excited to show me all sorts of Chinese Wen Hua, which was great. Plus she just has an air of an older woman who’s perfectly in control—kind of ladylike, maybe?
So that was fun. Then once we got to the park we met up with a friend of hers and her son. The son was 14, and thus had studied a fair amount of Yingyu in school (he spoke it better than the teacher). We bonded over the fact that we both had played Red Alert 2, which made me happy :-). The four of us then set about doing a more thorough tour of the park than I had done by myself. This included some museums about bronze work in ancient Yunnan (which I could now understand..) and lots of walking on small out of the way paths. It turns out it’s a really beautiful and serene park, with some wonderful corners where all you can see are trees and sky and all you can hear are some trickling streams and a bamboo flute off in the distance. That was a sort of surreal ‘this is China’ moment, actually.
We finished with the park by about noon, but little did I know that the day was actually just beginning. We took the bus back to the house of the friend and her son, where we had tea. This apartment was a pretty good example of something that I’ve noticed several times now: the run-down, not particularly nice, kind of dirty apartment building that suddenly yields to spotless, incredibly tastefully decorated, bright, airy actual apartments. My house isn’t quite this: the building isn’t that bad, and the apartment isn’t that good. But most of the other places I’ve been have been just beautiful.
Anyway, we had pu’er cha, which is a Yunnan specialty. This meant we got to try out their cha table, which was an amazing piece of knotted wood with different levels carved into it to put cups and plates on and drain excess water from. It also meant that we got snacks: all sorts of
fruits and nuts (the highlight for me was the peanuts, which hadn’t been prepared in the same
way as at home, so tasted much more like actual plants, a little bit like sprouts), some sweet bread, and the highlight, which was a sort of baozi from Sichuan that had an extra sticky and chewy outside with pork and eggs in the middle.
Tea! At an amazing tea store, with incredible tea accessories!
After the tea we said good bye to the son, who had school (on a Sunday, yes, and actually apparently his school doesn’t get the National Day break that I thought was required by law. Intense), and the three of us kept exploring. Our next stop was a new Bird and Flower Market, which I actually liked a lot. This was on the outskirts of town, by the park and their house, and I doubt it was more than a few years old, but they’d done a superb job of recreating classic Chinese architecture (at least to this supremely untrained Western eye). It was really beautiful, and filled with shops selling all sorts of vaguely Chinese things: tea tables, jade carvings, furniture, embroidery, porcelain, and birds and flowers too. It’s kind of funny, but this was probably the closest I’ve felt to what China must have been like a couple of centuries ago, before either modern technology or foreign influence. It was really nice.
We had one more stop left, and that was dinner. Over the course of the day, it came out that I had not tried Guoqiao Mixian, ‘Across the Bridge Rice Noodles.’ When I was reading about this place, I got the sense that these were a huge deal: they’re mentioned three or four times in the Lonely Planet, even getting their own gray box. But since I’ve been here I hadn’t seen that much evidence of them, and my host family made no mention (I suspect that they don’t like noodles. That works fine with me). So yesterday I got to try them out.
Guoqiao Mixian.
The basic idea is sort of like a twist on hotpot or fondue: you cook things in a broth at your table. But this time, each person gets their own broth, which comes in an earthenware bowl at an exceedingly high temperature. Each person then gets a selection of things to put in the broth, including the noodles of course, but also several different types of meat, lots of vegetables, and even a raw egg (I’m not sure what kind of bird it was from, but it was only about a third the size of a chicken). You dump all these things in the broth, with I think some order to them: egg first, then the raw meat, then the vegetables, and finally the noodles. Stir it and let it cook a bit, and then start picking the now-well-done morsels out and drinking the soup. It works pretty well, especially the soup, which now has flavors of all the different things you put in it. Yummy yummy yummy, and now I’ve officially been to Kunming.
After our dinner we had a nice stroll through a market street and then went our separate ways. It was a pretty great day, probably even beating the sights of the day before. This was the local version: hang out with people, let them show you their stuff even if it’s not super high-powered. Don’t worry as much about letting English happen (though I still tried to make the effort), and just have fun getting to know them. Very pleasant.
Both methods are good, and I think that getting combinations like this is really nice and gives a better picture than either could by itself. See the sights, and the people.
After our dinner we had a nice stroll through a market street and then went our separate ways. It was a pretty great day, probably even beating the sights of the day before. This was the local version: hang out with people, let them show you their stuff even if it’s not super high-powered. Don’t worry as much about letting English happen (though I still tried to make the effort), and just have fun getting to know them. Very pleasant.
Both methods are good, and I think that getting combinations like this is really nice and gives a better picture than either could by itself. See the sights, and the people.
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