Kunming

Hello everyone!

Yes, it's been a long while since my last post and I have already returned to the United States, but I still have a few more posts to make. My last weekend in China I joined four other girls for a trip to Kunming and Li Jiang. I've broken up that trip into three different posts, and here is the first.



To get to Kunming, we took a 13 hour train ride from Chengdu. After my experience with the train to Xian, I was less than excited to repeat it. When we bought the train tickets, we were only able to buy sitters instead of sleepers, but Wentao (our program director) told us there was a way to upgrade our tickets. Through a lot of confusion (not to mention me playing up the dumb blond tourist - I don't know if China has the same stereotype about blonds being dumb, but it didn't hurt to try) one of the train officers offered to help us and we managed to upgrade our tickets. After I negotiated with the train officer, it became quickly apparent that I was the designated translator on our trip. Every time we needed to buy tickets or anything, all the girls would say, "She speaks Chinese," and point to me. We had to skip a day of class for the trip, but I think being forced to use Chinese so much improved my language skills more than a day in class.

We ended up getting a soft-sleeper in the first train car. It wasn't nearly as crowded as the train to Xian and much more clean.

The train left at 4pm, so we slept the night on the train and woke up to see some amazingly beautiful terrain.

It started raining.

And kept raining all day. It was rather miserable. I had a rain poncho and an umbrella along. I gave my umbrella to one of the girls because only one other person brought an umbrella. I didn't take any pictures inside the city because it was raining really heavily. After leaving the train station, we bought our bus tickets to Li Jiang and headed to the Muslim quarter for some lunch. Kunming's Muslim quarter was not nearly as cool as Xian's. After lunch, we tried to find a public bus to take us to a nearby lake that all our guidebooks said was beautiful. I asked some guys at the bus stop to help us figure out which bus to take. They recommended that we go to a different spot because it was more fun, so we took his advice.

The place turned out to be similar to Connor Praerie. It is a park where they've recreated villages from the many different native ethnic tribes that live in southwestern China.

The sculpture greeted us when we entered the park.

Along with this elephant and his handler.

If I remember correctly, this temple was located in the Dali nationality area.

There were performers running around everywhere in flashy costume versions of their group's traditional clothing.

I can't remember which group had this, but it is a tube of bamboo stuffed with rice then corked in by a corn husk. It is then grilled. Imagine that, grilled rice.

To be honest, after the Dali area, I've forgotten what all the different groups are called. Before each different section, there was a sign board giving a little description in Chinese and English about the next group. The problem is there wasn't much variation between the signs. They would tell the approximate population of this particular nationality, tell you that they are an agrarian society, and say what region of the southwest they live.

They had model homes set up that you could enter.

This is a group of dancers displaying their group's traditional dance. I was impressed by how long and beautiful both the men and women's hair was, which was featured in their movements.

In another village, people were making some kind of traditional sweetened flat bread.

This group of women were posing for some kind of press photos when we walked past them.

They caught up with us later and one of the women insisted on taking my arm as we passed over a bridge. I didn't understand why until we got to the other side of the bridge and there was a camera crew video taping the women crossing the bridge. She was using me to give her a better chance of being included in whatever they were filming! I thought it was hilarious and asked her if I could take a picture with her myself. I wonder if I made it on TV.

The grant I received from IU stipulates that I provide a picture of myself proving I was actually where I told them I would be. I think I'll use this picture.


When we took the city bus back into Kunming proper, we grabbed a snack for dinner and then headed for the long-distance bus station to catch our 8pm bus to Li Jiang, but more about that in the next post.