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Published: June 15th 2010
6/5 - 6/7
你好from China!
I was nervous leading up to this trip because I would be across the world without my family. The night before I left I had two nightmares, one involving monsters and the other involving my family. I knew it was from anxiety about being separated from my family, but it still put a dark overcast on the following morning. My parents and I woke up at 4:45am, and after some last minute henpecking from my mom about my luggage that we had packed together specifically to avoid said henpecking, we left home. I forgot to say goodbye to Manee, Mojo, and Jojo, which makes me sad now to think about it.
After I had gotten my boarding pass and checked in my luggage, I got in the long line for the security check-in. Since my parents could not follow me through the check-in, they waited behind the line through the entire time I was in the line. We waved and smiled to each other a lot and bade our final goodbyes after I was past the security check-in. Although I would have insisted that they did not have to wait such
a long time, it cheered me up a lot that they waited and waved to me so much. My dad was also wearing a UNC Chapel Hill hat that I had gotten him in freshman year and a matching light blue shirt, which made me smile as I left.
One uneventful five-hour flight later and I was in San Francisco. The San Francisco airport was huge, and although my dad had advised me to quickly find the terminal for my flight and wait there since the airport was so large, I ended up wandering around. I had four hours before my flight, so I took my time exploring and looking at the exhibits they had. They had an exhibit displaying all kinds of jade sculptures and how different cultures sculpted it in different styles. The Chinese almost always had some kind of nature component to their jade sculptures, always including some kind of plant or animal. The Indian jade sculptures were embedded with small gems and always intricately detailed with patterns. The German jade sculptures were not as tediously detailed nor did they include many natural components, but instead there seemed to be a strong emphasis on shape
Beijing Airport
It was huuuuugeand form.
They also had a porcelain exhibit, which contained blue and white Oriental porcelain as well as European attempts to imitate Chinese and Japanese porcelain. What impressed me the most about the porcelain exhibit were some of the glaze paintings on the porcelain. They were so finely painted and detailed and I even saw a locket the size of my thumb containing a thin porcelain piece with an extremely detailed painting for its size. It contained a Chinese man, woman, a lot of natural scenery, and I think there was even a house in the corner. I was just astounded at how they were able to make such thin and precise strokes, some with the width of a needle point.
Anyway, after exploring another exhibit involving aviation technology and a replica of the Wright brothers’ first plane engine, I boarded my flight to Beijing. I don’t remember how long it was considering the time changes, and I’m not sure I want to remember. Fortunately I was able to sleep through a large portion of it, mainly because the seat next to me was empty so I was able to curl up and sleep on the
two seats. The first in-flight movie was this horrible, boring George Clooney movie about a guy who is addicted to air travel and hates staying home with his family. I slept through the rest of the movies except for the last half of Sherlock Holmes.
When I got to Beijing, the security was ridiculous. The airport was beautiful and grand on the inside, much bigger than the airport in San Francisco which I thought was really impressive; however the intimidating presence of security and the annoying amount of levels of checkpoints made it less enjoyable. First I had to go through immigration, which had ridiculously long lines because a lot of flights disembarked at the same time so all of us were trying to get through. After that I took a train to the Air China departure terminal and went to check-in, but the attendant said that I had to go pick up my luggage. It was strange because the woman at the airport in Charlotte said that my luggage would go straight to Kunming without any need to check it in again. So I left to get it and it turned out I had to pick it
up because it needed to go through customs. Finally, I was able to get my boarding pass and I checked in my luggage again. I was planning on loitering around the airport after getting my boarding pass because I had three hours before my next flight to Kunming, but there were so many serious security officers around that I got scared. I went to my gate and waited until my flight arrived.
It was a quick 3-hour flight to Kunming because I slept through most of it. The Kunming International Airport was certainly a shock after seeing the airport in Beijing. It was, for lack of a better term, “ghetto.” It was not nearly as clean as the previous airports and there were all sorts of shady people hanging around the arrivals area trying to get people into their taxis or selling weird stuff like lighters and tours. Okay, maybe it wasn’t that terrifying, but it was a little after midnight and I was alone and a little scared. After a while I got annoyed by all the people harassing me so I stood next to the groups that were waiting to meet people arriving on flights. I
In the Bus Going to the Hotel in Kunming
Party bus! Okay, maybe not really. We're all nerds. must have had a menacing expression on my face or something because the annoying people would look at me as if to consider talking to me, but then they decided against it and walked away.
I eventually went to a hotel because around 2 am they began closing the airport. The streets had a lot of decorative lights at night, but the lights were also interrupted by flashing blue and red lights of the strong police presence all over the streets. Every block had flashing police lights. I suppose I felt safer and my China guidebook did say that Kunming was one of the safest places in China, but it was still intimidating. Oh, I forgot to mention that airport security in Charlotte picked my luggage as one of the random suitcases they would ransack for contraband items. They cut off the lock and half the zipper on the suitcase and messed up my carefully organized items inside. They opened and messed with everything, but fortunately none of it was missing.
I did not get any sleep that night and mostly read Hannibal (which I had brought with me to read for lack of happier books),
watched Chinese television shows, and bounced between the two beds in my room. I went back to the airport at noon, loitered around in the departures area which was a lot more cheery and had plenty of stores to browse through, and waited until members of my group arrived. We all introduced ourselves and in total about 17 other people showed up. The program director and other staff met up with us at 2:30pm and we left the airport around 5:30pm to our hotel, which was called the Socialism Institute. Weird, right? Really it is a hotel, but with classrooms on some floors and a small library. I have yet to see any socialist propaganda that would earn the hotel such a name, or maybe that is what they want me to think.
We paired up with people to be roommates and my roommate was an Indian girl named Ananthi. She was really nice but a bit on the quiet side, which was actually a lot like me. She made a good observation that after coming to Kunming, she had only seen one person on their cell phone. All of the locals seemed relaxed and just going with
First Glimpses of Kunming 2
I had to wait til the bus slowed down to take a picture, which was quite often since traffic is horrendous. the flow, well, perhaps not in regards to their driving. Riding in the bus from the airport to the hotel made me scared for the people who were not in buses because our bus driver drove as crazily as everyone else.
After we got settled into our rooms, all of the students and program staff went to dinner that the staff arranged at a restaurant. We passed through the park where there was an old man flying a kite of a black bat, so we asked him if we could take his picture before surrounding him with cameras. At the restaurant we were divided into two different tables with lazy susans since there were so many of us. The director of the Yunnan Traditional Hospital and other hospital staff came by to introduce themselves to us, along with the Chinese teachers that we will be studying under. The food was delicious, spicy, and plentiful. We did not get anywhere near finishing despite having eight people at the table. Sammy and Peter, two of the other students, dared themselves to eat the eyes of the fish from one of the dishes. The rest of us were not exactly sure
Driving
There are no such things as lanes in China. Oh, and traffic lights are only suggestions. why, but we recorded it on our cameras anyway. Sammy was disgusted by the texture and Peter said that it did not taste like anything. Afterward the lazy susan ended up being turned in such a way that the eye-less fish head was facing Ananthi, the vegetarian and animal lover. We felt bad, so Louis turned the fish head upside down and covered it with the fish tail, which Lye Ching had taken a bite of after Peter and Sammy ate the eyes. It was a fun meal.
We went back to our hotels after we were finished eating and then went out as a group to the park near the hotel. We watched a group of old women dancing to music in a synchronized fashion, which was really interesting to watch since something like that is not really common in the United States. They were doing it for exercise and it seemed like fun.
We passed through that park and entered a well known park that was five minutes away called Green Lake Park. It was a gorgeous park surrounded by a lake surrounded by and filled with vegetation. There was a small group of
U-Turn Light
Chris' invention come to life! Now if only they put them on cars. people playing classical Chinese music on erhus and other instruments which was calming to listen to. We then spotted groups of people dancing in synchronized fashion like the old women from before. There was a large number of people dancing all over the park in different groups, all for exercise and fun. We tried to join in at the back and panicked whenever the dancers turned steps that would have them facing us. It was a lot of fun, despite our general lack of skill at imitating movements. We also found a small children’s theme park with a carousel and arcade. We could not resist going in, but we refrained from playing with the miniature rides and games since we did not want to give a bad impression. After all, we were representing SIT and our respective colleges. Two of the students were from Harvard. However, we still vowed to go back to the park and learn at least one dance skillfully enough to proudly dance with the groups in the park.
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