Yunan

---

Hi all -

I know it's been a while since I wrote last but I guess I felt more and more like I was just living in China and not travelling anymore, which gave me little motivation to write new entries about everyday life. But alas, I am travelling again and here comes the stories.

After a hot hot hot June and July in Hangzhou (like over 30C for three days in a row, which is like over 100F), my friend Jules (a Frenchman with no set loyalty to France, which is why I can travel with him) and I decided it was time to leave dodge and go to the only place in China that has nice weather in the summer, Yunan. This is a province to the Southeast of Tibet and is known for its hippie culture and cool summers (sort of like San Francisco). So last week, Jules and I set out on a 36 hour train ride from Hangzhou to Kunming, which is the capital of Yunan. The train ride like everything in China is an experience in itself. Jules and I are the only foreigners on the train and we could not get beds in the same cabin because train tickets sell out really quickly in the summer (Chinese love to travel). So I had a bottom bunk in a little cabin with five other beds, 3 stacked on each side. The opposite bottom bunk had a grandfather and his little grandchild. My first thoughts were ones of horror because the grandchild looked about two, meaning lots of crying and lots of me not getting sleep. However, she turned out to be the most well behaved child i have ever seen. She would sit quietly all day playing with her books, and when nap time or sleep time at night came, her grandfather would look at her and say "shui jiao ma?" meaning ready for bed, and she would quietly curl up at his feet and fall asleep within minutes. However, not all Chinese toddlers are as well behaved as the one across from me and the second night on the train, one child started to yell and scream for about 30 minutes before his parent decided it might be a nice idea to pick him up and try to calm him down... ah China.

So after two nights and one day on a train we arrive in Kunming which is know as the city of eternal spring. We check into our hostel and as we are getting our rooms, I receive an email that one of my friends from a Rugby team in Xiamen has passed away in a tragic accident over the weekend. Not the best news to receive upon arriving to a new city at the beginning of a vacation. Jules and I pass the morning away drinking beers on the roof top of the hostel telling stories of our friend. We then make plans to fly half way across China to be in Xiamen for the memorial service of our friend the following weekend.

Kunming has a huge hill to the West of the city which was surprisingly enough called West Hill. We went there for a little hiking and going through some Tibetan Buddhists monasteries. It was really nice to see this type of Buddhism again because the last time I saw was three years ago in Tibet. Kunming also had a Mexican restaurant, which for me, is the best thing a Chinese city can have (and we are lacking a good one in Hangzhou). We stay in Kunming for one night and then took another long night bus ride to a city called Lijiang.

Lijiang used to be a backpackers paradise. It has a huge old town with windy streets all with red tiled roofs. However, in the last 10 years more and more westerners have found this place but more importantly the Chinese tourists themselves have found Lijiang. This means now the old town has newly refurbished shops in every building and the streets are lined with Chinese tour groups (which have a tour guide with a triangle flag and all the touring participants in the same colored hat usually orange or something equally as out of place). We found this hostel called Mama Naxi's (Naxi is one of the ethnic minorities present in Yunan, Yunan actually has the most diverse amount of ethnic minorities in all of China). Mama Naxi's was run by a nice elderly Naxi couple who referred to themselves as Mama and Baba (which is Dad in Chinese). In Naxi culture, it was matriarchal society, and in the case of how Mama Naxi's was run, it followed the tradition. Mama has built a cult of personality around herself as a caring, loud and savvy business woman. She sets a curfew for 1 am for all guests to be back or else she will say up to wait for you. It was said it was better to come back at 4 or 5 am than 1:05 am because then she would be grateful her guests are safe rather than scold you for not making curfew. Every night, she and her staff cooks a family style Chinese meal that all the guests can sit together and enjoy. This meal costs less than US$2. Sometimes she doesn't give guests a choice, as one of our friends was sitting in the courtyard and she came up to him and yelled in a loving manner, "you eat, now." Rather, than challenge Mama, he briskly walked in to sit for dinner, which he thoroughly enjoyed.

During our first day in Lijiang, Jules and I wondered around the old city getting lost and then finding a landmark we saw on our map, just to get lost again. The problem with the old town is that three parallel streets running side by side all have the same name, which makes it hard to keep track of where you are. We did hike another mountain on the North side of town (training myself for the famous Tiger Leaping Gorge trek we will be doing next week). After being in Hangzhou for so long, I forgot what blue sky was, and it was simply amazing to be at the peak of the hill and look to the gigantic mountains around the valley with the endless blue sky hanging overhead.

Night life is what Lijiang is known for now. There is a canal that runs for about a quarter of a mile and lined up on each side are bars with live music, Karaoke, and DJ's. It's loud, crazy and something UNICEF might have a problem with because this is supposed to be a UNICEF historical landmark. However, every time UNICEF come for a visit, the bars are boarded up and shut down for a few days because UNICEF is kind enough to give advance notice on there visits. But afterwards its business as usual.

One of our friends from Hangzhou lived in Yunan for a couple months earlier in the year and gave us some western bars to go to. One of which called New Amsterdam was on the northern edge of the town. The owner was friends with our friend from Hangzhou was more than welcoming to Jules and I and actually closed up shop early to take us around Lijiang (which we were really grateful because we had no idea how to get back to the hostel). We made it back at 12:59 just barely avoiding the scolding wrath of Mama.

After our night in LiJiang we took that same night bus back to Kunming, which was worse than the first one because there was a smoker right next to me and he would smoker on the hour every hour. I think around 2 am i gave him a look and said in broken Chinese, "friend I think your done for the night." Surprised by the comment, he took 4 hours off until the next morning and gave me a nice wake up call of smoke at 6 am. We then headed to the airport to catch a flight to Xiamen for the memorial weekend of our friend.

I will update this more soon. Hope all is well!! Also pictures on here or facebook will be up!

best all,

Josh

---