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Published: August 6th 2007
Skyscrapers in KunMing
Ahhh, finally some real architecture to look at!First Impressions of China
Arriving in China is like getting hit with a tonne of bricks, thousands upon thousands of cultural bricks which individually could be handled with ease, but in such numbers are just totally overwhelming. Even the smallest task, such as finding lunch, can become a headache here as English is virtually non-existant. Of course, the local people are friendly and willing to help you out, if only you could explain to them what it is that you are after. You end up making a hell of a lot of mistakes and eating a lot of rubbish food, but hey, this is what travelling is all about - learning to cope. Actually, I hope travelling is not about rubbish food, that would really cramp my style.
After missing my first bus from Hekou to Kunming things did end up turning out for the best. I hopped onto a sleeper bus at 7pm and set off on the 12 hour journey in comfort, or so I thought. The bed was roughly 5’6” long and only 2 foot wide (four or five hours of the trip were occupied by a concerted effort to estimate the dimensions of my bed,
Central Kunming
Government Park. it was better than anything else I could do) which turns out to be almost, but not quite, perfectly uncomfortable for every part of my body. No matter how comfortable I got before drifting off to sleep I would wake up half an hour later with a terrible cramp in some obscure part of my back. I can handle that though, I’m not here to be comfortable after all.
[Edited: whinge removed]
Enough moaning though, the trip wasn’t so bad. The scenery was unbelievable while it was still light and even when it wasn’t. The road is being re-made so we were constantly underneath a construction site which meant we had to skirt around the very edge of the valley, which gave us great views. The Red River flows down a massive valley, perhaps 500m high on either side, with the road running near the peak. When one of our tyres exploded (and I mean exploded, you should have heard the noise!) I got out and walked towards the edge. Even in the pitch black darkness I could make out the shape of the valley and I could hear the river, even then it was breathtaking. Unfortunately I had
My First Chinglish
What? I always treasvre trees! to get back on the bus as the weather seemed to be closing in, later on the rain started pouring down and the loudest thunder I have ever heard cracked above us. Not great for sleeping, but highly exciting.
Thus I arrived in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province, at a reasonable hour of the morning and with excited expectation. What can I say about Kunming… it is different that’s for sure. As you walk down the street you are constantly being watched by gigantic advertisments for lingerie. That’s right, at least half of the big ads in the center of town of for underwear, and they are all featuring European women. The other half of the ads also feature westerners which I find quite disconcerting; I can’t imagine what feelings it invokes in the locals. On the main intersection you can see Nicholas Cage advertising watches, that English git from Gattaca advertising mens leatherware, Catherine Zeta-Jones advertising some clothes, and some young American girl advertising Victoria’s Secret, just to name a few. Is there really a market here for people who want to look like Nicholas Cage? There certainly isn’t back home.
Once I got over the
Temple Near KunMing
This is the main temple building where the clay statues were. posters (I had to spend a while just staring at a few of them) I set off to explore the city center. Given that four million people live here I was expecting a grand boulevard of shopping-ness, and that is exactly what I found. How boring. Kunming is very much like any western city I have been to, big shiny office buildings (some very cool architecture though), wide paved pedestrian malls, KFC and McDonalds (useful for it's clean western toilets). The differences between here and, say, Syndey are very subtle, apart from the Chinese characters used on the signs and the people walking around there are very few differences indeed, at least within the central mall area.
I took a minibus up to a temple on a mountain outside of the city in an effort to find “Chinese culture”. The main attraction at the temple was a series of 500 clay sculptures commissioned in 1890. Some of the sculptures are ridiculously lifelike, you need to take a second look at them to make sure that they aren’t moving, but the ones that I found most appealing were the slightly more surrealistic ones. Indian men with bulging eyes and bright
Gazebo
Behind the temple I found this cute little Gazebo thingy. red faces contorted into agonising expressions, larger than life heros of Chinese history shown in mid stride about to strike down a foe, and spooky looking wise-men with faces that make you cringe. These sculptures truly evoked feelings in me, usually scary ones that made me want to run away, and I found them totally compelling and absorbing. Unfortunately they didn’t allow photography so I can’t share them with you, you’ll have to go and see them for yourself.
Upon my return I steeled myself for the big event: lunch. I walked around for ages looking for a place that fitted my requirements, that is to say it was cheap and easy. Eventually I found a place that looked good, it was packed with locals eating all sorts of random things and a small list of prices was shown on the wall (all in Chinese though). I walked in, sat down, stood up, pointed at one of the things on the wall, sat down again, waited, and was then served. Ok, a word to the wise, don’t just order random dishes in China, especially when your only criteria for choosing the dish was price. What I got was fried
marshmellows (or small cubes of boiled fat, I couldn’t quite tell) cooked with a lot of oil, some eschallots and some pork fat. If that souds appetising to you then you are a very mistaken individual and I urge you to get some help, it was disgusting. The first few bites were ok but very soon I was sick of the bland taste. Do you see what I mean about things being difficult in China?
My luncheon experince put me in some low spirits, I didn’t want to spend the next few months of my life eating that dish over and over again. Thus, when I set out for dinner I was determined to get something decent. To this end I walked a long way through the bitingly cold night air (Kunming is 1850m above sea level and is therefore freaking cold) to a restaurant listed in Lonely Planet. Yeah, I know, I’m a sucker for the guidebook now. However, I didn’t actually bring the guidebook because it was too big to cary, therby making it impossible to actually find said restaurant. Whoops, silly me. Instead I walked down to an area that someone had told me was full
of western friendly cafes and restaurants. I couldn’t find that either, but I did find a street full of real Chinese restaurants and I confidently walked into one of them armed with my basic Chinese vocabularly. My first task was to find a table and sit down, then I tried to ask them if they had a toilet by saying the word for toilet over and over, but the owner, who spoke the tiniest amount of English assured me that they didn’t have one. That wasn’t the end of the world, just, so I then tried to order. The owner asked me if I liked chicken which I thought was an excellent start. He then started pointing at all sorts of chicken dishes in the menu which was a waste of time for me. I took him by the hand and attempted to walk around the restaurant pointing at tasty looking dishes and asking him how much they were (in Chinese of course) but he always told me that they didn’t have them. “What? This is a restaurant isn’t it? What kind of restaurant has no toilet and serves food to people that it doesn’t actually make?” I was at
a loss so I simply went for the first chicken dish he had recommended plus some rice and soup.
While I waited for my food I started to think, there must have been a communication problem during that conversation because all restaurants have toilets and serve food. It’s one of the universal laws of eating, laws which I am well familiar with. My confidence increased and I decided to try again, so I called over an old guy who appeared to be the father of the owner and was just hanging around being useful. I beckoned him to come close to me, and then I slowly pronounced each of my words, being especially careful to get every tone perfect: “Ni men you ce suo ma”. He looked at me with a funny expression, paused for a few seconds to figure things out, and then held up three fingers. Huh? He recognised my unsuredness and started pointing up the stairs to help me out. I got up and followed him, or more precisely I made sure that he followed me up, until I found the toilet on the third floor. As I closed the door behind myself I could barely
More Temple
Sorry guys, it was my first Chinese temple after all. I had to take lots of photos, it would have been rude not to. keep back my excitement, I wanted to shout out. I had successfully communicated in another language! I had broken through the cultural barrier! I can handle China now! Ok, a little over the top for just finding a toilet, but it felt damn good to me. The dinner was excellent to boot.
On my second day I joined a Chinese tour group, yes I joined the devil himself, and went to see the Shilin stone forrest. On the way we stopped at a souvenir shop and a random temple where I was herded around with the group just like the tour groups you see all over the world. I had a sticker to identify me as a part of the group and we all followed a girl who held up a flag with our number on it. Of course, I couldn’t understand any of the explanations or the rituals that we were put through, but it was interesting to be a part of the group for a change. Also, there was a six year old boy on the tour with his grandparents who took an interest in me and kept trying to talk to me. I found that awfully
Random China
I was just walking down a street in KunMing when I realised that this giant building was sitting next to me. I have no idea what it is for, just that it has a large gate running right through its middle. difficult as I could barely understand what he was asking me, but after a while we managed to exchange a few snippets of information. For lunch we enjoyed a local specialty called Across The Bridge Noodles, which can best be described as Chinese two minute noodles. You get a selection of uncooked meats and vegetables along with a bowl of noodles and a large bowl of very hot soup. You then push everything into the soup, wait two minutes for it to cook, and then you eat it. If uni students back home could get there hands on this stuff Mie Goreng would be out of business, it tasted fantastic, especially considering how simple the dish actually is.
The stone forrest itself was quite otherworldly, especially once I got away from all the other tourists. Quite like the name would suggest it is a forrest of stone, basically a massive hunk of limestone (several kilometers across) has been exposed from the ground and eroded by the wind to form thousands of free standing pillars. Some of the pillars are 30m high and you can walk through the massive valleys running between them. Unfortunately though, the best sections have been
KunMing Pagoda
Central KunMing. completely revamped for tourism with lawns and gardens surrouding paved paths through the forrest. Also, the guides and entertainers who work in the park are all dressed up as minority groups such as the Dai and the Hmong while clearly being plain old Han Chinese; this adds a really fake air to the entire place which I utterly disliked. By taking the smaller and more obscure paths I managed to get away from it all in the rear section of the forrest where I was essentially alone among the rocks. I climbed up a few to get a good view of the place, but whenever I did so I could see the other tourists and fake minorities again. What does it take to get some peace and quiet around here?
So after three days in China I am now starting to get the hang of things. Of course, there are going ot be many times ahead where some unexpected cultural thingy gets thrown in my face, but I feel confident now that I can handle them when they arrive. It’s going to be hard to get over the local idea of restaurant service though: they see no problem in
serving you both of your main dishes half and hour before your steamed rice and entrees.
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bill
non-member comment
stone
Cute boy??? *cough, choke*. Well, it sure aint Mt Rushmore, but nice try!