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Published: January 3rd 2008
First stop on our vacation. Kunming. It is a city of about 8 mill in Yunnan province. Despite our students raving about the clear skies and eternal spring weather, it is sadly just another big Chinese city. Our students claim it is one of the best cities in China. I guess maybe our interests aren't exactly aligned.
After a day in Kunming, we decided to head north 5 hours to Dali, a well-known ancient ethnic city--yes, where all the Bai's are at. The Bai people are one of the larger ethnic groups in Yunnan. The women seemed to be a bit shorter, a bit darker, had a bit bigger eyes, and many times wore a traditional looking head dress.
We were only there for 2 days, so we didn't have a lot of time to make real meaningful observations. The claim of this city as being ancient didn't feel to be true. Maybe the idea was, but nothing tangible in the city seemed to be older than 50 years. It seemed that everything had been re-built to maximize profits from eager tourists. So, I felt a little let down.
Anxious to do some trekking, we decided to take
a taxi to the mountains for a small hike. The taxi driver misunderstood where we wanted to go. By showing us beautiful scenic pictures of where he was taking us, he insisted his reasoning was well-founded. So, we agreed to go to his alternate site.
After a short hike of 30 minutes, we came to the end of the road, no summit in sight. So, we trekked back down and took an alternate route to see if we could ascend further. At first, we noticed a few graves along the track. Traditionally, when a Chinese person dies, the family takes the body up to a mountain and builds a sort of mini-masoleum. We resisted the urge to turn back. This proved faulty again, as we soon entered an all-out mountain grave yard. Not exactly what we were looking for. Sure as hell wasn't the glacier lake or beautiful waterfall that the taximan promised. Oh well.
Despite this, it was nice to see some good scenery. The "ancient city" had no air polluting industry that we noticed, so the sky felt similar to that of Valentine, Nebraska's. It was great to look up to the heavens and see a
sky full of stars, rather than smog filled air. omost enjoyable experience of Dali was leaving, where we could see the beautiful rice-terraced mountains and un-touched way of life. We hope to get closer to this in the coming weeks.
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mick 7
non-member comment
so relaxing!!
read your life in yunnan which is pretty cool and relaxing,enjoy the picturesque view and of course the beautiful ladies,other than that,be aware of the gangs in kunming and junk addiction,I heard of the big chaos in that place since my dad had been in there for 3 years.