We took the entire month of February off to explore Yunnan province in the south of China. It was warm, almost tropical, and a nice break from Beijing, which is at its coldest in February. We flew to Yunnan's capital, Kunming where my friend Julia met up with her grandmother before we set off in a bus. We went first to Lijiang, and stayed in a Naxi village called Baoshan. Our second night in Baoshan the villagers threw a bonfire, and helped us learn some of their traditional dance (lots of walking in circles around a fire), and we bonded with some little kids who were playing with firecrackers. From there we traveled to a small backpacker town called Daju where we got to see a lot of things like traditional Naxi papermaking, a Naxi music
... read more