The reality, although invoking the potential for such images, was not at such extreme ends. Yes there were some very barren sections, and others that were lush and irrigated all year round. There were even Australian eucalyptus trees growing on the slopes around Kunming and in Lijiang. But the hue of the landscape aside, it was the stuff in the air that was the region's best attribute - I'm talking about nothing - just good old-fashion healthy AIR. No chemicals, no smog, no whatever the hell else they pump out of Beijing chimney stacks that makes my living room air filter flash green (which means that while you may not smell the cyanide, it's actually lingering just below the surface and ready to strike - just like puberty in a Chinese airline pilot). It was also one of the province's that claim the most ethnic minorities (as does Xinjiang, where we visited earlier in the year). The number of minorities groups is so great that if you were to buy the traditional head piece of all of them, you'd take longer than the Pope to pick a matching skullcap for your choice of outfit.
Our plan was to start at the provincial capital of Kunming, and then head north-west and upwards towards the Tibetan plateau and aclimatise to the altitude as we went. We would eventually make our way up to 4,400 meters (if only for a short while), but with memories still lingering of a 4hr headache after our Xinjiang Karakoram Highway trip I was not looking forward to altitude sickness again. I was once told that Han Chinese suffer high altitudes more than most, as do those who are uber-fit. Well I'd been duped on BOTH of those accounts already, but this time I was EXTRA prepared. Under my belt this time was 8 weeks of my patented "NO physical training whatsoever" training program, and I'd had a few glasses of wine every night just to ensure I'd forgotten even the most simple of Mandarin words. I was sans Chinese, sans Iron Man body, and ready to tackle altitude sickness head-on Tommy Raudonikis -style.
We'd purposely chosen to travel in the area outside of the peak tourist season, with the aim of being able to take at least one photo without 500 chinese tourist heads bobbing away in the foreground. Only time would tell if she was friend or foe.
Kunming
The first thing that caught my eye as we left Kunming airport on the way to our lunch restauarant was a big statue of a wine bottle. How promising is that? But if there was one big novelty monument that would best epitomise Kunming it would be a giant mushroom, with a grass hopper sitting on top smoking a chinese cigarette. It's a mushroom lover's heaven, as we found out when we tucked into a big mushroom hotpot with 5 or 6 different fungal varieties. Already we'd noticed the different costumes of the waiting staff (dressed in the Sani traditional outfit, the predominant minority in the area), but still something was familiar - chilli sauce, in all its varieties. We were to discover that it's a big thing down south, and goes very well with mushrooms. But fear not, fellow carnivores - there was a meat option, but to be honest (and I can't believe I'm saying this) I much preferred the vegetarian options in this case.
To be honest we hadn't really done our research on the towns we were visiting, but that seems to be the way we do our trips as we tend to leave it to those in the know to know the best places to go. Of all our travels around China this approach had really only bombed out on a few occasions - way too many museums on a few trips, and then there was the Germ Warfare Museum on our Harbin Ice Festival (HappyLand THAT was). Kunming certainly didn't make this black list as our first trip was out to the famous Stone Forest, a large area made up of large limestone rock formations formed by water erosion when the area was submerged around 270 million years ago (give or take a few days). In typical chinese kitsch form (in this sense meaning all the Chinese tourists love it) they had names for the ones that resembled animals and objects other than just 'rock'. Even so, when one overlooks the over commercialism of the place and the excess number of tacky tourist shops it still is a great natural wonder. From the viewing platform high above we could see the tropical vegetation that supported Kunming's claim as the "Eternal Spring".
Kunming's Stone Forest
Kunming's Stone Forest
It was here that the head dress of the local Sani minority girls caught my attention (many of whom where acting as tour guides). The hats they wore had two little fabric pieces on the top that resembled cat's ears, and there seemed to be no pattern to whether they were pointing up or down. Some females had both their "cat's ears" pointing up, others both down and others again had one up and one down. Just when my temptation was building to go and point one down I decided to ask our tour guide what they meant. Gotta say it was the luckiest course of action in my life up to this date, as the guide explained that both ears up meant single status, one up and one down meant they were engaged, and both down meant marriage. If a male wanted to propose to a single girl they simply go over to them and turn down one of their "cat's ears". Phew - could have been an arranged marriage right there if I'd poked around with the pointy bits too much, requiring some real explanation to Amy.
Sani minority group dancing at the Stone Forest. The spectator in the blue jacket is really getting into it.
The next day our first stop was meant to be the museum, but unfortunately (or fortunately, depending how you look at it) the museum was actually shut. It did give us a short moment of concern, as alot of Chinese monuments are closed on Mondays and any Chinese tour company worth their MSG should know that. Could it be we had ourselves a FAKE Chinese tour company at the reigns of our tour plans? Thanks to some quick thinking from our tour guide she gave us a few alternative options and instead of moseying through what would have been 90 min of Maddy complaining she was bored (and doing cartwheels around thousand year old artifacts) we headed into the main part of town to check out a couple of pagodas (a staple meal on any China Culture Centre trip) and then the bird/reptile/arachnid/insect market. In an exciting twist we also wandered into a large market selling all kinds of local delicacies, allowing me the opportunity to have my first nibble of fried grasshopper along the way (surprisingly delicious) and see how they make chili in catering packs.
Big pots of chili paste being prepared and sold at Kunming's "Eat Street".
Our last worthy spot on the Kunming tourist trail was up a chairlift for a great scenic view over Kunming from Western Hill and Dragon Gate. It was from here that the less developed and less polluted nature of Yunnan became apparent. Yes there was a bit of smog hanging over Kunming, and they have had to undertake a big cleanup of their lake to make the fish from it edible again, but the city didn't look as impersonal and cold as all of the other Chinese cities we have visited. Like a bigger Vancouver in a way (apologies to all the Vanouvians/Vancouvettes/??). And I'm still not convinced that the smog was created by factories - it's more likely from the 90% of the Kunming population that take advantage of the region's reputation as a quality tobacco growing area, and who are single handedly puffing the world towards an early ice age.
Green Lake from Dragon Gate. The highway you can see on the left goes all the way to Hanoi.
It wasn't only daytime that held great appeal for us in Kunming. The nights were very pleasant temperature-wise. Bringing our stay to a spectacular end was a great night out at a show called "Inspiring Yunnan". Showing dancing and music from all of Yunnan's minority groups, the choreography made Riverdance look like a primary school play. The drumming was reminiscent of the Olympics opening ceremony performance, and when combined with one particular silhouette dance by a double-jointed local lass from behind a curtain it kept all of the crowd (and especially the men) transfixed for the entire 90 minutes. The show does tour outside of China, so if it comes your way be sure to check it out.
So next it was off to Dali, and with a 8hr drive away as the only other option it was alot shorter flight to drop us into the middle of Bai minority country.
Dali
Landing at Dali airport is a real last-minute deal, if only for the passenger (I assume the pilots had it all under control, when not reading their Enid Blyton books). One minute you are looking out the plane window and watching the miniature features of a landscape 800m below, and the next second the runway is 50 meters below you as you come to touch down on a flat plateau high up in the hills surrounding the city.
The city itself is at 1400 meters, meaning that we were really starting our climb up so where sure to take it easy and not rely on short sprints. Our tour guide in Dali was Alice, who's mother was Han Chinese and her faterh was Bai Minority. She had been lucky enough to go to Uni to do the English for Foreign Tourists course. And again the impressive language capability of even those Chinese citizens in the back-block of the country became apparent, as we found that Alice was fluent in English, Mandarin AND her 'native' Bai tongue.
Bai lady at the Dali market.
Fresh BaBa bread being baked by a vendor at the Dali market. It was VERY tasty.
Central to Dali's economy is another massive lake ('Erhai'), this one actually clean enough to sustain a busy fishing and recreation industry especially in high tourist season as the locals take boatloads of tourists out to observe the Comorand fishing and a bit of impromptu duet singing from the boat captains. As we experienced on our day out on the lake, when our boatier with a "Canberra Garden Club"-style hat joined the Bai guide on the boat next in a scratchy yet still appreciated rendition of a local love sonnet.
Comorand fishing on Erhai.
Our boat captain on our Erhai Lake adventure was all about colour.
After the boat ride and lunch at a great restaurant we headed off to check out the three pagodas of Dali. Built hundreds of years ago, they were surrounded by lovely gardens but more recently have been accompanied by a new and VERY LARGE temple complex starting behind the pagodas and working its way up the slope of the mountain behind. The new temple was on the site of a former temple complex, and the Chinese Government had invested alot of money to rebuild it for the sole purpose of attracting the tourist dollar. As with most large-scale tourist sites all the typical bits of superfluous infrastructure were in place - electric buses to take you to the top (and bring you back down), snack stands, places where you could (for a cost) dress up "Bai" style and get your picture among the surrounds. It did offer though GREAT kodak moments of Erhai, and so we decided to extend our stopover here and spend an extra hour wandering through which afforded us some great vistas.
The 'Six' Pagodas of Dali (3 actual buildings, and the 3 reflections in the pond).
Three pagodas, temple and Erhai.
The Dali old town itself was a bit of a disappointment. Looking very similar to Pingyao with its gate and row upon row of same-same shitty tourist shops, I had been expecting to find a place lined with quant little coffee and tea shops with plumes of mary jane smoke pouring from their doors. I'd read that Dali had a reputation as a hippy hangout, and although we did get one or two offers of "smoke smokie" from old Chinese women, most of the Old Town's main street was a line of Han Chinese all trying to sell us the same cheap souvenir. There was the opportunity to continue on my testing of the local culinary delicacies, which in Dali's case was a fried local cheese that was brushed with oil and cooked over coals chun'r-style. And as I would have expected from cooked cheese, it was pretty specc'y indeed. At a stretch, the presence of three guys dressed up as Monkey, Pigsy and Sandy at the end of the street did provide for some amusement, but as in most cases in China the opportunity for a photo doesn't come without you dipping into your wallet.
View from our lunch table in Dali.
So Dali was done and dusted, and to get to our next destination of Lijiang required a road trip of northern Xinjiang proportions - a 4hr drive to go 180km, on a stretch of road that I'm told represented the BEST sections of the 'highway' between Dali and Lhasa (capital of Tibet). Stay tuned for Part 2 of our Lijiang adventures in the coming week as well as a place called "Shangri-la", which although was absent of the divine beings I was expecting from such a place name, did offer divine food, divine kodak moments and a divine Tibetan barley firewater that actually made ME feel like an invincible god-like creature after just one glass (until 5 minutes later, when I realised Gods shouldn't be suffering post-firewater vomit burps).
Xin Nian Kuai Le ya'all. (Happy Chinese New Year).
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