3. YUNNAN PROVINCE
Off to the airport in Chengdu! Thankfully the subway took us there relatively quickly. The safety video on the flight had a cartoon panda demonstrating the protocols, which I couldn't get over. Around 1AM, we arrived at Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province. Yunnan is known for having many of China's ethnic minorities - in fact it has half of them (26).
Like at Chengdu airport and other train stations, we were met with tons of sketchy drivers (not official taxi drivers) trying to sell us a ride. As before, we ignored them and pretended we didn't know Chinese (only way to ward them off).
DAY 6
We got breakfast at the hostel (overpriced American food), trying to decide where to go for the day. Around 11, we biked to a flowers/animals market that locals often went to. So many caged animals :/ Then, we took a long bus to the well known Ethnic Minorities Village. Today was 5/1, actually Labor Day, so we were excited to see some live dancing and singing shows.
This village is basically a showcase of China's ethnic minorities, where there were sections for each minority, showing what houses they typically lived in, what foods, what clothing, what cultural activities, etc. I actually learned a lot about them. I'm of the Han majority (Han Chinese make up around 90% of China's population). Among the exhibits I saw, those of the Bai, Yi, Man, Hui, Dai, and Naxi minorities left the greatest impressions on me.
We were able to see a performance by old people from the Bai minority, where they played old Chinese instruments and danced in their traditional outfits. We toured around several sites, which were nicely put together. We then reached an area where the performers, who seemed to actually to be of the Yi minority, were roasting chicken and dancing. The performance was so elaborate: the women performed a dance with complex clapping and kicking, as well as singing, the guys joined in on a dance, a guy in what looked like hunting gear demonstrated horn calls used to communicate with each other in the mountains, etc. Their children watched on the side with all of us tourists. I think they actually lived there! (We later even saw someone herding goats.)
In Chinese school or history class, I learned little about Chinese minorities. But, I knew a little about the Dai minority from learning their peacock dance when I was in Chinese school; about the Mongolians from my trip there in April; about the Man from history class (they were the rulers in the last dynasty of China), etc. It was so cool to read more about them. I remember walking from one minority that lived in an environment that looked like Hawaii (with straw huts and all), then remembered a totally different minority that would visit these ornate-looking white temples. The minorities are so different yet they're all Chinese! It was a concept I wrapped my head around.
There were many other exhibits, e.g. the zodiac, gods a minority would believe in, or games kids would play, and details, e.g. ribbons tied a certain way, symbols printed on certain buildings/statues, that I noticed and wanted to understand better. Obviously, attention span is limited, so after a while I just appreciated the serene ponds, trees, bridges, recreated religious buildings, regular homes, etc. and took photos.
In the evening, we had some typical Yunnan dishes: the "cross bridge" rice noodles (过桥米线) and Naxi pork (the way Naxi people make it). We got to see the start of the sunset alongside Dianchi lake.
DAY 7
In the morning, we discovered that our hostel had little kitties (last photo above). Then, we got 1 RMB steamed buns for breakfast in the street and walked to the local outdoor market, where we saw all sorts of fruits and vegetables (lots of weird mushrooms), tons of raw meat (ew...), spices, noodles being made (from a flat piece of dough into strands), and so much more. It was 9AM but so so busy there, so lively. Then, we biked to Yunnan University. During WWII and Chinese Civil War, Tsinghua University (where I was studying abroad), along with other well known Chinese universities, moved to Kunming. It was an interesting concept - a multi-university university :o Students and professors had to travel across China on 3 possible routes to reach Kunming during this tumultuous time (see photo). We visited the museum that talked about this, and learned about other historic events too (like how 3 students and a professor were killed during a protest concerning the civil war). It's crazy to think that my grandparents were born during this time. My grandma agreed that it was a tumultuous time in Chinese history.
Later, we got lunch at food carts at the entrance of the university; they literally cooked noodles customized to your liking in these little silver carts! Maybe some sanitation concerns, but still super tasty. Afterwards, we went to Green Lake park, where tons of local people were gathered. There were huge crowds of people singing (literally size of a big chorus) and huge crowds of people dancing (basically public square dancing, where people just followed an unofficial leading dancer. Each circle of dancers were older citizens of Kunming having a good time haha - we definitely joined in, which earned us lots of strange looks. There were couple dancing circles, more modern dancing ones, and of course Chinese dancing ones. It was fun being able to experience the gathering place of local Kunming-ers.
In the afternoon, I stopped by a coffee shop to try to do some homework, but the cats there decided to sit on my laptop and distract me. I also got to speak to the barista, who is of the Hani minority. After several years of hard labor in the rural areas of Yunnan, he finally was able to move into the city and learn the art of wine and coffee.
At night, we headed to the train station to take the overnight train to Lijiang, another city in Yunnan province. This overnight train had narrow cabins with 6 bunk beds each (I had the top bunk and I couldn't even sit up entirely - that's how tight it is!). The funny thing is that foreigners almost never take these - we booked these on the all-Chinese app. So, you could imagine the stares we got as we babbled in English (we were getting those stares throughout the trip. I knew exactly what they were thinking: They look Chinese... how could they be foreigners?!).
DAY 8
We arrive early in the morning ~6AM, Didi to the hostel, which is at the center of the Ancient Town of Lijiang (a top attraction). Although mostly refurbished/rebuilt, this Old Town really gives you a feel for how the Old Town must've been back then. The streets are still made of big stones, not allowing for bikes or cars to enter. We ate 10 RMB buffet breakfast at the many breakfast places just opening up.
After freshening up, we headed out to Shuhe Ancient Town, known to be one of the earliest settlements of the Naxi people and a key location on ancient tea horse route. Again most of it was rebuilt (not the original), but overall the Chinese buildings, shops with minority's traditional clothing, crafts, all sorts of snacks, cafes and restaurants etc etc was so fun to walk through. The ancient town is enormous, and has relics of what it used to be - certain bridges, buildings, planting areas. The willow trees, small rivers/streams, cats and dogs walking around everywhere (so many dogs!), all the curves and alleyways, really made me think I could explore for hours more. For lunch, we wanted to visit a popular hot pot place, but the owner was extremely rude to us (a really long story - he hated foreigners), so we ended up having hot pot elsewhere, which was really delicious - tender pork, lots of veggies, including purple potatoes! We had mint tea, the typical tea for Yunnan people.
After wandering around for a few hours, we headed out to Baisha Village, a much less busy village also known to be an early settlement of the Naxi people. These buildings seemed much more worn down, and we got to peek into the little courtyards of the homes of the people living there. I was tempted to buy one of the woven scarves/ponchos that people were selling/making, but decided not to. We saw some old murals (a bit underwhelming), before it started to rain. Before hopping onto the bus, we used the bathroom - and in this remote area, it was quite gross. Transportation was harder here, as Lijiang isn't a big city. We barely saw any share bikes! That's when we realized that Lijiang was quite rural and aside from tourist areas, it wasn't very developed.
At night, we walked around the Lijiang Ancient Town more, the area where our hostel was located. Sadly, since it was rainy, the bump rocks were even more slippery and I slipped, twisting my ankle. :( This was concerning because I didn't want to go to the hospital or anything, but thankfully the hostel owner had some medicine. We ate dinner at the hottest restaurant in the village, savoring the Yunnan delicacies - plum wine, mushrooms, more Naxi pork, more "cross bridge noodles," and other yummy dishes. Each of us paid 50 RMB for our huge dinner - less than 9 USD!
At night, you can hear lots of live music coming out from the windows of the numerous bars and tea houses. Like in Jinli in Chengdu, I could've wandered for a few hours, shopping, eating, enjoying some music. We munched on some yummy shaved ice and spotted lots of dogs and cats while walking.
DAY 9
After dinner last night, we hastily bought a cheap tour for today to see the Tiger Leaping Gorge (since those assigned to plan Yunnan didn't plan anything, so we had to do things on the fly..). The tour company last minuted switched the starting point location of the gorge that we'd go to. Furthermore, the morning of, the tour guide also brought us to a rafting area, hoping we'd spend more money (typical Chinese tour group traps to make you spend more money), and brought us to a random museum no one signed up for. The first 3.5 hours of the day were wasted, and the 10 of us on the tour became really annoyed. At this point, we also found out the tour group forged one of our signatures on the booking contract, since they wanted to skip the paperwork needed for foreigners. WHAT A SCAM! (I guess it's what you get for buying a cheap tour... sigh)
Anyway, we reach the bottom part of the gorge finally, where we walked down 20 minutes to see the statue of the tiger and the huge, powerful water rapids. That was quite magnificent. However, we were allotted 2 hours to see something that only took 45 minutes to see... so I guess we took time to extra-appreciate the rapids. Usually, people from all over the world come to the Tiger Leaping Gorge to scale the mountain over the course of 2 days. What we did was the Chinese tourist version of a visit: see the statue and take tons of photos.
We returned to our hostel a little disappointed, but we couldn't really complain - the whole day only cost us 100 RMB (around 16 USD). At night, we had an intense mushroom hotpot, where the hotpot consisted of almost 12 different mushrooms. As someone who's averse to the squishy textures of most mushrooms, I was not a fan. I filled up on dessert though, and saw tons of dog in the streets once again :)
DAY 10
On our last day, we asked our hostel owner to call us a car and take us to his favorite spots in Lijiang. Thus, we first visited Lashi Lake - from a distance. We didn't enter the tourist-y area, but rather from the opposite side where there was a huge field of grass, with lots of big rocks, horses in the distance. The sky was blue, we could hear the sounds of the wind, and it was only us - overall just a wonderful view/feeling...
As it was our last day, we took a lot of awesome photos, including some funny jump shots. At one point, a horse herder came over to talk to us, offering a horse ride for 10 RMB, but his Chinese was really accented. We politely declined, as our hostel owner suggested that we do not ride the horses.
Next, we visited a small Buddhist temple that many locals go to - again, it was really quiet when we visited, so we got to appreciate it even more (and it felt even more holy, if that's the right word). The temple we immediately entered had old paintings, embroidered cloths that depicted images, chimes, the columns covered in symbols that you'd spin for good luck, and obviously the room with the 3 Buddhas. We followed a kid there who was studying to become monks too - he climbed lots of stairs to get to the new temple that seemed like was built, which was also where the classrooms were; the classrooms were lined on the sides of the courtyard. At the center was what I'm guessing is the Bodhisattva Hall, which had the enormous Buddha. The large paintings and embroidered drawings on the walls were really colorful, insanely detailed, and intriguing... so many things were happening; one theme I picked up was the drastic difference between mortal beings and the enlightened Buddhist figures (I hope I interpreted that right).
We also saw the books that monks studied from and where they'd sit to meditate for hours every day. We even heard the low hum of their meditation coming from other rooms. It was strange - no one was there to watch us, but of course we took off our shoes out of respect and only explored silently.
We ate a quick meal at a local favorite - a Sichuan restaurant (LOL). Then, we were brought to an authentic village in the mountains, where Naxi settled and were known to live. As we hiked up in the drizzle of rain, we saw dozens of horses waiting outside the doors of their owners (tied up of course). The rocky, narrow roads (lined with some kind of small canal/water system) had the light stench of horse poop. We again peered into open doors to see the traditional-looking homes of the families living there.. the sad thing was we thought that this village was not very populated. Many houses seemed abandoned or empty. We saw some local families who ran restaurants and stores, but that was it. Again, it was really quiet as we walked through the village. We finally ascended to an area where the road became more soil/muddy, and discovered an abandoned school.. it seemed to be geared to teach civil service / Chinese military ideals o.o The classrooms had scary black marks on the walls, signs of burning, and broken glass. Quite creepy. But, the sight from this high point was awesome - we could see the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain quite clearly. (Next time I come back, I'll actually go to the mountain.)
I really enjoyed being able to experience Lijiang without the constant noise and crowdedness of tourists. It honestly felt like a more "real" experience.
DAY 11
On our last day, I walked through the Ancient Town one last time and took photos. I finally bought one "authentic" shirt woven by a grandma, tasted Yunnan coffee, and bought one last flower pastry (popular dessert in Lijiang).
After lunch, we headed to the airport, flew to a random city called Shijiazhuang (because the prices to here were much cheaper than to Beijing), took a Didi to the train station, and then took the train back to Beijing. By the time we got back to our dorms, it was midnight. I had an 8AM class the next day. D:
Although I didn't do enough reflection on the trip immediately after it ended, I must say I am so glad that I got to travel to these places. I won't forget what I've seen, and I'm grateful that studying abroad has allowed me to explore parts of China I knew nothing about before.
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