On January 30th, Emily, Cameron and I took an hour train ride from Baoding to Beijing. Cameron was on his way to the airport to meet up with other teachers in the south as they were going to travel to Guilin, Kunming, Lijiang, and Chengdu. Emily and I were on our way to the train station to travel to Kunming and Lijiang, possibly at the same time at the others. At 4:30pm, we started our 38+ hour train ride from Beijing to Kunming. Kunming is the capital of Yunnan Province in the southwest of China. Yunnan borders several provinces including Sichuan, the autonomous region of Tibet, and three countries: Vietnam, Laos, and Burma. Kunming is known as the Spring City for its consistently warm weather. The mountain scenery is famous for its beauty, especially in Lijiang because the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain is huge and has a rocky top always covered with snow. Lijiang is 8 hours northwest from Kunming but still in Yunnan.
The train ride became surprisingly fun. We had the most expensive tickets: soft sleepers. This means our berth had a door that could be left open or closed with four beds. I had a bottom bed and Emily was above me. Across from me was a professor from Beijing and his 8 year old son who's mother was born in Baoding but moved to America (weird coincidences!). The girl in the top bed was born in Korea but moved to China when was 7 and is currently going to the Beijing Film Academy to be an actress. She can sing, dance, and act! All of us ate dinner and slept the first night and during our full day on the train we all played Uno. Playing cards, seeing the mountains out the window, reading, and eating made the day go by fast and we arrived in Kunming at 8:30am on February 1st.
Emily and I had left Baoding with a general plan in mind but only train tickets to Kunming and a hostel for one night. Therefore, a good portion of our first day was spent buying the train ticket to return to Baoding (this time stopping in Shijiazhuang first then coming back quicker than going all the way to Beijing) and deciding how many days to spend in each city. We decided to spend one night in Kunming, take a night bus to Lijiang, spend three nights in Lijiang, take a day bus to Kunming, and spend three nights in Kunming before taking a 36 hour train ride back home.
Our first day we also walked to the Flower & Bird market, and Fish & Bird market. They both sold animals, flowers, but of course a lot of trinkets and clothing. We made our way to these markets again when we returned from Lijiang. Our second day in Kunming we buses for two hours and made it to the Stone Forest. I have never seen anything like it! Limestone has created a so-called forest with skinny, tall rockets. We hired a local tour guide who is part of the Yi minority that lives in the village in the Stone Forest. We learned a lot about the land and got to see Yi traditional dances, and a tea ceremony (after trying four kinds of delicious tea we were pursuaded to buy two of them!). We also walked into an art exhibition. While looking at the paintings, an old artist painting two Chinese characters for Emily meaning "well-mannered woman" and because she is a foreign teacher he gave it to her for free. He then made one for me that means "reach your highest potentional" since my Chinese name means "high mountain." We also each bought paintings of fish that represent beginning a new year with fortune and happiness.
After seeing the World Hertiage Park (the Stone Forest), we made our way to the night bus. This was my least favorite part of the trip. I had a small, top bunk bed in the middle of the aisle. The driver and another worker seemed to yell at each other for two hours. The driver swerved all over the road. After getting to Lijiang at 6am, I was tired and ready for my room in the hostel. We stayed ride inside the Ancient Town (there are no cars or bikes allowed inside, no littering or smoking, quiet hours from around 1am-9am with ancient buildings squished together connected by cobble stoned streets and natural springs). It is a beautiful, beautiful city with a lot of tourists (most Chinese tourists). Shops are open everywhere selling everything from toys to tea to treats.
We mainly stayed in the Ancient Town trying snacks, eating delicious food (Chinese and Western and local), shopping and meeting people. Our first night we sat in a bar watching traditional dances only to hear the host say in Chinese, "Let's say hello to our two foreign friends!" The whole place clapped for us. Our second night we went to a smilar bar and had at least 4 Chinese people join us at our table and spend time laughing and saying "cheers!!" Our third night we met a Chinese guy only one year older than us who also graduated college then started teaching in college. During the day, we went to two famous places. Black Dragon Pool Park has a huge lake and beautiful scenery with traditional buildings discussing the Naxi minority people that live in Lijiang. We made friends with Naxi kids in the park and with a Naxi man in the Old Town. We also went to the Looking at the Past Pavillion which is a 5 story building atop a mountain with a view of the Old Town. It was overall a relaxing time in a beautiful, ancient city. When I left Hong Kong, I thought "I must come back here sometime!" but when I left Lijiang I thought "I don't want to leave!"
During my stay in Yunnan, I ended up trying yak meat, goat cheese, and rice noodles. I did not like yak meat but loved goat cheese. Over-the-bridge-rice-noodles are famous for this province. You get a huge bowl of hot noodle soup and add vegetables and meat so they cook in the hot water then you stir it up and eat!
We did not want to take another night bus to return to Kunming so we took the 8 hour day bus which ended up being sooo much better. The seats were huge, we had great views of the mountains, and were provided with lunch at a bus stop. At 5pm, as we stepped off the bus into Kunming, I got a phone call from the American teachers from Hebei University. They also just made it to Kunming but were only staying one night and were taking a flight to Lijiang the next day. We met up with them at the hostel at night and talked about our travels so far. We also made Tim, who had gone back to America for two weeks to propose to his girlfriend, tell us his whole proposal story. It was strange and exciting to see each other in the south by coincidence when we all teach in the same city in the north.
Our last few days in Kunming were overall relaxing. We enjoyed getting sunburnt, eating delicous food (I finally had a real, good burger at the hostel!), and shopping. While at the mall, we talked to random workers and became friends with a Chinese guy who's English name is Owen. One night, he took us a famous club in Kunming. While there, we met two people who worked for the club - the boy is a b-boy and the girl dances on stage sometimes. They brought us onto the small stage twice, and I later went up for a third time with Owen. The workers also pulled us into a long conga line that slithered around the whole club. We heard people sing Chinese and English songs and danced to songs by Black Eyed Peas, Lady Gaga, and Ke$ha. I can't forget to mention there was a dance remix of "Take Me Home, Country Roads" by John Denver. It made me think of my dad's side of the family when I heard it played at the hostel in Lijiang and then when the remix was played in Kunming. This ended up being my favorite night of the vacation.
During our last full day in the city, we made our way to the Yunnan Nationalities Village. It has replicas of Chinese minority groups' villages. It is very commercial but the weather was great and we were surrounded by water and mountains. We saw the Yi people's village, the Naxi people's village, the Tibetan village, and a lot of more. In China there are 56 recognized minority groups and 25 are found in Yunnan province. Anywhere from 25-40% of the population of this province belongs to a Chinese minority group. After living in the heart of the Han majority Chinese people, it was great to learn about the minority groups in the south.
Our train ride back we had hard sleepers instead of soft sleepers. There is no door for a berth and there are two upper beds instead of just one. Emily and I ended up with two beds at the very top. In the middle were 20something business men, and the bottom beds were occupied by 13 year old swimmers. 24 swimming students from a school in Tianjin took a trip to Yunnan and were returning to the north like we were. The businessmen were part of 15 coworkers from near Hebei province who went for a conference on Solar Energy production. They were a lot of fun. I talked to three of the guys and played cards with them for most of the 36 hour trip. The first night I talked to two of them for an hour and a half. I went to go to bed but one of the swimmers had snuck on alcohol and was very drunk and loud. No one could sleep so I talked to those guys for another half hour. After the girl was asleep, I finally went to bed. The next day we ate, talked, played card games, and went to bed because we arrived in Shijiazhuang at 9am on February 11th. Emily and I got off and went immediately to buy train tickets right back to Baoding. It was very busy at the Spring Festival was very near (Spring Festival = Chinese New Year). Luckily, were on a fast train less than an hour later to Baoding. At 11:30am we were greeted by Kim at the train station and had returned home after a long, exhausting, amazing trip.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment