Kunming

Arriving in Kunming at 4 o’clock in the morning is probably not a very good idea… The bus drops us in the middle of nowhere and we have no map… Hundred meters away some people are heating around a fire, taxis stop but they don’t seem to know where my next couchsurfer, Heather lives. I am not very enthusiastic about staying there too long. Finally comes a car (probably not a taxi) with a GPS who agrees to take me to Heather’s. Poor Heather, I wake her up in the middle of the night and she yawns from her bedroom: “you can go into the room with the girl”. I open the first door and a sleepyhead with beard peeks out of the blankets, nope, definitely not a girl! What is this place, how many rooms are there and how many people? I open another door, Yza smiles at me, great, this must be correct! I fall asleep instantly but don’t manage to sleep very long, I want to discover Kunming, the capital of the Yunnan province, and I only have one day to do so. 

Simon and Yza are from France, they bike around the world and record sound. We agree to meet in the evening to have some food and then they want to go to a pre-premiere performance of Yunnan minorities before the Premiere in Beijing. Do have a look at their blog for more information about this fabulous evening we spent together. You will find there some photos I took during the performance and the sound recordings they made.

http://lesoreillesbaladeuses.blogspot.in/2012/10/yuansheng-art-space.html

Kunming itself is quite nice, smaller than Chengdu, and more relaxed, but very modern. Again I seek refuge in a Buddhist temple, with its smell of incense and serenity. 

On the local market the puppies look at me with their sad eyes, yes I would love to take you home but I’m traveling around the world…

The next day I leave early to reach the airport and start the new chapter of my adventures: Nepal… Bye bye China, see you next time. And thank you to the Ger connection, Mille and Anne, Tom and his family, Scarlett, Norah, Ofir, Avihai and Noa, Hang Yu and her family, Tandzindjela and Fufujuma, Ananya, Moha and Julieta, Tejas, Sergio, Petter, Yza and Simon for a wonderful wonderful stay in China!

Lijang

It’s ok to return to a city after two days of nature. Lijang is a nice not too big city with channels everywhere. It reminds me a little of Bruges or Amsterdam. We walk along the channels, with no specific aim. There are many little shops everywhere, each offering a variety of touristy articles but also tea or other comestible items. People also wash their clothes nearby, and their hair, and their teeth... everything in the street.

On the top of a hill there is a tower. Imagine my disappointment when we discover that it was built in 1987. Being the symbol of Lijang, this means that it is a very young town I guess. We eat in a small restaurant. How can I explain to a Chinese who doesn’t speak English that I don’t want any meat? “Wo bu chi ru”, but in Chinese they have three different ways of pronouncing each syllable. Which is the right way, I don’t know… Also, in China the dialects are very different in each region, even per city. The easiest way to explain is to draw some meat and cross it out, then some vegetables and a “thumbs up”. It’s a miracle, I get good vegetarian food! We even return the next day, at least we are sure of what we get! The hostel is very “homey”, they even have a cat that seems to fancy Petter a lot…or is it the opposite, at least they seem to adopt the same positions, overlooking the channels in a dreamy way. I’m leaving by bus to Kunming, with a German fellow going the same way that we met in the Gorges.