Mainland China - Kunming

... supplement to my last post...

After our tour through the rice terraces, we took the night bus to Kunming. Night buses are quite common in China. They have 2 major advantages: tickets are cheap and you don't lose much time as you would be sleeping at night anyway. In our case, it took us 8 hours going to Kunming.

On Sunday, we walked around Kunming and came across a Traditional Chinese Medicine hospital. That was pretty interesting as you could see doctors examining their patients as well as assistants preparing different kinds of remedy.

Afterwards we visited Yuantong Tempel. This large Buddhist temple was first built in the 9th century. If you go there during lunch time, you can even get a tasty vegetarian dish for a few RMB.

As the weather was just perfectly sunny, we decided to pay a visit to Green Lake Park to relax before we flew back to Hong Kong. The park dates back in the 17th century. It's right in the city centre. Locals seemed to enjoy the sunny Sunday as well as the park was full of people walking around the lake, boating or dancing.

 

 



Mainland China - Rice terraces of YuanYang (Xinji) Part II

I suppose before my next journey to Java over Chinese New Year, I should better finish writing about my christmas holidays. So here we go...

Arriving in YuanYang we found out that our accomodation was not a 5 star one this time. ;)




From my point of view, the fact of the matter was not that the toilet was the same as the shower, but rather that it was freezing cold. There was no heating at all. You could see your breath when you were outside. When we went to the reception desk to ask for a recommendation of a restaurant, we met a two other Germans who just arrived. As they had not yet had dinner either, we decided to go somewhere together. Finally, we ended up in a local restaurant. They even brought us into the kitchen so that we could point out the things that we wanted. Besides the meat and vegetables that we ordered, they served us a complimentary chicken broth. You can see it in the picture below. Actually, it's a picture puzzle - who spots the chicken feet and the pecker?

The next morning, we got up 5.30 a.m to see the sunrise at a rice terrace. I was wearing my jogging pants under my jeans and 4 layers of shirts under my jacket in order to keep my warm , by the way. When we arrived at the scenic spot, there were already other Asian tourists waiting for the sunrise. Well, during the next hours we could see dark fog turning into bright fog. But unfortunately no sun was anywhere to be seen. So we went to a local market in a small village called Bada. Yunnan province is home to 6 different ethnic minorities. Two of them - the Yi and the Hani people live in the area around YuangYang. That market was really authentic as people were wearing their traditional clothes and were selling their own vegetables, poultry, cakes, ...

 

 

By the way, if you fancy chicken feet and the wet market is already closed, you could always go to the supermarket in Xinji to satisfy your longing...



 



When we came back from our tour that day, we saw an add "Sophia - English speaking trekking guide". As we were interested in hiking - and seeing more of the rice terraces - we gave her a call. Fortunately, she had time to walk us around the next day. First Sophia took us to the wet markets of YuanYang. Like the one in Bada village, we saw Hani and Yi people wearing their embroidered clothes doing their daily grocery shopping. And again, you could get everything from vegetables over fruit to living poultry and piglets as well pork meat and roasted dog.

 

If we would have been in the mood for something new, we could have even got our hair cut...










As we were done with the shopping, we started hiking to the rice terraces. Since 2011 these terraces are part of the 45 world heritage sites in China. If wikipedia is right, Hani people started building the terraces 1,300 years ago.

 

Our hike led us through some very small villages. It seemed that life has not really changed for the last 100 yours in these villages. They were still drying animal dung for heating and had a well to get water for the village.

As the sun was shining the whole day, it was just great hiking through the terraces together with Sophia. Actually, she is one of the English teachers of YuanYang. But she enjoys showing foreigners the rice terraces more than teaching at the school. So she even hosts a blog about her trekking tours (if you are interested, just visit  http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_728728280100smyf.html).