Lijiang/Shangri-la (Part III)

The first thing we did upon leaving the inn was go to a small restaurant for breakfast. We all ate mi-xian. (I don’t know if I mentioned this before, but mi-xian is a popular dish in Yunnan where the noodles are made out of rice and placed in soup, sometimes with other stuff like herbs, mint, pepper, garlic, and different kinds of meat. It’s not bad- it’s actually quite good if it’s not too spicy- but it’s not something I’d eat every day. I need to vary up my meals or else I get bored. But lately, mi-xian has become a rather sentimental dish and whenever I find it I eat it…it reminds me of Kunming and Yunnan.)

This is mi-xian (it’s a bit blurry):

Then after we finished eating, we hopped in the van and the driver took us further into the country to a place where we could ride horses. Now, I absolutely LOVE horses. I told Min Dan so. So I was SOOOOO excited for this opportunity. Riding horses + in China = Awesome

So we get to the place and Min Dan and Wuyi quickly hop on some horses and go to the field where they can free ride...because they know how to ride horses. Mei Nv and I do not know how to ride horses, so we hop on some horses that have ropes attached to them and a guy pulls us along around the entire area. Guy pulling us along = SO Anticlimactic = Not cool

Unfortunately because I myself was on a horse and everyone else was also on a horse, I could not get a good picture of myself riding a horse. So you’ll have to settle for a picture of Mei Nv on a horse.

I took this one while riding the horse…the horse’s head on the right is the horse I’m riding.

Well, as anticlimactic as the dude pulling us along was, I still can say I got to ride a horse in China! And I’m still happy I did it. Win.

Next we go back in the van and we continue driving. I’m not sure where we’re going, but we’re winding down this road that like zig-zags down the side of the mountain we’re on…so it goes one way and then you have to make a sharp turn to go the other way, and so on. It’s alright if you’re the only car driving on it, but we weren’t so you got to be careful. But it was interesting seeing the mountains that I’d only seen on TV and movies and on Google.

But before we headed down the mountain we stopped at this interesting structure. I can’t describe it better than “it looks like a huge pile of rocks that you can walk through,” so I’ll just show you a picture.

When we walked through that doorway, we could look down and see a rather large river that basically was cutting its way through the mountains. I’m looking at it and before I can even consider what it might be, Min Dan tells me that it is the Yangtze River.

I was like, WHOA! THE YANGTZE RIVER! The longest river in Asia! That’s the one I’m always reading about in Chinese history and stuff.

It’s actually the third longest river in the world, the Amazon is the first…which I’ve actually been to, haha! The Yangtze (in Chinese called Chang Jiang…meaning “long river”) as well as the Yellow River have played IMMENSELY HUGE roles in Chinese history, mainly because bodies of water, particularly rivers, have basically been the life force of the biggest ancient civilizations of the world. The Yangtze and Yellow River allowed the Chinese civilization to thrive, the Tigris and the Euphrates allowed the Mesopotamian (now Iraq) civilization to thrive, the Nile allowed the Egyptian civilization to thrive, and many more. Rivers. They’re pretty cool.

Anyway, as I was gawking at the Yangtze (I mean, I didn’t expect to see it during my time in China and the next thing I know there it was sitting right in front of me…it was like boom! here it is!), Min Dan also informs me that the source of the Yangtze River is in fact here in Yunnan Province. Wowwww.

So after a couple minutes of looking at the pretty epic view, we get back in to the van and continue on down the winding road. As I write this I am reminded of J.R.R. Tolkien’s immortal phrase, “The road goes ever on and on, down from the door where it began…” Those who know my love for epic things will understand this. J

During our drive we get to the bottom of the mountain, where we come to a bridge that leads across the river. As we approached the bridge, Min Dan explains to me that the Yangtze River is the dividing line between Lijiang and Shangri-la. We were currently on the Lijiang side, and across the river we were looking at Shangri-la.

Here’s a picture of us making the cross over the Yangtze:

And here’s another picture I took on the Shangri-la side of the Yangtze (it’s prettier when the picture’s bigger...and actually I just found out if you click on the pictures in one post, they get bigger and turn into a photo album):

And here’s one that gets more of the mountain…observe how the top of the mountain is just chilling out in the middle of the clouds. It’s not every day I see mountains as high as the clouds.

Anyway, so after stopping for lunch and then driving along the Yangtze for a little bit, we reach our next destination, a place called Tiger Leaping Gorge. It is a gorge with some ridiculously huge rapids. I mean, they’re so huge and fast they could take out a neighborhood of houses. The scene was absolutely indescribable, but it’s a good thing they had platforms and railings set up to keep you from getting to close because I’m pretty sure if you so much as touched the rapids with your finger, it would suck you into it, pull you under, and crush you. (Haha, I’m joking of course…but not really. They were intense.)

Here’s a sign that has some of the gorge’s measurements:

And this is me before I head down the millions of stairs into the gorge:

And here are a bunch of the gorge:

On our way back from the gorge, we stopped on the side of the road to buy some honey…well, Min Dan bought some, I was saving my money souvenirs, hehe. It was this really cute area with the boxes of beehives all in a row. I’d never actually seen that in person before, so that was really cool. And the people had a cute little puppy just sitting there watching us, haha. Here are some pics:

Okay well that’s enough for this post. More about the return to Lijiang Old City and what we did there in the next post.

Lijiang/Shangri-la (Part II)

The train pushed off, and we talked and played cards until they shut off the lights on the train, which was around 12. Then I climbed into the 2^nd level bunk bed (there were three levels of bunks) and went to sleep. I enjoyed every minute of being on that train. Even though it was tight living, just the fact that it was a train that had beds on it was the coolest thing to me. When I woke up early in the morning, I looked out the window and saw big mountains looming in the near distance. Here’s what I took from my window (you can see the glare of my camera and the curtains):

When the train stopped, we quickly piled out of the train and outside. Min Dan had hired a driver to drive around Lijiang and Shangri-la for the day…and to be honest, if you want to actually SEE the area and observe its natural scenery, not just go on planned tours where tour buses take you or actual museum-ish areas or developed areas where taxis can take, then a hired driver is the best way to go here in Lijiang…and they actually are quite affordable, if I remember correctly from what Min Dan told me it’s like 100 to 200 kuai per day. It’s a good deal, because they’ll take you wherever you want to go and stop whenever you want to stop (to take pictures or to buy something interesting being sold on the side of the road).

But anyway, before we hopped in the car to go off, Min Dan and I went to get tickets for the return journey. Thing is…I hadn’t brought my passport, which means I wasn’t going to be able to ride the night train like I did coming here. I was quite certain that I hadn’t brought it, and it was nowhere in my tan schoolbag that I bring everywhere with me. I was going to have to ride the day train by myself and stay in Lijiang another night…by myself. Min Dan and the others were leaving the night of the next day. I wasn’t worried about doing that, but I was definitely banging myself in the head for this mistake. So Min Dan is like worried for me and I’m feeling bad as the driver drives us to the inn, located in the Old City of Lijiang.

First some background on Lijiang. Before, it wasn’t an unbelievably well-known city, but after the 199_ earthquake, it reached world-wide awareness. Because of its newfound fame, Lijiang was transformed into quite a tourist town, and the Old City is a re-done version of the typical style of the Lijiang city, if I’m not mistaken. Unfortunately, you need a map because the roads are NOT straight, and because every part of the Old City has a similar style, it’s easy to get lost if you don’t know your way around. In addition, Lijiang and Shangri-la are home to one of China’s special ethnic minorities, a tribe called the Nakhi (Na-xi in Mandarin). When I went back to Kunming, I found out that my pen-pal friend Shujuan actually was a Nakhi ethnic minority. Pretty cool.

Here’s a picture of the my first glimpse of the Old City (Min Dan is on the right and Mei Nv is on the left):

Anyways, we then got to the inn. It was an unbelievably adorable inn. It was very small, and the rooms were right outside…not like many hotels where the doors lead to an indoor hallway…these doors led right outside to a cute little Chinese traditional courtyard. And the sky was grayish, as if it was about to rain, and it really gave the area a very Chinese ambience. There were Chinese-style carvings on the wall and the ground was like a mosaic and it was just really really cute. The room was cute too. Me, Min Dan, and Mei Nv stayed in one room and Wuyi stayed in another. Here are some pictures.

Here’s the courtyard…that’s Wuyi in the front.

Here’s me and Mei Nv in front of our room.

So then we set up our stuff in the room and got ready to set off and see Lijiang and Shangri-la. As I was setting up my stuff and waiting for the others, I start rummaging through my backpack (not my schoolbag) to make sure I knew exactly what I had brought along. As I was rummaging, I got to the middle compartment of the backpack and guess what I pulled out? I pulled out my passport AND my student ID! Well, I guess you can say we were all pretty relieved. After we left the inn, we quickly bought a ticket on the night train for me and continued on our adventure.

Lijiang/Shangri-la (Part I)

Alright this may be a longish one and I’m going to divide it up.

I was hanging out with Min Dan one day and we were talking about the must-see cities in Yunnan Province. The biggest ones were Lijiang, Shangri-la, and Dali. She has made the trip to these cities very often, pretty much every year. I express my fascination and tell her that I would very much like to see them, but I just haven’t had an opportunity to go. But later on, she says that she and her family are traveling to Lijiang and Shangri-la at the end of the month, and invites me to join them. Of course, I immediately jump on that opportunity and at the end of the month during the long weekend of the Dragon Boat Festival, I meet up with Min Dan at her house to go to Lijiang.

At Min Dan’s house, I met Min Dan’s mother who at first glance looked like just another of Min Dan’s friends…it was kind of crazy how young she seemed. Min Dan told me that we should all just call her 美女 (mei nv- v represents the u with the two dots on it…literal meaning is “pretty lady”). Then I met her little brother, Wuyi, who was 16. He was DEFINITELY a shy one from the beginning and wouldn’t talk to me at all. The fact that I was shy and not speaking a word because I get nervous around friends’ families was not helping either. We hung in the house for the entire day because our train left at night (I’m so upset I didn’t get pictures). During that time, we also went to dinner, where Min Dan and Mei Nv spent the entire time scolding poor Wuyi about what kind of job he should get in the future…boy do I know how that feels. I was actually quite surprised because they didn’t seem to mind me sitting there while they had that conversation. I was glad they didn’t mind though, because hearing their conversation gave me more insight into the mindsets of Chinese people and Chinese families. I found they were very much like my family and like other immigrant families of America…working hard to earn a good job is very important to them, even if they have to leave their home and go to a bigger city to find work. That’s what Min Dan did, but I’ll tell you about that later.

Anyway, by this time they were pretty much treating me like one of the family and I felt like it, haha…well, as much as a person who has a bit of a language barrier could feel. So after dinner, everyone packs up the remainder of their stuff and we head off! I’m soooo excited I’m practically dancing out the door, haha. So we head off to the bus station, arm in arm (I told you…they treated me like a member of the family J) and we hop on the bus that’ll take us to the train station. I’m grinning ear to ear. But we have a problem.

It’s 9:30 and the train leaves at 10. The bus ride would have been about half an hour long, but 15 minutes into the ride we hit some MASSIVE traffic. I am very silent…I’m not quite sure what to think. It’s obvious we’re not going to get there by 10, but I’m hoping maybe the train will be a bit late leaving and we can possibly get there before it leaves. But at the looks of the traffic, it’ll be probably at least an hour before we get there. Min Dan and Mei Nv are talking amongst each other about what they’re going to do, and I’m there thinking, “Why are you talking? There is nothing to do. I mean, we could hop a taxi, but the taxis are all stuck in traffic too. There’s nothing on this road that is going faster than this bus, except for those motor-bikes that are swiftly weaving their way past us…and seriously, what are we going to do? Hop on the back of four of those motor-bikes and book it to the station?”

Well, you better believe I spoke too soon.

Min Dan is one of the craziest boldest friends I’ve ever had. My thoughts are cut off by her yelling at the bus driver, “Bus driver, open the door! We’re getting off!” And we four climb out of the bus and walk down the side of the road. I’m thinking, “What is Min Dan gonna do? She’s not seriously going to ask four motor-bikers to give us a ride?” Next thing I know, Min Dan is talking to one of the motor-bikers who’s parked on the curb of the road next to some vendors frying vegetables. She asks him if we can get a ride. Before I know it, she’s got four motor-bikers in front of her and tells me to hop on one, hahaha. Well that’s the first time I’ve ridden one of those things, and it was pretty awesome. And we’re there cruising down the side of the road, past all the traffic, weaving past other motor-bikers and other stuff. The wind is blowing past me, and the warm Kunming night sky is above, and I’m there thinking, “Hopping on the back of the motor-bike, racing through traffic to catch a train, in a foreign country…well that’s a pretty awesome thing. What a start to our Lijiang trip!” To be perfectly honest, it was so refreshing because though Kunming life lately had been filled with interesting adventures and stuff to do, this was a different kind of adventure, and an opportunity to get away and see something new. It was nice.

After having a nice conversation with the motor-biker and running off to find Min Dan, we all met up with each other again and rushed through the train station customs and on to the train, where we could finally relax. Min Dan offered me some duck feet (her family really likes chicken feet and duck feet, and they’re not bad if you cook them the right way), and being the brave person that I am (if it’s offered to me, I never say no to something that’s regarded as really tasty in a culture, even if it may seem strange to me…I always give it a chance and boy have I tried strange things in the past) I munched on one. Not bad, but not something I’ll eat every day.

More about the actual cities of Lijiang/Shangri-la next post.

Kunming Part 12: Chinese Friends

This’ll be a short one. So after the Ju Yuan Lang anniversary party, Min Dan and I continued hanging out a lot. When I didn’t have san-da (martial arts), Min Dan invited me over to her house for dinner a few times. We’d go to the store and pick up some stuff and then we’d go to her house and I’d help her make the food. She’s a really good cook, and she taught herself how to cook. That’s pretty awesome. I’m really good at making breakfast foods. Bacon, eggs, that kind of stuff. But dinner is not something I can just improvise. I can’t just throw some random meat, vegetables, and spices together and it taste awesome. Min Dan can. And according to Chinese style dinners, she makes quite a few different dishes to eat altogether. Like four or five. Her dinners are ALWAYS ridiculously spicy, but they are so ridiculously good. Man, I’m going to miss those dinners.

Sometimes our other friends (friends she introduced me too who became my own friends) would come to the house and eat dinner and we’d chat (in Chinese) about stuff and they’d help me with my Chinese and they’d tell me about the culture. And then we’d sit in front of her TV and watch some of the many Chinese TV shows that are on TV. I’m definitely getting better at understanding them. I’ve come to the point where I can understand the general story of Chinese movies and TV shows, some better than others, but at times the small details still escape me. So I’ve come pretty darn far. Yay me!

So rather than a long post, here's a compilation of pictures of me and my friends from China (not just Chinese friends, but mostly)...from the beginning of my time in Kunming to the end.

This is my roommate Youya, she's Korean.

That's my Daddy, for those who don't know.

The girl in the middle is Shujuan, my pen-pal. A friend from CMU introduced us and we'd been emailing each other from before I got to Kunming. She was so great while I was there, and if I ever needed any help, she'd always help me out. In fact, she lent me her guitar for my school performances.

This is Tanya, my Canadian friend. We go to class together.

This is Nadja, from Switzerland. (And Dorian, who isn't looking.)

Dorian is looking now, hehe. He's also Swiss. Helen, from Holland, is in the corner on the left. Zhaoxuan, Korean, is in the yellow shirt.

This is me and my head teacher, Zeng Laoshi. She was really sweet and always looking out for her students. Hehe, we always used to tease her about how short she was! Aww, I'm going to miss her. Also, there was a lot of wind in this photo...my hair's not that crazy all by itself, haha.

Me and Youya again

Okay so here's a bunch of photos from KTV with the martial arts gang!

Here's Xiao Xi-xi, Dan-dan, and Dan-Dan's boyfriend. Dan-dan's boyfriend is a taekwondo coach, and the other two are also taekwondo students.

These three are from my San-da class. Lao Zhao, Lao Li, and Tangmi. Tangmi is my girl from Germany. We became pretty much inseparable by the time the end came.

The girl on the left is Qianying, she studies Tai-chi and sometimes she practices with a sword. It's fake, of course, but still cool. We also became good friends.

Now this here was the best shot I could get of my coach and another one of our friends. Our coach, Hou Zhenfang is the guy in the white shirt closest to the camera (second to the left). The one on the far left is Li Wenhao, who sometimes practices taekwondo, sometimes practices san-da. I don't think he's decided which one he wants to learn, hehe. He's a jokester and is always making everyone laugh, but when it comes to pictures, I guess he'll have none of it. Same with coach, but I think he's more just shy. Awww. Yep, DEFINITELY going to miss those two.

These next two pictures are of girls that came in maybe a couple weeks before me and Tangmi left. Jiaolian (coach) pretty much made us their mentors during that time. They were really sweet, and I don't think they always believed they were capable of being strong and powerful...so I definitely think me and Tangmi helped them out in that way by showing them that they could. Definitely gonna miss this crew as well.

There are a few other people from martial arts that I didn't get pictures of, and it's really too bad. But maybe I can steal some from Tangmi. If I do, I'll put them up.

Here's another picture of me and Tangmi, wearing dresses (gasp!). But we thought we'd look nice towards the end of our time at martial arts.

This group of people I met through a friend of a friend who ultimately became my friend, haha. They were on a program that took them around the world to different places. Pretty cool. But all the Asians in this picture are Chinese that live in Kunming. They also became good friends that I had met through other friends. I have just been so lucky to meet so many people from so many different backgrounds and with different stories.

And finally, can't believe I almost forgot, here's Min Dan! This lady to the left is Min Dan's mother, and she looks like ridiculously young for her age. I thought she was our age the first time I saw her.

This is Min Dan's little brother, Wuyi.

Well that's all the pictures I have of my various friends...hopefully later on I can get some more from other friends that show you some of the other friends I met.