Kunming -- Impressions

Kunming, the provincial capital of Yunnan, looks like a typical modern city in China at first glance. A hustling and bustling city of high office towers and big shopping malls, of wide streets congested with traffic, of crowds of people all equipped with the latest cellphones, engaging in either busy business activities or the more leisurely yet no less intense activity of shopping. All looked quite happening and just a little bit chaotic (which could be annoying sometimes, yet also somehow adds to the charm of the place). Yet Kunming is an old place, with a history that goes back over 2000 years. Through the ages it stood at the edge of the empire, on the crossroads to southwest Asia. Once it was a walled city, a quiet and somewhat isolated and backward provincial town. At the Jinbi square, we saw an exhibition of photographs taken at the dawn of the last century (by the then French Consul Auguste François) that took us back to Kunming of that period. Now the whole city is transformed. Like in Beijing, old quarters have been pulled down to make room for more modern ones, which make the city look rather characterless. Yet part of the old still remains, in the flower and bird market and what's left of the Muslim quarter (and probably many places we haven't seen).

Kunmingers are proud of their city. From taxi drivers to enterpreneurs to government employees, from locally born natives to immigrants from other provinces, they are all happily settled in this city at the southwest corner of the country. To them, nowhere else matches their hometown, which attracts many newcomers as well -- a taxi driver told us that one regular client of his, a Korean student who just graduated from the local University, had assured him that she would come back here to settle once she made enough money in Seoul. It's an energetic place, yet more laid-back than other big cities. There's the lovely location -- situated on a high plateau, Kunming is surrounded by green mountains and a big lake. There's also the pleasant weather.

Well known for its delightful climate, Kunming is nicknamed Chuncheng, which means spring city. It was certainly pleasant -- even when it rains, it does not rain for long. We were delighted to see the clear blue sky and breath clean air again, although the traffic downtown was creating quite an amount of car exhaust, it was nothing compared to the nightmarish air quality in Beijing. I mentioned this to some proud Kunming natives, meaning it as a compliment. They looked at me as if I was mad -- how could I compare Kunming to Beijing, whose air quality, traffic jams, and bad attitude is notorious in all China? If they had to go to Beijing for business, they explained, they would try their best to make their stay as short as possible. But Kunming does have its own pollution problems, the locals admit. Just look at Lake Dian at the outskirts of the city. The largest lake in Yunnan (and the sixth largest in the whole country) is in a very sorry state indeed. Just back in the sixties it was so clear that you could see its bottom, and swimming in it was a delight. Now it was completely dirtied up by surrounding industries (mostly cement and pulp factories), as well as sewage from the ever expanding city of Kunming. The once transparent water is now completely opaque, and emits an unpleasant smell. Swimming is out of the question. At least the problem of pollution is now identified, and some measures are being taken to restore the lake, though it will take years and years. In terms of environmental awareness, there is one promising sign visible all around Kunming -- each building seems to be equipped with its own solar powered water heater. Some clean energy is at work here.

Although we only stayed one night in Kunming, we actually arrived at the city no less than 3 times (once from Beijing, once from Shilin, once from Lijiang on the way back to Beijing) and spent quite some time here.

Amazing Race

It was Thursday afternoon, a day after we had landed in Beijing. And we were heading to the airport again, to catch our flight to Kunming. Our day in Beijing had been hectic -- upon arrival the day before, we discovered that the airline had somehow lost one of our bags, which happened to be the bag in which I had cleverly put most of our Yunnan trip supplies. With no idea of when (and if) we would see our bag again, we were faced with the possibility of going to Yunnan without enough clothes, among other things. So we had spent the early part of the day purchasing some backup clothing. The cell phone mom was lending us also turned out to be not in working order, and was sent out for fixing. The phone came back, still not working, just when we were about to hop onto a taxi to the airport. By the time we checked in at the domestic counter, we had about 15 minutes before our plane started boarding.

Having called the airline several times earlier to enquire about our luggage and each time told that they had no idea where it was, we did not have much hope for finding it at the last moment but decided to give it a try anyway. We ran down the stairs and over to the international arrival, talked our way into the customs area, and was told to inspect the storage area ourselves. Miraculously our suitcase was right there! With just a few minutes to spare, we hurriedly rummaged through the suitcase to take out whatever we needed for the trip, throwing back a few extra items we had packed that day, and asked the luggage people to send the rest of the suitcase to my parents. This involved a small process of weighing and sealing of the suitcase, signing it off. And then off we went, now a little overpacked due to the hastiness of the situation. We ran all the way back to domestic, waded through a modest line at the security gate, then ran all the way to the gate of our Hainan Airlines flight. They had not finished boarding, thank God!

This whole episode of hectic running around the airport reminded us of one of our regularly-watched TV shows -- The Amazing Race, where teams of two raced around the world for a million dollars. Ours was a typical scene from the show: a couple running around a foreign airport with big backpacks, anxiously telling each other to hurry up, feeling uncertain about their immediate fate... The only thing missing, unfortunately was the million dollar reward prospect.

Settling on the plane, Matthew focused his attention on the flight attendants -- all young and pretty girls, while my neighbour chatted with me. A Kunminger who was born in Beijing, he had been on an extended business trip which took him away from home for half a year, and he was very excited to go home finally. Like a typical Kunminger, he was enthusiastic about his city and gave me quite some advice on what to do and where to go.

Xishan (Western Hills) and Dianchi (Lake Dian)

The Western Hills lies a half-hour's taxi ride from downtown Kunming. It was raining cats and dogs the whole way. But it was only drizzling slightly as we got off at the parking lot halfway up the hills. As we entered the hills, we were transported from the hustle bustle of the city to a completely different place, of calmness and serenity. The lush greeness of the hills in the rain reminded us a little of the Pacific Northwest, although the vegetation is different here -- there were bamboo groves lining the stony steps. Here lied the tomb of Nie Er, the Yunnan musician who composed China's national anthem before drowning in Japan, at the tender age of 23. We paid our respects, then took the chairlift up the hill. At soon as we got on the chairlift, the clouds cleared. The sunshine was surprisingly intense, even though we knew we were at a relatively high altitude (over 6000 feet). No wonder every woman carried a parasol! Stuck in our raincoats, we were roasted the whole way up the hill. Below us spread out Lake Dian, which glinted a cool-looking though rather unnatural green color, and beyond was the sprawling city of Kunming itself.

We climbed further up the hill after getting off the chairlift. At the summit of the hill was a pavilion with panoramic views, which conveniently provided us with rain cover -- as it started to rain again. As the rain subsided, we went back down the hill and realized that we had taken a spur trail and almost missed the the main attraction of the western hills -- Dragon Gate Grottos. This series of grottoes carved into the sheer rock face was the work of a local Daoist monk from the 18th century. The path on the cliff edge leading to Dragon Gate is so narrow that only one person can pass at a time -- that is probably how it is supposed to work on the gateway to heaven. Below was a precipitous drop straight down to Lake Dian. It was a fun trail, complimented by the sweeping views of the lake and city.

Several tea houses lined the path down from Dragon Gate, looking quite tempting. But we had a train to catch that afternoon, so we walked all the way down without resting. Vendors of all sorts of tourist trinkets lined the path, selling all sorts of goodies. But it was a quiet Friday noon, and not many tourists were around. We walked by several vendors sitting by the roadside, playing cards or mahjong. At the parking lot we took the gondola, which took us across the lake back to the edge of the city, where new subdivisions were sprouting like mushrooms, little townhouses and detaches units. We had never seen housing like this in China before, we could be somewhere in a subdivision in America.