Kunming

I flew to Kunming from Beijing on Monday. Kunming is in Yunnan province which borders Vietnam. Dr. Yin met me at the airport and we went straight to this place, he told me it was the Agricultural Bank of China and to wait with his wife in the car. He came out and was like OK grab your stuff this is your hotel and told me to thank a friend of his who was there. So yeah, I'm staying in the bank's hotel. I'm being treated very well, always being treated, I never have the oppurtunity to pay.

 

The first day, he had one of his doctors, I think a resident, a 24 year old girl take me to a bus station to go to some nearby attraction, but on the way there he calls and says he couldn't arrange something and that she was supposed to take me around all day. So she got off work, and we went to Dian Chi, a large lake south of Kunming and took a boat to a mountain on the other side. The path on the way up the moutnain was all these stone steps, which I don't like because they are actually more work than just walking on a regular trail. The girl I was with got tired quickly and a little surprised at her situation changing from 'take this whitey to the bus station' to 'he wants to climb to the top of this mountain'. Oh well. She kept telling me to be careful while walking up these steps, which is the story of my time here with Chinese, always being told to be careful. Along the way were several little pagodas/temples/pavilions with buddha statues and the like. They look cool and at some points are carved into these steep rock faces but I question their genuineness as they all seem to be poured concrete that is painted over. I figure they are recreations of old structures that were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution.

 

Afterwards we ate some ethnic food, and it kicked my butt. I thought I had gotten tougher with regards to spicy food but man, this is a new breed. Apart from the spiciness it tastes really good. I think it has a lot of basil (maybe its cilantro) and lime.

 

Dr. Yin is a nice guy and his family is nice. The Chinese courtesy shows though, and to someone who is not used to it, it comes across as being treated like a baby. We all went out to dinner and the young female doctor ordered extra noodles for my soup and put them in my soup and there are all these small things that they do, like when we get ready to go somewhere they tell me OK we will go now and then they basically usher me towards the door, offering their hand like I need directions. And of course since I'm in China I am constantly told by every single person in the room to wear more clothing, so that I don't catch a cold. It's amusing, but you just smile, nodd, and say OK. But the weather here is so nice. Its fairly dry, I don't know what the temperature is but today at 3pm I walked around the city and was just smiling because the weather is so nice. The air quality is infinitely better than Beijing as well.

 

But I'm having fun, last night we went to a tea house after dinner and got a room and Dr. Yins friends came trickling in so there were a bunch of people there. We sat around and drank tea, all of the males except Dr. Yin smoked, (thats China) and later we drank beer and talked about random things like funny sayings in Chinese that I knew and how Chinese like to drink tea and beer.