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An American visits Kunming, Yunnan Province, China I arrived in Kunming on the afternoon of January 22, 2001 on a clear sunny day. Kunming's a lot cleaner than Hong Kong! Bryan met me at the airport and we rode a bus to the Golden Dragon hotel. A few hours later we found ourselves in a dark, smoky cybercafe. I sent the following email home: Hey
Gang, 1 day in Taipei one day in hong kong, it was all very interesting but hk is probably a lot like new york. kunming is a different ballgame though. sorry
about punctuation this keyboard is hideously bad im
sitting in a dark, smoky cybercafe with sounds of computer games all
over the place, it costs 1 dollar per hour and includes tea (self serve)
if
hong kong is like NYC then kunming is like omaha.
things dont move quite as fast as hk. bryan
met me at the airport , i noticed that people stare at americans here.
i guess i'm exotic. I
should tell them theyre exotic too, EH? Bryan
secured a luxury hotel room for us - $30 per night.
That's a month's salary for a chinese bus driver. I was
feeling a little guilty about that - i thought maybe we should have
gotten a $12 hotel room in the interest of equality - but then i
realized that the guys that work at the hotel are happy to get my $30.
so i should feel good, not bad.
assisting the 1.27 billion person chinese economy.
am i a great guy or what? we're
sitting next to an italian girl that bryan helped find a hotel she could
afford. that was the $12
hotel. she's a backpacker
who can't find a lonelyplanet book. OK
anyway, all for now. Hope
you guys are handling your new el presidente okay. Perry
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Kunming from our hotel window: a modern city in the mountains with clear air |
| My diary continues:
As
far as I'm concerned, this is where the real adventure starts. Hong Kong and Taipei are heavily Westernized, in fact in some
ways more like the West than the East.
But Kunming is a two hour flight west of Hong Kong, deep in the
southern interior of China -- north of Viet Nam and Thailand, east of
Bhutan and Burma. (These
are places that people such as myself know nothing about, until they
come here.) I
flew over mountains and villages and winding, remote country roads and
arrived in Kunming, population maybe 2 million and 6000 feet elevation.
Very clear air and a much slower pace of life.
Bryan picked me up at the airport and we climbed on a bus and
went to the Golden Dragon Hotel, a 4 star affair with 108000 Yuan
($15,000US) sculptures for sale in the lobby. We
sat in our hotel room for a couple hours and exercised our cynicism
skills as we watched CNN. Then
we went out and bought a Chinese magazine with a music CD and bumped
into an Italian backpacker girl who'd been in China for 5 months and was
looking for a cheap guest house. She
was hoping to find something for under 20 Yuan ($3) but we couldn't find
one. So we took her to a
dark, smoky cybercafe whose acrid air was punctuated with the mirthful
sounds of video games and the occasional grunts of internet junkies. What
did we do with her, you may ask. Well,
we just showed her the Lonely Planet website, but turns out you have to
buy their China book for guest house details for Kunming.
So we walked her to this other hotel, but she decided to take a
bus to Stone Forest, a tourist site 2 hours away. And that was the end of our rendezvous with the Italian gal from Rome.
So
anyway, then it was suppertime. Bryan
took me up this alley with all these street vendors, and we stopped at
this place which an American would probably describe as a "mongolian
barbeque" operated out of a garage. The
food looked real good -- so we came up with a list of ingredients and
they stir fried all the stuff into a meat dish (cured ham with peppers),
a noodle dish, and soup. The
pork was awesome and it was a great, tasty meal.
When we left, they drastically over charged Bryan but he didn't
feel like arguing with the lady, so he just gave her the six bucks (50
Yuan) and we left. Bryan
and I agreed that once Star-Trek matter transport technology is
available, we'll franchise teleports between this little restaurant and
some college campus like UC Berkeley and we'll sell cheap eats to
starving college students from China.
We'll be rich! Whadaya
think? Then
we went back to our hotel and went to bed. What
happened on 1/23 -- our flight to Lijiang from Kunming, and my first
tour of Lijiang Old Town, will come in the next installment!
Let me summarize by saying it was a terrific day, and the
interior of China is a MOST fascinating place. Love, Perry |
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