In case you’re wondering about the title, Yunnan means “south of the clouds” partly because of it’s remoteness from the rest of China set high on the country’s distant frontiers with Tibet, Myanmar, Vietnam and Laos, and because of the  mountainous terrain surrounding the province.

It’s a gorgeous sunny Sunday morning here in Kunming .  Howard is off to a symphony rehearsal this morning rehearsing  Chinese music for a concert this next week, and I am enjoying our good friend Dan Taylor singing Bach as I write this.

I know as Canadians we talk a lot about weather, but I do have to mention the spectacular weather we are enjoying here. It’s sunny every day, nights are cool (it was 5 the other night), but day time highs are 25 or 26. No humidity, and the air is clean which is a rarity in China. The city of Kunming is very green, although Yunnnan has really suffered from drought conditions for the past number of years. Lat year we had some water rationing, but none so far this year. I just learned that most of the worlds flowers come from Yunnan, second only to the Netherlands!

 

 

 

We have been here for more than a week now. Reentry (other than jet lag!) has been relatively smooth, and we have eased into a whole new but familiar lifestyle again. We knew what we were coming back to. We’re in the same apartment as last time, and the 5 flights of stairs aren’t really that bad! Strange though, what seemed so exotic when we arrived last year seems almost commonplace to us now, but still not so familiar as to be taken for granted.

Things seem to change here on a daily basis – old shops or restaurants disappear, and new ones are hurriedly constructed in their place. Our corner of Wenlin Jie has been somewhat “cleaned up”,, so our friendly homeless man is no longer there to greet us every morning with a big smile. Mind you the overflowing garbage hut is still there (it gets emptied regularly) and everywhere blobs of spittle glistens on the street amidst other sometimes identifiable things on the street. I don’t wear sandals much!

We have enjoyed our daily market visits again, and the vegetables and fruit are fresh and in great abundance. We’ve been especially enjoying the fresh strawberries for breakfast every morning. We still mostly eat dinners out, although every once in a while the fresh produce is too tempting and I have to cook!

The other night we tried a new restaurant, and of course we’re always grateful for pictures of the food, some of which are more realistic than others. So we point and choose while the waiter stands patiently and waits. NOBODY speaks English. Then I realized there was some English in the menu, but alas it did not describe the food, or maybe it did!  It said “lotus aroma kitchen with wind like a symphony”! Not quite sure what that meant. The food wasn’t bad, except for one dish which was black and white (black meat with white gobs of fat). Silly me I thought I was ordering mushrooms with lotus flowers! Oh well, it’s all part of the fun!

Just across the street from us there’s a little man sitting at a very old sewing machine called flying man, and he fixes clothes for people. We brought him a pair of Howard’s jeans which had a tear in it, and for about $1.00 he fixed it beautifully.

One of our favourite pastimes is walking to Green Lake Park. It’s green, with many blooming trees and shrubs, and part of the lake is hardly seen because of the thick carpets of lotus flowers. But mostly it’s a people place, and people come to visit, to sing in small group, especially the elderly, and many of the minorities come decked out in their traditional costumes and dance. It’s a happy place. In fact, Paul Theroux in his book Riding the Iron Rooster suggests that it was here that he saw the happiest people in all of his travels throughout China.

This next week should be an interesting one for us. On Tuesday, together with the whole large Symphony Orchestra, we are flying to De Hong, a city 650 kms from Kunming. The orchestra will be performing only Chinese music for some big military event! Can you believe it? We come back to Kunming on Thursday, and then there’s another concert here on Saturday with the orchestra, mostlywestern non Chinese music!

The biggest problem here for us  is the language barrier,  and we still go to bed exhausted every night. Having said that, I feel we are incredibly fortunate to experience a culture so vastly different from ours on a daily basis, and not just as a tourist. G K Chesterton said it well, he said “the traveller sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see”. Another favourite quote of his is “Travel broadens the mind, but you must have the mind’! Let’s hope I can have the mind to continue to absorb all this strange and wonderful world that surrounds me.

Talk to you next week!

Love,

Maggie