China 2008, Part IX: Kunming

Sorry for the delay once again in writing... I had my finals this past weekend and had to work quite a bit to ensure my A's for this semester! Fortunately, I got them, so my studying time was well spent.

The 2008 Olympic Games loom just 4 days away, so it's time to get crackin' on my China 2008 series before I start getting sidetracked with Olympics related blogging!

After we had our way with the PSB again at Wuxi Airport, we hopped over to Kunming, Yunnan province, stopping along the way at Wuhan airport in Hunan province. Incidentally, my good friend Eric from the good ol' days of my China 2002 study abroad, just recently returned from a work assignment in Wuhan. Eric is becoming a very well traveled white man in China... since my last trip to China (before this one, of course) in 2004, Eric has gone to several Chinese cities that even I haven't been to, like Dalian, Tianjin, and now Wuhan!

But this post isn't about Eric, it's about me! Yunnan (云南) is waaaaay out in the southwestern corner of China, bordering not only the Chinese provinces of Tibet, Sichuan, Guizhou, and Guangxi, but also the countries of Vietnam, Laos, and Burma. Most of the industrial cities in China, such as Shanghai, Beijing, and Tianjin, are concentrated along its east coast. As such, way out here in the western rim of the country, the skies were blue and the air was fresh almost every day, although it did tend to rain quite a bit.

Speaking of rain, because of its geography the weather of Yunnan is quite interesting. Its latitude is far enough to the South that it is fairly warm all year long, yet its altitude is higher than 2000 meters on the plateaus, causing the temperature to typically stay between 60-85 degrees all year round during the daytime, though it gets substantially colder at night. It is because of this geology and subsequent weather pattern that Yunnan is said to feature four seasons of Spring. I have to comment that this reputation was well deserved - just look at those blue skies! A stark contrast to the greys we had seen all summer long!

Yunnan is famous in China for oddities. Throughout the province, you will find people and publications quoting sets of the 18 oddities of Yunnan (云南十八怪, yun nan shi ba guai). These range from all sorts of oddities such as "Children are raised by men", referring to the tendency of women being the dominant gender in many of Yunnan's ethnic groups to "The same dress is worn all four seasons", referring of course to Yunnan's pleasant weather, to more bizarre ones like "Three mosquitos make one dish", referring to the large size of the local insects.

The source of many of these oddities is due to the diverse nature of the population on Yunnan province. China officially has over 50 ethnic groups, with the predominant one being the Han tribe. 85% of Chinese, including myself, belong to the Han ethnicity. Thus, about 300 million Chinese belong to one of the remaining ethnicities. Of these minorities, 25 are found in the Yunnan province. Among the most well known are the Dai people, the Yi people, the Tibetans, the Muslims, the Miao, and the Naxi.

Because of this famous ethnic diversity, our first stop in Yunnan was the Tribe Exhibition Park in the capital city of Kunming, the largest (population 6 million) and most modernized city in otherwise relatively underdeveloped and poor Yunnan province. The park featured exhibits of quite possibly all of the tribes and cultures that can be seen in the Yunnan province. In addition, we were able to try on some traditional dress and buy some handmade traditional crafts, such as these beautiful wooden mantlepieces which were carved right before our eyes!

We didn't get to stay very long at the Tribe Exhibition park, but arguably we didn't want to anyhow - it had been a very long day for us, having got up at around 5 in the morning and taken a long trip to the other side of the country, we were about ready to head to the four star hotel to have a rest! After unpacking our luggage in the hotel, Cherrie, Ed, mom, and I went out to check out a little bit of the nightlife in Kunming, stopping to have a bite of some local (and I must say, somewhat unimpressive, food) and buy some Metersbonwe (one of the major local brands in China) clothes, so we could traipse through the rest of Yunnan in style!