Dali and ErHai lake

Dali, I somehow did not find to be the all-relaxing place it was supposed to be. Another place to go and drink at night, do nothing by day - and yes, the streets of the old city look like street of an old city ...

So it's obvious why it would be considered as a nice hangout, but really - a bit too noisy. Maybe the hotel I moved to for tonight will be a bit more quiet.

 

I'm now getting to the confused part about Chinese people (as expected). The rudeness is very obvious - as if there is a gene of consideration lacking - things like smoking inside a close sleeper-bus (thank god it was only two people and not the whole lot), talking or watching a movie on the laptop in a dorm room when other people are obviously trying to sleep - are just small obvious examples.

 

I guess this easily traces back to ultra-rational behavior I was mentioning when talking about Kunming (Game Theory and such) - maybe it is the rest of us that have a defunctional gene.

However, consideration can change when you're an insider. When I specifically mentioned to Luojun that I'm dead tiered after having spent the previous night with 3 women - in the context of him asking me about eating at some point - he suddenly got conscious of the noise, went to close the movie running on his computer, and went out of the room to do his talking.

The previous evening we went for a dinner and coffee together, which brought us close. That night (after getting some sleep), I also joined him and 3 other Chinese guys at a bar. A rare occasion indeed, for them to go to a bar - specially Luojun, but of course when I found them in the bar - I realized they somehow managed to find a bar in which we were the only party. Before long we were doing some fine male bonage blasting the place with some Karaoke.

 

They were planning to rent bicycles and head for a village on the other side of the lake the folliowing morning, but I figured I'd need some rest, so declined their offer to join. However, the following morning, when I woke up about 9 or 10, they were still around, going back and forth talking about going, so at some point I just said "Can I still join?", and there you go. I later told them that I haven't been actually on a bicycle for a couple of years, so will have to go slowly - and they said, sure - no problem. Then one of them realized what I was saying (but it was too late to back up on the offer) "What if you get too tiered?"  "You can leave me on the road to die quietly".

 

Actually, the last time I was on anything remotely resembling bycicle was probably over 3 years ago in some Tel-Aviv Gym ...

 

Indeed, as soon as you leave Dali - it's great - and we had real luck with the weather: a cool overcast but no actual rain. The view of the mountains around is great, with little rice and corn fields and plenty of villagers working them everywhere.

After about 40 minutes, the scenery is slowly being replaced with pain. The name of the game for the day was endurance.

The chair area, is the obvious weak-point, but I got reminded of some other muiscles involved in cycling during the day (and yes,the value of gloves when it comes to mountain-bikes).

 

Still, if you go at the right pace, and maybe get a bit of bike-riding refresher ahead of it, it's a magnificent little trip, with small towns/villages on the way.

Hopefully I'll find some time soon to upload some pictures somewhere and post the link.

 

The last 15 km or so are on a dirt road (last before the Nanzhou village we went to). The road also gets close to the lake, and it's a lot of fun. Specially a lot of fun to ride through the village, with the road completely wet from the last couple of days' rain, smelling clearly of some sewage from the surrounding households involved, and then sprinkle yourself with that mud-cum-whatever's-in-the-mix by the bike's wheels.

 

Not to lose the original point - the guys were perfect gentlemen, keeping pace with me, waiting for me in those moments when I decided to die on the side of the road quietly and motioned them to move on. They even helped me save face a bit - they took regular turns for one of them to fall way behind me, one of them even went the extra mile and went off his bikes on an upward slope.

 

"They" are all from the east part, but not really cohesive: The official translator of the group (translation here means both augmenting my poor vocabulary by some words he knows in English, and more importantly - translating my poor attempts in Chinese to Chinese the others can understand, sometimes using the exact words I used, but I guess with proper tones) was Fengli Wang - 32 from Beijing, very gayish, but I didn't get to figure out what he's doing exactly. Shun Hang Ren is 31 from Han Zhou (near Shanghai) - as far as I managed to understand, he has a company with another friend, designing/ planning train-routes.

Lastly, Kadi Lin was the youngster of the group at 21. From Tai zhou where he is now attending something they translated for me as "senior school" - apparently something in between High-school and college.

 

When we arrived dead-tiered, we had a lovely dinner at the little guest-house we found in the village - just by the entrance to a touristic site, and smack on the lake, with view to some mountains and village-houses.  After dinner, Fengli lead us through a night tour supported by mobile-phone lighting of the tourist scenic zone - why wait to see it tomorrow, while you can go through it blindly for free right now.

 

The next day, I bid them farewell - they wanted to continue down the other side of the lake, completing the whole circle, but that would have meant a longer route, and not really as rewarding, so I opted for the bus/ boat option.

Well, saying "option" here, is a good one - since none of us could figure out if there was indeed an option.

We already realized that there is a bus somewhere, that should be heading all the way to Dali, but that it was very much uncluear if they'd let me on with the bike.

I knew however that I'd find a way, so sent them on.

 

People on the street said there is a bus running along the street that I could just flag down, that would be coming in an hour or so.

The bus eventually came, and as I was flagging it down (along with two other helpful locals), the bus just waved a very clear "no way in hell", and passed on ignoring us. I started to talk about finding a boat, but they suggested that I'll be more lucky with the next one.

The next one did arrive ... this time I left the bicycle a few meters down the road. My helpers said that this was the wrong bus, going somewhere else (on the way), but as the driver saw the discussion (and not the bike) he slowed down, and opened the window asking where I'm looking to go. "Dali". "no problem".

 

Then I showed him the bike. He started to accelerate again, waving a furiuous no-way.

 

Ahh ... this time I had some leverage, since he already slowed down before. So I shouted my pre-prepared magic words "I'll pay!".

 

Tires screeching, dust blowing, the bus stops, driver comes out running towards my bike, cash-lady comes out the other side running towards me to let me know they're going to rip my skin off and suck my blood dry ... which came out to 20 Yuan (just over 2 Euro).

 

Time to give it some extra rest in my bettered lodge, and move on in a couple of days.

Ahh ... for future reference, if someone needs it some day ... this one is called Lazy lodge.

.

 

 

Heading for Er'hai lake

Well, guess the sleeplessness, the noise, the lacky facilities paid off after all. I'm heading now with 3 Chinese guys to rent bicycle and head for a village on the other side of Erhai lake for the night ... see how it goes :)

Jinghong to Dali

I found my hard cot again, here in Dali.

Yesterday's wait for the afternoon's bus was made easy by a Los-Angeles originated gentleman. I didn't really get to ask his name - I was working more on my listenng skills, you could say.

 

As I finished sending the post yesterday (at Mekong Cafe), I moved to a table in the shade for some Mango+Passion-fruit juice, and my Chinese vocabulary notebook.

As it happens, the table I chose was next to the gentleman's table, from which he was heartily talking to Greg (the French owner). When Greg made a move and disappeared somewhere he changed to my direction and asked "so where are you from?".

And that was it, I had my next 2~3 hours filled with Israeli war stories. The guys is about 53 these days, from Hollywood, LA (although he looked quite settled into the place). Sporting a black Harley-styled undershirt with the slogan Xishuangbanna riders (or something like that, could have been Jinghong or Yunnan riders).

 

Presbyterian as he might be, in '73, as a Marine, he felt something was wrong about the way people reacted to the Vietnam war, and affectionately was listening to what was happening in Israel. When he met a 25-yo olive-skinned Israeli lady-officer in California, he asked her if there's something he could do.

Before long he was apparently in Israel doing some logistics downloading of American shipments, and before long - he found himself charging as part of a Tank brigade towards Damascus. Something like that. I could not really follow all the details - it went through a whole lot of weaponary acronyms - he seemed to assume that as an Israeli I would know of any weapon ever used in the Israeli military history - all I could do was to try and figure out when he was talking about a Tank, a rifle, or an airborne thing from the context (as much as I got it). On top of the weaponry details there were stories of people he got to kill (quite detailed, mind you), and to wrap it up nicely, he was apparently in good terms with some big names in Israeli history (such as Arik Sharon, Rafoul, Haim Bar-Lev, and a few other supposedly big-time brigadiers who's names I never heard myself).

 

I later took the bus. Some bits of anxiety as the bus was late, and I was not sure if that was the case, or I missed it, or just bought the wrong ticket.

 

Eventually on the bus - an excellent choice of route - the direct Jinghong-Dali route. That's opposed to taking a bus to Kunming and changing to a Kunming-Dali bus (as some would recommend). The road supposedly takes 15 hours, and it indeed only took us 16, but apparently it can take at time much much longer. Specially if the road get blocked by mud-slides, and you get to stay in another place on the way. In our case - no mudslides, but we were held up a bit in traffic jams (the route goes through some very narrow jungle and later mountain roads, and is quite heavy with buses and big trucks trying to go in both directions. Another small hickup was a police raid on the bus at some point during the night - just to see that we're all fine.

 

But really, since the bus goes through these roads, you get to see some nice Jungle views, villages, and in the morning approching Dali - some nice mountain-side fields.

 

Anyway, arrived in Dali - and after some hostel browsing, settled on what might be the worst option of all that I've seen. And no, not trying to prove a point. They're all priced about the same, but the other options that I saw all had nice soft beds (one had queen-size comfy beds within the dorms option), while this one has hard bunks again.

So why... this is the only hostel in which I saw Chinese travelers, rather than only other foreigners. Not sure how much communication will be happening, and my back my decide in favor of me moving again, but for now.

One does wonder why Chinese would choose this least confortable (for the same price) option. Maybe I'm missing something myself.

Piotr

[ I cannot give a specific link, but you might want to read "From Soft Landing to Hard Cot" first, for some context ]

Late afternoon, returning to the guesthouse, I found the "zombie" awake - seated at the room's desk in front of a laptop, wrapped in a huge set of headphones.

Piotr is from Moscow, 30 years old. He managed to get away from serving in the Russian army, and ended up settling on a job of climbing buildings.
The job had its moments - watching sunrises and and sunsets from the roofs of Moscoe buildings - but Piotr says this job can change a person's mind, and not for the best. Slowly but surely, you get to talk in foul abusive language and drink too much.

Piotr has since changed again.
He is just out of India, where he lived and traveled for the last 15 months. Apparently he picked up all of his English during this period(!).

As he says - he barely has money for survival now, but he likes the way "freedom" is changing his mind (and creativity) again, and would not go back to Russia for now.

He's a bit tiered of traveling, so he is taking it easy in Jinghong, trying to write some music. Chill-out music, apparently.

Back in India, he was involved in some Goa parties, so could get free accommodation, food, plus some pocket money.
Here, he doesn't really have anything, but he can see some potential.

He's teaching himself some of the surrounding musioc - some regional, Chinese and Mongolian songs - while getting himself some gigs here at the local cafes/ bars. He's carrying with him a local newspaper clipping that has his picture playing some exotic type of flute in one of these local gigs.

When he's ready - he'll head to Shanghai and see if he can make a proper living with what he likes doing.

Piotr helped drive it through for me. He asked if I came here on my way to Laos (which would apparently be the natural reason).
When I told him I'm only visiting here before heading to Dali he was quite surprised: "so what are you doing here? there's nothing interesting here. You should head to Dali tomorrow, use the extra days there".

Words of wisdom indeed.

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From Soft Landing to Hard Cot

Arriving just before 7AM at Jinghong (Xishuangbanna) after a night's ride on the sleeper bus, I opted for the one option for accommodation in Lonely Planet that included the dorms option.

I figured this is the time when I should start socializing with other travellers.

At ~7:30, it seemed like I have woken the place's attendant a couple of hours before her time. She was not happy.
Even less happy when I asked about seeing the room ... (and indeed, what is there to see exactly?). She said something that was supposed to explain why I cannot see it right then (couldn't really figure out what exactly that was), so I kept asking her at what time it will be possible. Eventually she shouted at me (in Chinese) "you want to see the room?" ...
"Ahhh ... yes."  She shouted something else, and I followed her the 2 meters to the next door, where the dormitory room is.

I ended up paying her the 15 RMB nightly fee (~2 Euro), and went in.

Guess you get what you pay for. Could have been worse, I guess - it turns out that the shower (minus the shower head) actually has hot water. The shower hose also doubles up as the flush for the crouching-style toilet. And, there was a functioning dim lightbulb in the shower room. The rest of the room, as far as I could tell, had no functioning lighting (I later found out that there are two functioning bulbs in the room, but you have to figure out your way amongst the 10 or so switches).

There is a big set of lockers in the room, which I noticed on my first glance into it, but as I failed to actually ask the lovely lady about it, I found out quickly that thosse have no real function other than some dormitry-style decoration.

The beds are 2-storied cots covered with a plank of thin wood and a thinner "matress" - since it's too hot to be really using a blanket (did I mention no A/C?, guess I thought that's obvious), one can use the provided blanket to double-up the matress for extra comfort (that's right, "the princess and the pea" was probably inspired by a guest-house experience).

Yes yes ... I know what you're thinking, and you're right - I'm getting old.

For all its little misgivings, this guesthouse knows what you really came to Xishuangbanna for, and provides in full - it's the Jungle experience. Without risking a proper jungle-trekking, you can lie in the comfort of your cot, and watch the lizards strolling the walls, or alternatively, you can go for the shower-toilet room, and observe some cool spiderwebs all over the ceiling and corners.

But the reason for choosing the dormitory option was not about the added comfort (and consulting the wrong guide book).
As far as socializing opportunities, the only other person in the 6-bed room ws a zombie that didn't seem like anything could stir alive for the next few hours. Also didn't look like someone I'd be sharing a jungle-trekking with.
I'm sure there are plenty of foreigners around even in this off-season (some were on the bus with me), but they must be reading some more up-to-date guide books ...

I gave it a couple of hours to find out I was not tiered enough to sleep on them cots just yet, took a shower and hit the town.
Not much to see, as expected, but even at 10:30, my shirt got sweat-drenched within 20 mins of walking as slowly as possible, in the shadow.
My morning stroll found me a few "upscale" possibilities for upgrading my accomodation (all on "Manting Lu"). Right in the area that seemed to be the town's center, and all within 5~10 Euro/night, with A/C, descent-looking showers, TV ... one even had a western-style toilet (but when I arrived the next day, they were unfortunately full). I moved to one of those for my next night.

Thank god for the foreigner-oriented cafes here. It's the only place to pass the midday hours here.
On a street corner, mid-town, Banna-Cafe can supply Yunnan or Italian coffee. They make their carrot juice in a blender - no filtering - so it feels a bit like chewing on a carrot, and they have quite a varied food and drink menu that comes with English built-in.
The woman that now operates the place like to practice her bits of English with the customers when the opportunity strikes, and as a foreginer you get to feel welcome - they kept on refilling my water glass for a few hours somehow.

Generally it seems that the foreigner-oriented few places here are giving a good fight for the business, and this works nicely for everyone.

Greg, the owner of Mekong Cafe is a French guy in his 50's. He used to work as a Chef in 5-star hotels around Asia for about 30 years before settling here about 3 years ago with his Chinese wife and son. He offers free advice, help with ticketing, free self-designed city maps, free internet usage, and an extensive western menu (including things like Deer medallions, Lamb stake with Rosmary, ...). A more hidden part of the menu offers some local cuisine as well. The chicken fillets with banana flowers was not bad at all, though it was the first "Chinese" dish I had that seemed to be fried with a lot of butter rather than oil. For sure, it was the first time in a while when I got a chicken dish which was all about the chicken-meat rather than bones and skin.

I later found out that there's a whole nice area, completely over-looked by my guide book - a street running along the bank of the Mekong river, known to some as Bar-street. All the houses in that area have thai-style roofs with yellow lighting, the bars, set one after the other in succession are all very river-bank like, wooden made, nicely styled, all with large wooden balconies in front of the river.

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Goodbye heat (for now)

Jinghong, Xishuangbanna.

Too hot to walk around, too hot to bring up the camera and take pictures, too humid to enjoy drinking.
Definitely too hot to "cycle between villages for hours", which is the only point of being here in the firstplace.
I guess I was relatively lucky, as within 2 days it only rained for about 1 hour. And probably, I will get acclimatized within a few days ... but I see not real point for it.

And the food is not half as spicy as I was promised - I could of course been missing on the real local grub somehow - but I can usually spot a proper chilly from miles away, so I'm somewhat in doubt.

So I'll be moving on to Dali - back to the original plan, and back to 1,900m above see level.
No VPN access no more for nicely organized posts, so I'll be posting some staff remotely once settled again (or maybe even soething tomorrow before heading north).

Here comes the heat

When the waiter in a Jinbi-square club starts giving you free Whiskey refills ...
When you start getting picked up by 17 year-old children in clubs ...
More to the point ... when you start to finally run into some foreigners in town (even hear some Hebrew) ...

It's time to move on.

Yes, with all the disappointment I had with this "school", Kunming was as soft a landing into China as one might get. Relatively cool August, regular warm water supply in the shower, calm beggars, and people that are not trying to squeeze every possible penny out of my pocket.

Before going back on the original planned route, I am going all the way south to Xishuangbanna (西双版纳). It's going to be hot.

This is Mekong country. Bordering Myanmar and Laos, with 1/3 of the population being Dai people (very close ethnically to the Thai people). 21 degrees north of the equator.
I'm told it is now 40 degrees Celsius, but a quick look at the weather forecast for the next few days says I can get away with about 35 degrees, only 85-90% humidity, and some scattered (yay!) thunderstorms. Lows are at a cool low 20's - sounds promising.

Since one is drenched in sweat in such places at all times, might as well hit it with some Thai chillies. The dai food, and more generally Xishuangbanna food is supposedly the spiciest around when it comes to Yunnan. Can't skip this one.
This is siesta, minorities, spice and Jungle country. We'll see how it goes - run away from the heat after 2 days.

Time to go out and get some last Kunming samples before I head off to my overnight bus ride:
Fresh carrot juice from the juice-shop downstairs, followed by a whole roast duck (the most expensive roast-duck dish in this excellent restaurant goes for 38 RMB - just under 5 Euro, for which they separate the duck into 3 parts: one is the classic roasted brown skin - the whole duck, you get the head, tail and whole ; another part is the duck's meat, pan-fried with some vegetables, and then the bones are not lost - serving to make a third big bowl of duck-soup).
Yummy!
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Some generalizations - Chinese relationships, marriage, and foreigners

This is mostly coming "straight from the horses mouth" if you will, so I'll allow myself some leeway.

I have noticed for some while that foreigners - as frightening as they might have originally been considered - are representing something of coolness here. It is true that I'm being stared at a lot, but 95% of the time - this is with some sort of admiration. A lot of Chinese - mainly young people and children - just love to communicate with foreigners, even if that means just saying "hello" or "how are you?".

In my case, there's the added advantage of the protruding belly - it seems like Chinese people just cannot get enough of the Buddha thing I have going - this might just be the thing that keeps getting me all them free drinks.

This is one with the clubs, and the dancing - copied 1-to-1 from MTV, all apart of feeling closer to western culture. They see a foreigner in a club, and they expect her/him to automatically pull out some serious MTV dancing routines.


With that, and maybe because of that - Chinese men fear nothing more than a foreigner man next to their girlfriend.

Teach (my teacher of the last few weeks) is 26, coming from a city in Henan (just north east of the area I'll be traveling). Her big dream is to open a Bar of her own when she's 35. In the meantime, she really enjoys teaching Chinese to foreigners. She started with this accidentally, by helping out a foreigner woman on the street, and now left her hotel-job to join this school and teach me (yes, I was the first experiment).

Teach says that it is quite difficult for Chinese men to accept that she is working in the vicinity of foreigners. She was recently on what might be considered a first date. All was going well until the guy asked her what she was doing for work.
She told him she was teaching Chinese (bad move), and he asked "Chinese? who are you teaching Chinese? ..."

And there you go - this was the end of it.

Generally speaking, it seems that most of Chinese men will find it very difficult to live with the fact that their wife-oriented girlfriend or their wife will have work that puts them in touch with foreigners.
And this can be pretty tough for women that have passed 25, and are fearing getting to 30 without marriage - becoming what is known as 3S ladies - originally coined for Single, Seventies (born) and Stuck, but we can generalize by replacing Seventies with Thirties (age). See here.

The foreigner thing is rather a singular case of a broader picture - not unfamiliar to men all around the world - we (men) being jealous of capable independent women. The point just seems to magnify itself and be crystal clear, rather than sub-conscious when it comes to the foreigner issue.

I said wife-oriented girlfriend before, as this apparently can be quite specific. As teach says (she can say it, as she was quite in love with a married-man with a 7-yearold daughter), girlfriends and wife are separate things here.
Creating a family is an expectation and tradition, and both men and women feel the pressure to get there in their 20's (the law actually forbids women to marry here before they're 20, and men before they're 22 - but nobody seems to care). So they opt to quickly find someone suitable for starting a family, but then many times find other forms of fun or love outside the nest.

Not highly surprising, when you hear about the expectations from Teach's last boyfriend. That boyfriend comes from a small city in Guizhou province. For context, here's a quite from Lonely Planet: " Poor Guizhou, always the short-end-of-the-stick southwest China province. A much-quoted proverb has it as a place 'without three li of flat land, three days of fine weather, or three cents to rub together', Ouch. "
The guy is now "making it", jumping between Kunming and Chengdu (capital of Sichuan province). The guy was expecting Teach - if they were to be married - to go and live with his family back in Guizhou, while he will continue working (and partying) between Kunming and Chengdu. (she said "no" by the way)

This is quite the norm in many cases - not something that was never heard of. While Teach is really fond of drinking and bars, she's not really into the club thing. She has a friend though - a married man, with his wife and daughter leaving in some remote town while he's working the Kunming-Chengdu line. She says that he really likes the clubs, and has numerous "close" female friends.

You're getting the picture, but this is just one woman telling a story, so I asked for the opinion of Lin Yang (fabricated name). Lin is 25 (just entering the pressure zone), half Han and Half Yi (minority). Came to Kunming from a small town not too far off. She's been in Kunming working in a Jewelery shop for the last 5 years, and she has a boyfriend she's been living together with for the last 2 years. She originally thought she wants to marry the guy, but seems like she's recently going through some second thoughts. Her boyfriend recently told her that she's a bit too much on the chubby side, and he might not marry her. Her parents don't really like him, and would rather she doesn't marry him.

I asked Lin whether she would go for a combo as described above - marrying a guy and joining his family in some remote location (where she would probably be a slave of the mother-in-law), while he will continue to work in the city. She said that she doesn't like the idea, but that probably she will agree indeed.

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Kunming 昆明 - Part II

Continued from Kunming 昆明 - part I ...

I did promise to talk a bit about the club thing here. Clubs and bars are not really what you'd call traditional China, but they seem to be abundant in all big cities.


It's definitely an interesting mix of old and new.
The clubs usually have a mix of music, but all and all focused on trashy club-trance, technosized dance and Chinese hits, and most important - make it loud (nothing new so far).
Although these are - generally speaking - clubs, and the atmosphere is dancing, most of the clubs don't really have a proper dance floor (a few do), but rather the full place is filled with small round tables all over what was supposed to be the dance floor (and why not, if people are ready to stand there and buy an extra bottle).

Kundu club

These clubs usually add on some color in the way of some life acts - triplets of skinny dancers with minimal clothing, drag queens, Chinese pop wannabe singers. These moments are usually when the music might get semi-descent for a little while.

"Disco" in Kundu is as trashy a place as you can get, but it has an operational dance-floor, with a nice ratio of about 100 men/ 1 woman, and a wannabe radio-MC's that interrupt the music every roughly 20 seconds, so if you have some patience you can enjoy it. Around 1:15, just after the daily drag-queen finishes her thing, there's a moment of descent trance when they put on "Infected Mushroom".

Drinks of the day are warm Beers - bought at multiples (usually, about a dozen a time), or Whiskey mixed generously with room-temperature green tea. Either is drunk from very small glasses.
The beers are around 3-3.5%, and so is the mix of Whiskey with tea (thank god for that).
The whiskey, is the local breweries finest, usually bottled in your choice of Chivas Regal or Johnie Walker Black. If you really want to splash out - you are entertaining people or female company and you feel for some reason that you want to show off with spending extra money - you can usually opt in to pay twice and have the same Whiskey presented in a more classic way (say, in a 18 year-old Chivas bottle).

The tendency in the clubs is to try and get you a table, were you would normally be presented with a menu suggesting that you buy a whole bottle of Whiskey or a couple of dozen beer-bottles. They seem to fail to understand that one person does not require a whole bottle (or a table). And it's not necessarily a language barrier.
Not to despair. The trick is to arrive when the place is full - so they do not really have any tables to try and sit you at. Arriving to the main club areas after 11:30 or so, will usually allow one to just be ignored entering the place, and then go around as you will and enjoy.

This version of clubbing is so not standard, that it might actually be difficult in this case to get yourself a drink, or even find out where the bar is hidden.
Also, most of the clubs only (!) stock Whiskey and beers (bad beers), so you'd need to do some club-hopping to find out one where you can get your Cuba Libre flowing. But if you're ready to experiment a bit, and walk out whenever someone insists on escorting you to a table of your own - you'll be in for a good evening before too long.

While standing around the tables and drinking, it is highly important to have some drinking-facilitation. This comes in the form of games. There are a few favorites around, and it most of the clubs you'll see most of the people deeply occupied with padded glasses (usually red) from which they are rolling dice, or otherwise you'd see them playing cards or waving their hands frantically as they play group-stone-paper-scissors. I'm starting to slowly get the idea behind some of these, so might at some point do a post with the rules for some of these.
Getting the point, however, doesn't really help matters - as you might end up being too good and hence not drinking enough - bad company in other words.

Assorted Yunnan mushrooms on a Kunming street

There is one game, however, which stands out as a clear all-around favorite.
Called "get the foreigner drunk". EVERYBODY just loves this game, and I actually enjoyed it on my first night.
Really, if you don't mind drinking only the tea'd-Whiskey and warm beers, there is not particular need to spend money at all. You just get to a club, and stand or stroll slowly between the tables. They all stare at the foreigner anyway (Kunming is actually full with foreigners, but it seems they like to hang out together in foreigner-oriented bars, so I very rarely saw any foreigners inside the clubs so far), so before too long - someone will add to the smile a "cheers" movement. You can reply with an empty hand (which will speed up the next step), or cling glasses and have a sip (which will bring the next step just as fast), and then they'll signal you to get close to the table, where a glass is already being filled for you with beer/ whiskey. They might let you off the hook the first time (that's in the case that first toast will include all residents of the table), but by the second glass if they're patient, they'll make you understand they expect you to drink-up properly. This is because they person you just drank with did the same.


Only that the table is with 10 people around it, and once you've cleared the glass, it's being filled again so that you can drink with the next person down the line. When the table is more or less done with the round, there can be a few options (and don't forget, there is not much communication involved other than the toasts).
Possibly, if they found you really intriguing (and you have not found the experience too boring yet), they might continue with toasts, this time more sporadically, not in clear round-the-table order, and will point for you some nice girls (I cannot say about pointing boys for girls, as I hadn't had the pleasure). This is true event if they are themselves girls (assuming a mixed table). Also, usually, you'd find out quickly enough that a table nearby wants a piece of the action, so you'd be pulled a bit to have some drinks with them as well.
Sometimes, they'd actually release you after the first round by smiling politely while waving you goodbye.

Midday Siesta in Kunming, by the East Pagoda

On my first night here, I was actually pulled away from the table I was drinking with by some nice Chinese girl. The people at the table with me motioned me positively to go and follow her (she was not from the next table). I had a feeling that this was something of a more official nature, as I was following her towards the exit of the club, but just as we reached the exit, she turned right, and after a few more meters we reached a table with her friends. She just wanted to treat her friends for a round of their favorite game, after which I got the sign that I can go back to my original "friends".


At nights like this, you really get to appreciate the super-weak beers, the extra tea in the Whiskey, and especially the extra-small glasses. It all suddenly makes sense.

Taking a stroll - Kunming streets

I was surprised to find out that not a lot of people in the school (living here for a while) have noticed that, but Kunming has what seems to be a surprisingly big Gay community. At least on the male part. This might not be as straightforward to see, I guess (if you're blind), since a lot of men here can be seen as having somewhat of a gayish behavior - specially around foreigners in clubs - and even the gays tend to not kiss here outdoors, but still - this can get quite obvious. The men-women ratio, as mentioned, is not favoring men, so you might not be sure at a first glance, but on some nights in some clubs, and on the streets as well, this is becoming more and more obvious for anyone who cares to look.
I wouldn't know to say much about a gay "scene" here as such, and I didn't run into any gay clubs per-se, but they are definitely here in numbers, and not hiding.


Another option in Kunming, is to go for a bit of inspiration on Green-lake park. Specially in the evenings (or early mornings, as I hear well from my window), you can find people practice their Chinese-opera singing (usually, they have been practicing for many many years with no apparent success, but are not deterred by this technicality), Tai-chi, or what seems to be quite popular, dancing in groups to the sound of Techno. The Techno groups are mixed with a tendency for older crowd, and there's usually some sort of a leader-figure that in between tracks gives instructions about the steps for the next track. Really cool staff.

Street beggars - definitely exist here, but very easygoing for China - no groping, no heavy insitence - nothing like what one will experience in Shanghai or Shenzhen

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Kunming 昆明 - part I

If you're interested in some general information and stats about Kunming, you can go ahead and look here.
To cover the basics for context, Kunming is the capital of Yunnan Province, has a population of 3-8 million (depends on definition and who you're asking), and is quite elevated at 1,900m - the last fact has helped get it its nickname "spring city".

Yunnan - the province - is the south-western-most province in China, bordering with Vietnam Laos and Burma, and further surrounded by Tibet, Sichuan, Chongqing, Guizhou and Guangxi.

As the capital city of Yunnan, you can find here people and food influenced by the surroundings and various ethnicities,mainly Hui (Muslims), Dai (Thai related) and Yi, but unfortunately, the Hui are not as connected to the Muslim Asians as those in  Xinjiang (the north-western-most Province), and there is a clear lack of Lamb meat dishes around.

Kunming at night

Kunming's elevation/ moderate weather/ "Spring city" status can remind one of Dublin in a few ways. For one, there is a relative lack of mosquitoes. This was quite a surprising finding, as some pre-reading suggested that mosquitoes are around as much as in any other place (minus Ireland), as did the nets on all the windows in my apartment.
OK, the nets on the windows, and the 24th floor dwelling may be of some influence, but I still found it surprising to have waited a whole week before getting beaten for the first time, including a couple of days in Jiang-Shui to the south - a city with a lot of water and rice paddies around it.

And there's the weather. Yes, it's August, and it can get at time pretty hot, but in this area, getting as hot as 30 degrees, is as good as it gets. The weather really does resemble Dublin - on an average day, you can go through the 4 seasons, from a strong rain to clear sunny skies, from chilly to hot. It's only about 5-10 degrees above the average temperatures in Dublin.

Taking the kids for some recreation in the city center

Kunming's main commercial street

The Game of the day in Kunming is playing Chicken with the cars/ buses/ taxis and the thousands of small electrical scooters on the streets. In most of the road you want to cross, you will not find proper traffic-lights, although the traffic is quite heavy, and the way to go is just go and hope for the best. None of the vehicles is taking much note of any of the traffic rules or signs anyway.
The way to go is jump in front of the cars, with the assumption that the cars will just decide to stop.

The traffic in Kunming brings us to an important observation (just before we can to some fun staff about clubs and drinking, so hang in there).

reminiscing on better days

The traffic is just a small example of what I see more and more to be the most fertile ground for Game-Theorists. Behavior of the Chinese seems to be as basically rationale (in a pure economic sense) as it gets, every behavior being cost-benefit based (on the personal level), driven strongly by considerations of gains and losses.
This means that China can be a great place to experiment and implement economic behavioral theories, a great place for government intervention mechanisms, Mechanism Design implementations, etc.

This also (probably) implies that old-school management techniques applying good-old stick-and-carrot probably work best here.

"Cheap talk" is at revealing itself here in full, and any verbal agreements between people here, are only held to the extent that those agreements work well for all parties later on.

I spent most of last week here with no light in the bathroom. On Friday, when my roommate (Zhang Laoshi, you remember him) finished partially repairing the pipe issue (don't ask), it turns out that on the way the light somehow stopped working. As I notified the American here (Jonathan), he said no problem, Zhang is heading anyway for some shopping today (Friday), so he'll buy a new light on the way.
On Saturday, I notified Jonathan again that I am still taking showers in the dump, and got the usual: "oh? But Zhang said he fixed it. I'll see to it, it will be fixed today. Sounds good."
On Sunday morning, I ran into Zhang in the apartment. He casually asked me about drinking together that evening. In return, I opted for losing face, and raised my voice a bit when asking him about the light in the bathroom. He said "I'm not sure there's a problem". ...
I ended up raising the tone a notch when asking him how can it take a whole week to change a bulb. This of course would not have had a particular influence other than where the conversation has started.
That evening we were sharing a couple of glasses of BaiJiu and MiJiu (52% and 25% local alcohols), enjoying the light coming out of the bathroom.

One of the few cities within the city - the East Pagoda

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Learning Chinese in Kunming II - 在昆明学习汉语

I had to take things a bit into my own hands, apparently.

For the next day, I went to sleep rather early, and got to class equipped with some energy drinks and a bunch of my own ideas on picking up Chinese. And I don't only mean me finding opportunities to use my 3 words' worth of vocabulary on the streets.

My teacher quickly figured out that I have some expectations, such as that I will get some homework to do in between classes, and more importantly - that I expect her to actually do some homework, and get to class with some sort of a plan. How this was to be rolled out, was to change a few times over the following days, but the basic idea worked, and I'd say we're now on a good route - plan or no plan.

As I mentioned already, the girl can run on talking without a stop for hours - like the little energizer bunny. The 4 hours are real full 4 hours, and I feel quite bad when I have to stop her for 10 minutes to get a refresher mid-way, as my brain reaches its attention limits.

There's also this little rule of speaking only Chinese ... well, we broke that rule on the second day, and through it out the window completely by the 3rd. What doesn't make sense doesn't make sense, and when I need to understand why a word is being used in a certain way - I need to be actually able to figure out the explanation. Guess it's just the weird way my brain functions, what can you do.

Another big step forward, was when at some point she realized the depth of my not understanding her when she speaks. I guess that my gesture-interpretation genius through her off in the beginning (can't really blame her). She still seems to assume I just know a whole lot of staff that I don't, but by now she understood that if I am to understand anything, she needs to slow down her bugs-bunny pace, talk a word at a time, and then repeat. This seems to work better.

With all of this working in our favor, we're making now some real progress, and I only have to try and follow the teach' pace. If not, my notebook is being filled with things that I will be able to try and actually remember over the next few months, but I'd say I'll be reaching at least the level I got in Portuguese/ Spanish during travel in the past, within these first 3 weeks.

Another great way to practice your Chinese - your next door pub.
(unfortunately, just realized all my pictures were automatically resized to to square formats here, so adding now some blanks to correct)

I'll be definitely giving an update on how this all works out later on, but guess we can turn some of the attention on this post to some observations on Education in China.

I've made a quick attempt in the first post to over generalize and bad-mouth a bit on Chinese work ethics. I actually have quite a few Chinese colleagues that are marvelous, so obviously I'm aware of the worth of generalizations, but the observations are observations, and some previous readings kind of support it.
Either way, there was no real debate following the little remarks from my Chinese friends or otherwise (either because they agree, or more probably because they're being polite), so I'll go ahead with some more observations.

Chinese education has some problems. This is probably not a significant insight, and with the changes this country is continuously going through, it is not a big deal to figure out they have to keep on struggling with how to approach education.

As always, my observations are only due to a very incidental run-in to some education-related cases, but 2 cases for me are enough for some sort of feeler.

Education has been key for Chinese people for a while apparently. This is the way for a lot of children to "be successful", and get out of poverty. Along with the general views on child education in Asia, this can be quite tough on the children.

Not too long ago, my teacher went through 15 hours of school 6 days a week, and then only about 7 on the Sundays - not much room for individual development. These days are gone now, but the teacher figure here still carries some weight with it.

What brought me to feel not too comfortable about some of the education methods here are a couple of cases I ran into, but one of them in particular.

I had a couple of chances to make very short visit to Yunnan university here. During both occasions, it took less then 5 mins of me sitting somewhere for a bunch of students to approach me on an assignment from their Teacher. There were enough similarities in both cases, and 2/2 within very short visits was enough for me to start feeling bad. Similarities such as going around and marketing the teacher's greatness, while also trying to make some money in the same time.

Of course there can be some good things to these assignments (the first of which was given by the Taekwondo teacher, no less), but something about the all thing just felt really wrong.

The second case, had two children (by the look, teenagers) that approached me - in English - while I was writing something in my notebook, telling me, "our teacher asked us to make a presentation for you".  "OK ..." (exactly the kind of entertainment I was looking for).

They immediately gave me also the teacher's business card. Name's Sixing Xie, card is boasting a horizon-looking picture of the guy, wearing an Olympic games shirt, the address for his disfunctional site as well as another Chinese blog entry, and behind a quote of his moto (I wouldn't be able to read that, but I'd imagine it would be in the lines of "I'm great - make me your congressman", or the Chinese equivalent). Well, actually I had someone here give me a loose translation - something about improving your future by strengthening your memory. In line with the little show-and-tell I got from his little minions.

The blog has some pictures of his - none of them actually reveals his connection to the Olympic games, but all involve group photos as he visits the people ...

So the two children start their little "presentation" by telling me they can remember numbers if I tell them, and write down in my note book - and they'll repeat. Soon this went for another version in which they would recite the first 200 digits of Pai (just in time, I just forgot the 157's digit which I need for one of my passwords).
After some initial confusion with the English version, they just wrote it down for me in my notebook, and then recited in Chinese.

When they told me they memorized the 200 digits of Pai, I asked them "Why?"
The blank stairs to me and between themselves only lasted a few seconds, and then they understood my question, and answered with confidence "out teacher told us to".
After the little recital, I asked them again, "Why?", and this time elaborated a bit more on why do they need to know all these Pai digits.

The answer for this was also quite easy, and seems to be a translation of some of what's on the back of the card I received - it will help us have a better future.
Right you are.

I am not one to argue the advantages of exercising one's mind - memory, thinking, logic, the whole Shebang. And we've all seen people selling memory-improvement magic-solutions all over the place.

But then came the great finale - they showed me some of their class' logos on these little pins. (Great, I'm gonna be a honorary observer now).

But not just yet - money came up. "You can buy those for ..." (looking at each other) "... 20 dollars" (That's ok, that's the general translation to units-of-money, and they meant the equivalent of 2 Euro).
It was my turn to give the blank stare now, and while I was at it, they added - "we can give you the card for free..." (that's the card with the pretty picture of their teacher.

After another minute of a blank stupid stare - admittedly I was torn about the best approach - I eventually decided to try and make some sense of it.
"And your teacher told you to also ask for money?"
"Yes, he says that we should learn how to take care of ourselves, make money for ourselves"
(by annoying innocent people on the street, and then basically play beggars asking for them to buy useless pins?!)

So, basically, I gave them a quick speech. First on the card (and the pins) - I appreciate you're giving it to me for free, but this is not for me this is ... (I tried a few words until one of them picked up on this one) advertisement for your teacher. You are doing this for him, not for me.

Then I went on with some general lecturing about the whole idea, and told them that "you can tell your teacher I said so".
They were quite immobile, thinking of when it will be polite enough for them to run away from there.

And then, I'm ashamed to say, I did the worst thing - I gave them some money, and sent them on their way. (Just couldn't let these obviously talented kids run away with a sense of failure)
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Learning Chinese in Kunming I - 在昆明学习汉语

My first week coming into Kunming was pretty militant-style. After roughly 24 hours in the way, I reached the apartment on Sunday evening, but seeing that the hour-difference would not be sleeping-friendly anyway, I opted into immediate exploration of some of Kunming's nightlife. More on that in the next post about Kunming itself, but this means I ended up back to the apartment at around 2AM.

Next morning, bright and early, I was ready for my schooling experience to begin at 8:30 AM (that's 1:30AM on my bio-clock). Having reached the "school" - an apartment 2 floors under the apartment I'm staying in - I found out that they decided to take pity of me, and postpone the class by an hour. Later at the end if the day, I found out that taking pity of me actually meant deleting one hour rather then postponing, as they let me know that the program is one hour less then what I figured. (this has later been settled, after I had to take them through some of the Emails they have sent me)

Anyway, this first day was only 3 hours - but a real treat. As might have been expected, there is no real plan-of-action, and I'd say they're as amateur as it gets - rather arbitraging between lowly-paid young tutors and highly paying foreigners. This was to be expected to some degree, but I thought they'd have some sort of a school general program, recommended books to follow, would be familiar with industry available courses, ...

But of course this was not to be - me mentioning in advance the type of self-studying and material I was using had zero meaning, when I asked them about supporting material (as in Chinese-study books) that drew some long blank stares. Eventually they gave me a good book that I can work through with my teacher on - that book is from somewhere in the deep 90's, teach says words are not really used these days, and as it turned out, this was one book out of a set of five, which is only used for the extra listening exercises (only no CD attached). Told me no problem getting the other parts in any bookstore, but of course nobody in any bookstore has heard of these books in the last 10 years.

No better way to practice a few words in Chinese than over a Chongqing-style Hot Pot.

Still, by 9:30 we were there, me and my teacher bunked in one of the rooms in the office/ school, and off we go ...

The one rule that this school did decide to adopt as part of their serious-business philosophy - "No English in class". Awesome. So I spent the first day - 3 hours straight listening to my teacher speaking Chinese. It can be a lot of fun. And specially when you are on an extreme jetleg, this can be extra useful, as you can feel less apologetic about not really following what is being said, and can float back and forth between complete day-dreaming and quasi-following of the teacher's gestures.

I have to give it to her - she can really carry a monologue. No problem starting to speak at 9:30, and naturally stopping to speak at 12:30, as planned.
From the little I could gather from a few key-words in English (shhh... don't tell the school) she allowed herself to put in between, gestures etc, it seems like she was mainly going around about our non-existent plan for my schooling.Something around us picking up different subjects of importance (food/ restaurant, travel, money, shopping, ...), creating a story around those, and then practicing using the key sentences from the story.

But I already figured out the plan: It's like one of those movies - you've all seen those. The foreigner falls captive in a small remote village up in the mountains, understanding not one word. They keep talking to him in a language he does not understand, and over time (usually visualized through a few seasons changing), the Chinese/ Japanese/ Korean/ Vietnamese naturally changes into English to represent the Foreigner's natural adaption of the language.

Guess they've been watching too many of those movies ... not to mention that I don't really have a few seasons to spend in this school.

Of course, I had to take a bit of control of my own schooling ...

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A soft landing (kind of)

Have to start with a small disclaimer - worry not (reading the title) that everything is 100% smooth and there's not really much to report in terms of mischief or trouble making.
Knowing that my 3 readers are into some China-bound action stories, be sure I'd find something to tell you, sitting next to a quiet pond on a lovely warm spring day in Canada.

To keep things short and sweet (per post, relatively speaking), I will just have to split into a few posts at one go, as it took me a while to sit myself down and start updating.

As far as what is ultimately supposed to be a backpack trip in rural China, this was as soft a landing as possible, I guess.
For one, I made it easily enough (along with my checked-in bag) all the way through to Kunming, despite of the tight transfers. This includes a 3-hour scheduled transfer in Shanghai - requiring an on-time landing, getting my luggage, clearing customs and immigration, commuting/ locating another terminal, and checking in for the local flight.
This was all done with 2 hours to spare somehow, only to find out last minute that I forgot my iPod on my Shanghai-bound flight. Not an enormous loss on its own, other than I will now be deprived of my music and Chinese listening-courses for the next 3 months - can be quite painful.

And so, I will have to rely on whatever means I will find along the way to help me pick up some Chinese. We'll get to that in notime.

As of the landing's softness, I had someone pick me up at Kunming's airport, and take me directly to my pre-designated apartment. Well, there you go ... not really the pre-designated apartment.

Airport pickup - the only non-Chinese

Although I was promised a fully-furnished apartment in a specific location, to be shared with other students of this so called "language school", they forgot to mention they had some logistical change-of-plans, and so relocated me to their "new apartment", which I am to share with one of the Chinese employees of the company - as it happens, the only one who does not speak any English other than "Long live Chairman Mao".

"New" in this case, refers mainly to the fact that they had no time to equip the apartment with a lot of the essentials, which they apparently plan to slowly add up, with me serving as a free consultant on what's missing - not a bad deal, only that my consultancy fee here is not too exciting. There's a whole kitchen that they proudly showed me when I entered, but I soon found out that the Gas-cooker is without gas, the fridge is within-plans, no kettle, no utensils, .... you get the picture.
Plasma TV with extra stereo-speakers, but not connected to the cables (the box is there). etc etc.

As I said though - soft landing - as much as it will get to here. I'm on the 24th floor, overlooking the city-center's famous "green lake" park, the shower does work, and does have hot water, I have a bed, there's a leaving room with couches.

View from my bedroom, over Green Lake and a 100 year-old but active military training facility

Oh yea, and I have a fully Chinese-capable roommate. Yea. Chinese non-privacy and all.  He's called Zhang. Excellent, extremely friendly and touchy guy. Old-school, and yet very open to experience the weird foreigner mind. One of my proudest moments thus far is when I managed to get him to say "Drink Tea" (rather than "drink'a-tea") - not as easy as it sounds.
Zhang is ex-military, and not a newbie to Kunming or Yunnan - he was down in the south of Yunnan bombarding Vietnamese cities back in the days. He's actually from Shanxi province.
Zhang is very caring, as I said, so after I found myself locked out of the apartment one night at 2AM, as he decided to use an extra bolt on the door ... when we were asking him about the extra-locking, he really wanted to know when and where I went out to.

Working with this school's staff on getting things to the apartment, is really a quick-course into some work and general ethics here. Of course, this is about to be a very generalized quick-and-dirty generalization, but that's how observations work. Reliability, Accountability, Delivery ... not really. And I'm actually talking directly to the office's American program manager. This has been a daily routine, in which I'm being promised that a whole bunch of things would be at the apartment "today". I mean, how difficult can it be to buy a few plates, glasses and a kettle?!

All and all, things are good and comfy - as far as it can get here, I guess. By now I have a fridge, a hot/cold water dispenser (bottled), bought a few DVD's for the TV, got a local phone, laying low in a big city (next little post on that I guess), listening to Chinese-opera enthusiasts at the park from the 24th floor.