Welcome back to China!

This was an unusual trip for me. More like a family reunion, we went to see Ella's relatives for Christmas. Not because they celebrate Christmas, because we both had time off.

So off we go to Kunming Airport, in Yunnan Province. You've probably never heard of it, but it's the 4th busiest airport in China. Behind Beijing, Shanghai, and I'm not sure of number 3... Guangzhou? Chongqing? Anyway, a lot of people come through here. It's actually far south, neighboring Laos and Myanmar. But after landing, we grabbed the train to Qujing, Ella's home.

Qujing is probably considered a small to medium city, with about 2 million people. I know that sounds insane. But for reference, you can walk across downtown. And there is 1 KFC. Meanwhile, in Bangkok there is 1 KFC per block. They like to build up in China, with massive apartment complexes. When every building in the city is 25+ stories, they don't really look out of place or overly impressive.

Anyway we arrived of course, and were met at the train station by Ella's mom and dad. They're both very sweet, dare I say fairly typical Asian parents. Dad commented that the scotch I brought for him was too weak after downing a glass of it. Then smoked a cigarette and went to work. Mom on the other hand, believes that if you have not eaten a grocery store's worth of food, you will die of starvation within moments. Therefore, the only solution is to put food in your bowl for you.

I got a bit of a culture shock here, even having experienced China before. For one, it's cold. Just a little above freezing, which is nice after the heat of Thailand. They also do that weird thing here where they keep windows open. Something about fresh air. I didn't understand it in Hangzhou, I don't understand it here. But in Hangzhou, the homes and stores had heaters. Here, nope. It's not that easy to enjoy dinner when you're sitting in a freezer. At least showers are hot, it gives some reprieve from the cold.

It's a big test of my Chinese ability here, because Ella's parents usually do not speak Mandarin Chinese. Mom is very nice and will switch when talking to me, but Dad doesn't really know how to speak it. They speak the Yunnan dialect of Chinese, while mostly similar, is different enough to be confusing.

Anyway, what have we been doing? To be honest not much. Mostly eating. And visiting people. And more eating. And then going to the grocery store, for more eating. We've seen a few minor points of interest in the city, like a park with an art exhibition in it. Like in Xiaoshan, I'm sort of the subject of attention here. There's very few foreigners in the city, probably less than 10. So lots of staring. And in the case of the artists selling their stuff, not-so-stealthy photos of me looking at things. Which I'm sure will appear on their next catalog.

We went to Qujing's south gate one day, an impressive and large wall as is often the case in China. They're super good at building walls. And ya know what? I didn't see any Mongolians invading. So apparently it's working.

We hiked up a hill for the view, and took a walk through a very pretty park to find a sort of fun fair for kids. We saw an advert for a 7D movie, which I guess means in addition to travelling through time, it utilizes string theory. While there someone told us that 7D is for chumps, he has a 9D movie.

Okay China. Dimensions have defined meanings, you can't just add them as you want. Hell why stop at 9, I'm going to open a godamn 100D movie. Anyway you basically put on 3D goggles from the Atari dimension and sit in a chair that moves to the movie. At least it should, but the movements had fuck all to do with what I was seeing. Weird to say the least.

After we saw some monkies and went to the zoo. Asian zoos are always a little depressing. Like in the last blog, animal rights are pretty unheard of, much less regulation. This one wasn't too bad, except for the monkies inside who were confined to a very small, wet cage with nothing to do. The lion and tiger also were a bit cramped. But everything else was more or less alright, and they had some wolves. I tried howling, and to my surprise they actually howled back. It wasn't long before the 3 of them were howling up a storm, and we could still hear them going after we had left.

The next day, we took a walk around the old town with Ella's old friend, Tadpole. Or at least that's her nickname, in Chinese. We had lunch, did some shopping, and wound up in the most luxurious KTV I've ever been in. This was straight out of the Donald Trump dimension, with marble floors, chandeliers, and lots of expensive looking art scattered around. It was quite ostentatious, even if it was fake. They had an amazing selection of music, quite beyond what any place in Thailand has. Like Walk The Moon. That was an unexpected find.

Thoroughly drunk, the next day we went to the big tourist attraction of Yunnan, The Stone Forest. Basically a bunch of interesting looking stones that shoot up from the ground like trees, it really is quite impressive despite its boring sounding description. On arrival they had folks letting you borrow traditional Yunnan clothes for a few bucks, which was fine because we got some great photos. As is usual for places like this, I don't have much to say except it was beautiful and to look at these pictures.

On the way back we stopped at a smallish temple which turned out to be a large and pretty temple. I of course took some photos, and some dude yelled at me in Yunnanese to stop. Of course I didn't know what that meant so I just kept doing it. Then Ella translated for me, and I chose again to ignore it because hey, I don't speak that language. Keeping this beautiful thing train going (god that was a bad segue), we visited Dad's workshop. Dad teaches deaf students how to do things, like woodworking and art. His students made some amazingly beautiful things, which is to be expected because he's no slouch himself. A lot of the work is his own, and his and Mom's artwork hangs around their house. Mom even tutors in art on the side. Now I know where Ella gets her talent.

That night was New Years, so I definitely wanted to go out to the bar to celebrate. Bar, singular. I exaggerate but there is really a single small street with 4 small bars the size of a dorm room. And that's about it for Qujing nightlife. We quickly downed our cocktails from one bar before hopping next door. When midnight came, it was quite anticlimactic. I had a clock out, and of course did a countdown. And then midnight came.. and nobody gave a single shit. I heard one glass clink, and I imagine the conversation went along the lines of,



"I say Ping, it appears to be midnight."

"Oh right you are Li. Shall we clink glasses?"

"I suppose that would be acceptable."

<clink>

"Quite."

"Quite."

We had to wake up at 630 the next morning to catch the train back to Kunming, so we left shortly after that. A few people asked for photos with me on the way out, because foreigners seem to be unicorns around here. After an early rise and staying goodbye to Mom and Dad, it was off to Kunming!