Kunming - one city too many!

From Dali we are headed to Yangshuo, which is further south in Yunnan Province and is renowned for its karst limestone scenery; but to get there we need to go via Kunming, which is the capital of the province. We are all rather tired from travelling and fed up to be going to another big city. the hotel is uninteresting and the city is enormous, modern and seems to have little to recommend it, or distinguish it. We are getting tetchy and feel that the 1 night and 1 day that we have here while we wait for our flight to Yangshuo is not enhancing the trip.

Harvey takes us to a noodle restaurant for lunch to try the local speciality dish, ‘Over the Bridge Noodles’. This is a similar idea to the hotpot we tried in Chengdu. We each get a big bowl of very hot chicken stock and a collection of small dishes containing various vegetables and cooked meats and a bowl of noodles. The idea is that we add these ingredients to the stock, which heats the meat and noodles and cooks the vegetables. The name comes from a folk tale about a wife who had to carry lunch to her husband each day and had trouble keeping the food hot. Her solution was to invent this dish, whereby the fat on the top of the stock kept the liquid hot and added ingredients were heated in turn. The result is delicious, hearty and takes some chopstick dexterity and concentration to assemble and eat.

Over the Bridge Noodles

We fill the time waiting for our flight by visiting various places in small groups. Some go off in taxis to visit a stone forest, a Buddhist temple and Phil and Lesley have heard of a nearby village where ‘people of small stature’ live together. It is officially called ‘Dwarf Empire’ and can be visited and the little people will entertain you! They are very excited at the prospect and this sparks all sorts of discussions as to the appropriateness of the concept and visiting it.

Peggy, Elliot and I decide to stay in the city and visit an art district that is mentioned in Lonely Planet and hang out in the city park. We try to get a taxi to take us to the art area, but the drivers look blank and shake their heads when we show them the address. We are not sure if they don’t recognise the address, or they don’t want to take us there. We decide to go to the park first and then make our way from there to the art. The park is pleasant and filled with people doing the usual physical activities and playing games. We spend some time watching a group of small boys running around and playing with their child-minder.

boys playing in the park

There are also a couple of men doing calligraphy with long paintbrushes and water on the pavement slabs. Several people watch them quietly and respectfully. Is it poetry, or art – or perhaps it’s both

calligraphy in the park

From the park we walk to find the art district.  It takes some finding and when we do it really doesn’t warrant an entry in the guide book. We can only find one gallery, which has an exhibition of sculpture and photography. Perhaps this is what the taxi drivers were trying to tell us, ‘It’s not worth the effort’!

Wandering back to the hotel we go via a market. The first part of the market is devoted to pets – small animals in cages such as birds, rabbits, hamsters, squirrels, chipmunks etc and various insects and reptiles.There are hundreds of animals, but they are all in very clean conditions.

Pet market

Birds in the market



Squirrels for sale



One little girl dressed in pink chooses two pet rabbits. These are little girl rabbits, because they are in pink cages. The little boy rabbits are in blue cages of course.

New pink pets for a pink girl