"spring" Kunming by picek

I stayed in Kunming for 4 months in 2004, learning Tai Ji and a little bit of Chinese. Then my visa expired, my money was gone and well spent and I had left Kunming and my little tai ji group with hope to return one day and revisit my old friends and see how it will like next time. Will I remember anything? Will I be rememberd?

So, those days I spent many days wandering streets alone or with somebody. It's quite a big place that Kunming... the centre is large and buildings are high, they look ugly and way too uniform, metal-concrete-glass kinda things - banks, offices, multinationals.

Maybe... go a bit off the main streets and you can still see remains of old houses, the whole streets with chinese houses, yet neglected but busy. It's just the matter of time before they're gone too.

Sometimes ... it seems the development like that will take us to the point of no return. They can copy facade and protect the houses and parks, but where is the spirit gone once they (houses, little traditional mansions) are not a place to live in but just a place of pure business? I get confused sometimes and the world as we know it is gone before our eyes.

So... that time I had my favourite places and things to do in Kunming:
- Cui Hu park when it gets full of musicians and Siberian gulls
- Muslim restaurants and their little streets near flower bird market
- serene place of chinese cemeteries at the hills with flowering mimosas
- temples at Xi Shan slopes and its bamboo and pine forest
- ZOO with flowering peach trees and pavillions, and rocks where birds chatt
- sometimes I liked hanging out at those western style caffees with people I knew
- eating and tasting fried snacks, fresh vegetables and fruits; especially evening food by street vendors
- and hectic place of the railway and bus station, where else can you see such a variety of peoples?

Honestly, I didn't have much time to go out of city to travel. But sometimes we went to the hot spring in Anning, and once I'd been to majestic Stone forest and had a trip to Dali and Ji Zu Shan and some other mountains near Erhai lake.

2009. I've been back and it was rather unplanned. Didn't spend more than one night and a full day. I was tired and sick and cold... after having things done in Hong Kong in January, me and my husband travelled overland to Laos. So we stoped in KM. Rather unplanned. Too short to see what I always wanted to see again and check if any of my old firends still live here. Anyway, we were travelling by train without a seat at the beginning of a Chinese New Year. Sitting on our bags at the smoking corner by the toilet and we didn't close our eyes.... it was a terrible ride from Bai Se, from 7 pm to 6 am.
Only then I began to understand what it means to travel like ordinary Chinese. Talking to students, some spent more than 48 hrs riding like that, travelling home once a year from other provinces - sharing seats or standing and trying to catch a bit of sleep.

We wanted to go to Camellia hotel at Donfeng Donglu, but couldn't find a taxi driver who spoke English and none of them didn't understand where's that cha-hua difan ... apparently one took us to nearby place, another cha-hua. Empty large building.

We took a room in some old hotel near the railway station then (wish we didn't because it smelled like ***). I took a few hrs nap and left my man sleeping when I got out for a bus ride by No. 2 bus throughout the city. It took me to streets when I hanged out often years before. Went for a walk around Cui Hu to take some pics of Siberian gull. Passed my old flat and Wenlin Jie and off streets where I dined often and sipped coffee.

Passed my old market and decided to go back. I didn't want to have lunch alone. Now there are lots of new shops and some restaurants are at the same place but I didn't felt much feeling that's the place I knew... it looked much different, more organized, more uniform and where there used to be local restaurants with goat cheese and dumplings I didn't find anything similar anymore. In vain I tried to find flower-bird market and Muslim street - were they gone too or I just couldn't locate them anylonger?

Kunming was out of my reach for too long.

So we left next day with a bag of jasmin tea I bought in a nearby teashop, left by bus to Jinghong in some completely different place. Going back there again. From that hectic long distance bus station.