Stone Forest, Ancient Town, and Not Wanting to Leave

This past week I took Friday off from class and hopped on the Thursday afternoon train heading south to Kunming in the Yunan Province. Our train left Chengdu at 1:30 in the afternoon and ended up pulling into Kunming at 8:30 the next morning. Needless to say it was a long trip. Here's the first installment into my attempts at video...



Getting into Kunming early in the morning gave us the whole day to get settled into the Hump Hostel and explore the city. After dropping our bags off and getting maps/info on the city we headed out the door into the heart of town. Kunming is another typical big Chinese city. It's nothing on the scale of Shanghai and Beijing but none-the-less still a mega city. The skies were their usual greyish hue and buildings did their best to be as tall as possible. There's a different feel to Kunming than Chengdu and Chongching though. I've started to notice that each city within China really does have its own distinctive personality, no matter how similar they may seem on paper.

We spent the majority of our time in Kunming exploring parks and pagodas, but what brought me here is what's known as the Stone Forest. About an hour and a half away outside of Kunming is Shilin, a small city with one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. I find myself saying every couple of days, "Wow. I've never seen anything else like this before." And you'd expect that after thinking this 40 times in the past 6 weeks it would lose its meaning and excitement, but somehow I still get floored by so much here. The Stone Forest is literally just what it sounds like - huge stones jutting up to over 100 feet out of the ground for as far as you can see. Another UNESCO World Heritage Site (which we seem to keep visiting just by accident), the Stone Forest is grotesque, nasty, and absolutely gorgeous all at the same time. The rocks themselves are not the prettiest thing I've ever seen; but somehow when they are all together you can't help but to think about how beautiful it all is. This alone is reason enough to bring you to Kunming, or eastern China for that matter.



After our Saturday in the Shilin, Sunday we spent around the city again before we took the overnight bus from Kunming to Lijiang - famed to be one of the best cities to visit in SE China (and yet another UNESCO site). The 9 hour bus ride was a hell of an adventure. The bus was crammed with as many beds as possible, with mine about 5 and a half feet long. I decided to catch as much sleep as possible while on board since we'd be getting in a little before 6:00 in the morning and I didn't want to miss sunrise in this place. Just about every hour I was woken up from the bus taking a tight turn through the mountains and every time I peaked my head out the window we were about 5 feet from the side of the road, with no guard rail, and a drop so far down I couldn't tell you far it is. None-the-less we pulled into Lijiang safe and sound and right on time. After dropping our bags off I grabbed my camera and took to the Ancient Town. Not being a big city and with having hundreds of years of history behind it, Lijiang has a lot more charm than 99% of the cities in China.

The early morning in Lijiang is really the best time to catch the town. I was able to see the sun rise above the mountains surrounding the city and remove the fog from each alleyway and canal in the city while kids made their way to school and locals set up shop and cleaned up for another day. After winding my way through the "Venice of the Orient", I headed to the top of Sleeping Lion Hill for the best view of the city - both the Ancient Town and the New Town which sit right next to each other in perfect contrast. The view was everything I had heard it was going to be.



After grabbing lunch I went into a park at the edge of the Ancient Town to snag a view of the Black Dragon Mountain and the pool that is at the base of it. You can check out the view in the slideshow below.

From here we decided it was time to start drinking. We found a bar running happy hour and decided to drink some 5RMB (US ~ $.80) Tsingtao to really send off the weekend in good fashion. After a throwing some back and sipping on some baijiu (a Chinese liquor that tastes like rubbing alcohol) we were feeling good and surprisingly speaking some pretty good Chinese to the bartender. Then, in typical Chinese fashion, the bartender asked us to join her and her 4 friends for a free homemade dinner. Of course we could never turn down an opporutnity like this! So there's the three of us (a white kid, an Indian, and a Philipino who everybody thinks is Chinese) sitting down drunk for dinner with some Lijiang residents. The food was great and the time spent with them was even better.

We had to wake up very early on Tuesday morning to catch our flight back to Chengdu. The weekend was great and I'd only change one thing about it - the time I spent gone. In the next month I really hope I get back to Lijiang and use it as a hub for the treck through Tiger Leaping Gorge - a two day hike through some mountains surrounding the deepest land gorge in the world. So in the end - Lijiang, I hope to see you again soon.