Chinese New Year in a blur of baijiu.

So, I arrived back in Kunming on Monday evening to clear skies and much warmer temperatures. I had spent Chinese New Year, or Spring Festival, with my Chinese friends in Pingxiang, Jiangxi Province. I had a great time, though it's a very different experience being in Pingixang than being here in Kunming, and it was nice to get back to my own place.

Having found it difficult
to buy a train ticket, I decided to fly from Kunming to Changsha. I then took a bus directly from the airport to Pingxiang. As usual, I managed to make a friend on the bus - a guy from Pingxiang who's now working in Shanghai (I think!) and who was happy to chat and practise his English. In fact, I spent the whole holiday chatting to people who wanted to practise their English. It's nice to be in a place where you're kind of special and where people are always friendly and welcoming. Though of course the flipside of this is that I have to put up with lots of staring and comments of 'laowai' ['foreigner']. I am much more used to this now than I was when I first arrived in Pingxiang in 2005 and sometimes I even make jokes with people about it. The interest is always based on surprise and curiosity and not hostility, so smiling and saying 'hello' seem to be an appropriate response.

During my holiday I spent some days with Steven (my Chinese friend)'s parents, also making a trip to his grandparents' house in the countryside. I also spent a couple of days with a former student of Rick's - her home is in the deepest countryside and has no running water or gas. Washing is done with a bucket and food is cooked over a fire fuelled with coal bricks. Water comes from a well and is routinely boiled. When we walked about the countryside, whole villages of people were staring at me.

Another highlight was going to Huang Shi Mu (sp?) with Joseph, one of Rick's friends, and some of his friends from the photography club. We had quite a steep climb up the mountain and stayed in a guesthouse near the top - again no running water and this time also no electricity except for a short time from a generator. Good job I took a torch and it was a clear night - the stars were amazing and the moon very bright. The toilets there were across a stream, accessed across a rickety bridge! Kind of puts you off getting up in the middle of the night...

New Year itself was very noisy - many many fireworks and firecrackers going off for days and days. It was incredible - I've never heard anything like it before.

So, the Russians drink vodka, the Chinese drink baijiu. I think it's to do with the cold - houses are largely unheated and so as well as wearing all your clothes a shot of the strong stuff helps keep you warm! We drank a fair bit during the festive period. Some was bought from a shop, but quite a lot was home made from... erm... I'm really not quite sure! At one place it arrived at the table in a soft drink bottle, obviously decanted out from some vat somewhere.

Food... more meat than normal on the table, including the special treat of dog (which I mostly avoided this time - put off by having a live one running round my feet while we were eating, though I did eat some donkey meat). Lots of snacks - fruit, nuts, some sweets. Lots of visitors and trips to other people's houses to eat and drink.

It was cool because this time Steven and Rose's daughter got a lot more used to me and was quite friendly. She's very cute and now learning to speak.

I also started learning how to play Majiang, though I am a bit slow at it still.

Well, that's a very brief version of my trip. Here are some photos.

Teaching starts again next week so I'm looking forward to finding out which classes I'll be teaching...

Perils of life in the Middle Kingdom

I know, I know... I've written before (at least once) about the hazards of being a cyclist here, but sometimes problems come from rather unexpected sources. Yesterday, I was on my way home, using the cycle (for 'cycle' read cycle / pedestrian / moped / though not usually horse) lane when I saw ahead of me what looked like a wet patch. A woman was tipping washing-up liquid on it and a man was also tipping boiling water on it. He shouted 'be careful!' at me (amongst other things which I couldn't understand) and waved his arms about. I wasn't sure what to do? Should I stop? Was is something toxic?!! So I stopped and put my foot down right in the middle of it. Good move, Steph.

Turns out it was oil and so I spent the rest of the journey home trying to maintain my dignity while my left foot repeatedly slid off the pedal. Not ideal.

Another thing... many lights here, particularly in apartment building stairwells are sound-activated. A clap of the hands will usually do the trick, though stamping your foot sometimes works better. All well and good until you trying doing that in your own home (no sound-activated lights there) or, even worse, outdoors when it's dark.

'To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.' Bertrand Russell

I know exactly how you feel...

So... I'm enjoying being on holiday and I haven't quite got bored yet (though there's still time!)

Yesterday I finally visited Kunming Zoo. I'd been putting it off for ages and I was mostly justified in that - it was a bit of a depressing experience with old and quite small cages for the animals and a strange show which included performing birds, monkeys, bears and a dog. It also appeared as if there weren't quite enough animals in the zoo for the Chinese tourists to look at... yep, I got stared at!

As if I didn't stand out enough with my fair hair and blue eyes, sometimes I just have to go and draw attention to myself by doing something stupid!!! Today as I was parking my bike at Carrefour I managed to knock into the next bike and then had to watch in disbelief as a load of them toppled over, domino-style... Despite it all happening in slow motion I was powerless to do anything until they were all on the ground and I had to pick them up again!

The weather has got quite a lot warmer and I am enjoying eating 20p strawberries as I write this - there are some things I love about this country!!! However, I did risk life and limb on my bike to purchase them.

As well as strawberries, the shops are full of things for Spring Festival (Chinese New Year): decorations, special food and gifts... It's a little bit like Christmas back home. It also means that most of the kids are now on holiday, which in turn means that there are more of them wandering the streets and shouting 'hello' [or more accurately 'halllooo!'] at me. Still, I guess I should be glad that they're learning something at school.

And finally, as I am unable to go running here (lack of nice places to go and unwillingness to be stared at any more than is usual!), I have decided to take up skipping. Will keep you posted, but so far about 10 seconds is all I can do.

A Chinese Winter Wonderland

Wow - it's snowing! Apparently this only happens once every few years in Kunming, so we're very lucky. It does make me nostalgic for the Alps in winter.

Speaking of which, I just recently got back from a trip in Yunnan. I visited Dali, Lijiang and Tiger Leaping Gorge. Although I wasn't that keen on Dali when I arrived, it grew on me and I think it would be a nice place to hang out for a few days. I stayed the first two nights half-way up a mountain, Cang Shan to be precise, at a height of around 2600m. I stayed at a place called Higherland Inn (www.higherland.com) and it was wonderful. Being Winter, it was especially quiet, only a Chinese girl and I, plus two Frenchmen who seem to spend a lot of time there. The owner, Li Ping cooked really good food and it was great place to chill out and escape from people (not an easy thing in China!) In the evenings after dinner we sat around the log fire reading with a couple of dogs and a tiny kitten for company.

I spent the following two nights in the town of Dali, which was also quite relaxing, mainly because I didn't do very much! However, I hired a bike and cycled to Erhai Lake and visited a village called XiZhou (only 18kms each way!) Dali is quite attractive, though far too full of shops and tourists for my liking! I also spent some time with Amanda, my new Chinese friend, which was cool.

After Dali, I moved on to Lijiang. Now, if I thought Dali was bad, Lijiang was a hundred times worse! As one of my friends described it, 'Disneyjiang'!!! Oh well. So, I found a bed for the night, visited Black Dragon Pool Park, ate some pizza and planned my escape... When I was staying at Higherland I got chatting to the Frenchmen and told them I was heading to Lijiang. They asked me if I was going to Tiger Leaping Gorge. I had thought about it, but wasn't too sure about making the trip and doing the hike by myself etc., so I had kind of decided against it. However, they told me that it was really worth it and, not wanting to spend 3 more days in Lijiang, I threw caution to the wind and got on a bus headed for Qiaotou.

I was a little apprenhensive, but I met some Germans when we arrived - a couple called Maite and Christoph, and also a guy travelling by himself, Gerhard. We decided we would all walk together and it was really lucky for me that we did as they proved to be great people and I had a really cool time with them.

The walk itself was amazing - my photos are good but you can't really imagine how spectacular it is unless you have been there. The peaks tower above you and the water gushes along way below. Dry and bare hillsides give way suddenly to bright green terraces. Amazing. We stayed at the Halfway Guesthouse the first night - a wonderful place far away from the main road. The stars were something else. The second night we stayed at Sean's Place in Walnut Garden, also cool, but not quite as 'in the middle of nowhere'.

The second day we walked down the gorge to the river and then alongside it for a bit. We were stopped at regular intervals by people asking us for money to use the paths they had created and/or were maintaining, but I guess they needed the money more than us. On the way back up we met a man called Mr Xia who invited us in for tea at his house. He showed us his business card and gave us some of his corn alcohol to try - blimey, it was strong!!! He takes people hiking, horse riding etc and was really friendly. Communication was a little difficult, but I got by fairly well with my poor Chinese. We ended up using his and his friends' ponies the next day to go up the mountain. Wooden saddles and everything...

All in all, I'm very glad I decided to go to Tiger Leaping Gorge. Unfortunately, there is a plan to flood the valley and use it for HEP - see Sean's website for information on this: www.tigerleapinggorge.com.

I arrived back in Kunming last Friday in one piece, but managed to pick up some sort of stomach bug on the way back and was in bed on and off for most of the weekend. Business as usual once more in the stomach department, however, and it didn't do my waistline any harm!

Still snowing...