my journey in yunan, china
ok. yay. im finally back from my holidays. and finally, there's radio, internet and television. MOST importantly, clean toilets that are charge-free so you won't have to hop in urgency as you dig out 0.5 RMB notes outside the best toilet the region could offer.
then again, my body's back in singapore. but i think my mind's stuck with shangrila...[i'll tell you why as this essay goes]after purchasing a huge bottle of martell which we intended to drink in china to keep warm, what else could you do to kill 45 minutes at around 2am in the morning of the 16th.
CAMWHORE.
tired from the wait.
we first arrived at KUNMING, the capital city of yunan. it was 8 sth am and everyone was DEAD. DEAD. and DEAD. china eastern was a squeezy flight.. with a mom and daughter sitting in the same row as me.. GOSH. the girl couldnt sleep so she kept making noises while the mom has obviously made herself comfortable by removing her shoes and her socks-enclosed feet overlapping into my arena. best of all. it turns out that the both of them are in the same tour group as us... -_-"i think we first arrived at a temple... but i didnt find it very holy or whatsoever with the turtles, tortise and fishes frozen to death in the pond. unless i deem it as their recarination.
the very first park we visited in kunming. ok. there were surprising a lot of people on a weekday. it turns out. ALL OF THEM WERE RETIREES AND THE AGED. ok. that's a huge ageing population. off with the blabbering i wanted to make and let's just follow the photos. [ cause im typing with badly cracked fingers due to dryness over at yunan.]
pretty trees (:
seagulls that migrated to the park. initially due to the warmer climate.. then the amount of food people are giving out. there are stalls set around the pond selling bread..
we next found ourselves at a teahouse. and we drank cups of tea... BAD. that means toilet. which i visited. ok. it was clean. BUT. NO LOCK. and to make matters worse.. the door was GLASS. with words only to make them translucent. see how OPEN the chinese have become.
animal moulds made out of pu-er tea. IM AMAZED.
mushroom moulds?
this frog caught my attention. it totally reminded me of seet. not cause of it being a frog. but.. the EYEs. quite familiar... and no neck somemore.
the next day, we headed further up the mountain to some dinosaur valley. from 1900 sth metres above sea level to some 2000 sth metres.. FREEZING at 10 degrees already. somemore still got tram ride = MORE WIND. my dad captured by 2 bandits. HAHAHA. no la. the air is just too unbareable[i cant spell] to be inhaled.
i was drawn to the fact about all or most of the dinosaur gathering in the same area to die. and the size of the park.. so singapore's really nothing.. i was even pondering over why people would chose to tour singapore. almost everything is man-made and we do not offer any cheap and value-for-money products. why then? is singapore that attractive? or are they just materialistic..
first shot for the buildings within just one part of the park.
second shot for that pretty face. HAHA. she's our guide for the park which proves the size of it.
we headed to dali with.. i think a 4-5hours coach ride. lol. the toilets on the way were really amusing yet. kinda appettite-killing. imagine this scenario. withstanding a temperature of 6-11 degree celcius, you see a small sheltered block the size of an ordinary HDB room. you step into it, only to be taken aback that there's NO DOOR. and the walls end BELOW YOUR WAIST. then the scene gets even more horrifying. there is NO FLUSHING SYSTEM. and you almost fainted when you see a hole with a slope that sends out your waste through the walls down to behind the little house. anyone could just stand there and SEE EVERYTHING your ass gives out. i found it utterly amusing when you see steam as you erm.. leak. like "WOAH. SO COOL." another thing is, for such facility, you still have to pay 0.5RMB which is equivalent to S$0.13 or so.
our baizu dali guide. photographer=dad.
this just so happens to be another doorless toilet at another spot where natural dying is being carried out. AT LEAST THERE'S FLUSH. and AT LEAST THERE'S NO OPEN AIR HOLE UNDER MY BUTT. ooh. that explains my dried up butt. =_= even my waist and thighs is covered with flakes of dried epidermal cells.
"er hai" their lake is so huge in dali that the commoners just name it as a sea. the water is ultra clean cause its people treasures it for its importance.
on the way to lijiang, we came across this mine. look like a heart. so i just took it. NICE HOR.
green green grass of home. sometimes i wished i was born there.
the mountains. the fields. making the long bus rides worthwhile.
sakura. no need go japan le.
at a old town of lijiang, we toured a street called "si fang jie" and came across many small dogs. and even kittens. all of them puffed up from the chilling breeze. SO KAWAII.
at lijiang, we managed to catch up with a show directed by the famous ZHANG YI MOU and some 2 other more-famous-in-china directors... there was 3 parts in the show. depicting their culture, lifestyles and romance. the cast consisted of 500 men, 100 women and 50-100 horses. all handpicked by the directors and from the minority tribes. i must say i was truly touched by these people. i wonder how many hearts they influenced and how many trickles of tears were flowed. having been living high up in the mountains at a high of about 2300m above sea level since they ancestors have settled, how have they survived the harsh climates? what about the diseases they encountered? the globalisation that is forcing them to part their simple i-just-wanna-stay-alive kinda mindset?
such thoughts led me into deeper reflection. we people from developed countries travel to countrysides thinking that we would meet innocent nice people who would open their arms wide to welcome us. and it is the tourists whose minds are filled with ideas of how to take over the area one day into endless wealth or to take advantage of cheap goods and souvenirs provided. then again. i face this irony. it is in fact the tourist today who are the simple-minded creatures, who enter a land of unknown, meeting the natives who are filled with scheming thought of ways to rob your valuables. poor thing. what a vicious cycle.
the men singing. surprisingly, i found (some of)them attractive. so man. WAHAHAH.
another interesting thing is the way they piggybag the women. the man held on the the woman's knee as the latter lenes[ahhhh! can't spell] on the guy's back.. apparently, this is used when a woman gets married. the guy have to carry the girl from her house and walk his way back without putting the girl down. it is said that if he did, his bride would be eaten by a tiger or something -_-" i only thought of how muscular the guy must have been.
their stage = amphitheatre. the audience seated in a way to face to snow mountain at the back, heighted at 5000 over metres. LOOK. man is so small in the midst of overwhelming scenic views..
after "perving" at a few males and tearing from the show, we had to squeeze through the crowd in order to board on their "green bus". it seems china is really genuine about protecting their heritage and all. they've got such clean transports, whether buses or trams, that run on batteries instead of diesels so that as little damage and pollution is brought about to their pretty environments. unfortunately, what they failed to realise, like singapore, is the source of the electricity to charge those batteries.. *shakes head* then again, unlike singapore which has almost no natural resources, china has its rivers and winds to generate cleaner electricity.. in fact, most countrysides that i scanned through and running on electricity running on dams... and did i forget to mention that more than 80% of the buildings in kunming are running on SOLAR energy? like, literally, you see each house has it's own solar panel... but AGAIN, it aint fair to compare it with singapore... look at own climate.. it pours suddenly every now and then.. any thing would just degrade itself ASAP under such "unfriendly" conditions. so i cant help but to place some blame on the tropical weather.
another thing i wanna mention is its people. while the government has made its own commendable efforts, it's people are not. you could see the men smoking EVERYWHERE. and i bet at least 40% of the litter generated in the country are made up of cigarette butts. so imgaine how much second-hand smoke i've inhaled... and if you wonder why they smoke so much, it all boils down to their culture. many tribes/races believed that if a man doesnt smoke and/or drink, he's like gay. or sissy... so just make your own judgement.
so back to what i was attempting to say. the crowds were really impatient and rude... and mostly made up of people from C and T. so uhh, in return, i got to be more ruly and pushed back too. YAY. ok. no joke cause there's children and elderlys... while waiting for the bus, you could constantly feel a force coming from all the pushing ang tugging behind. HOW IRRITATING. there's this point of time when two bad zhar bor-s tried to cut our tour group's queue.. and so my nanny-guide hissed at them and shouted fiercer than any woman i've seened. GOSH. but it was kinda satisfying to demoralise those 2 women a bit, afterall.. they were really arrogant.
a tweeny little peek of one of their 4 natural lakes. unfortunately, it contained too much minerals such that animals couldnt live off it.. only plants and algae -_-. and like many times during the journey, i wished my camera was NIKON or had better resolution like.. 8 megapixels or something. or even better, if only the camera were my eyes.
i forgot which tribe.. the yi or the naxi tribe.. i was told they worshipped frogs.. and erm. find it adorable.. i just couldnt figure out why from the picture below..
at a park in lijiang.. i was still surprised by the number of aged exercising... and to add on to my amazement.. THEY WERE ALL SO FIT!! imagine standing and squatting repeatedly without the help of your hands at 70... O_o. and playing badminton ? O_O.
not in the park, but somewhere between lijiang and shangrila on the coach.
I LOVE SHANGRILA though the climate totally ruins my skin all over. look at how vast their land is!! and their herds of buffaloes???[you know those long long hair cows.. i forgot what it's called in english OH WELLS] and pigs and PIGLETS!!!
because of the scarcity of water on the highlands, the zhang tribe calls this the holy lake/sea/whatsoever. which i kinda agree. and uh, this is a protected area by the way. (: (:
open this up and you'll see those black dots better... WAh LAH! all dung. but it doesnt stink. really!
the background is the kitchen cum living hall of a zhang's house. I LIKE THE SPACE.
after a night stay at DI QING hotel, we took a plane back to kunming in 40 minutes while our poor trusty driver was left to return back all by himself with his bus which broke down TWICE in shangrila due to the sheer coldness. and his trip would take 10 hours.. POOR CHAP. i could hear most tourmates whinning about a different driver at kunming...
we got down to this place called shilin, i.e. stone forest in direct translation. everything you see there today were all once the corals, sea and all. it was all due to earthquake that such masterpieces were pushed up.. so cool right..
2 uses of this photo. one for my mum. the other.. HAHA... you make the guess yourself.
man-made pond in shilin. and filled with tons of over-fed fishes..
rental of costume: 10RMB = abt S$2.50
corrosion in a PIG. YEAR OF THE PIG. lol. ok random.
this is some other tourist attraction called QI CAI YUN NAN, aka seven coloured yunan... oh wells. the tribe here had somewhat been influenced by the thais after living at their border.. and hence their buildings looked thai too. this place reared countless of peacocks...
at dinner we returned to the hotel where we lodged ourselves for 2 days.. and that very night me and my sister abandoned our parents at the hotel to tag along with a couple of other aunties and ladies including our nanny-guide to a nearby hairsalon.. afterall who could resist the cheap temptation??my first experience as a taitai in alien form. they washed. treated. steamed. then washed again. then blow then cut my hair -_-"
the next morning at kunming, we went to another mountain... ( seriously, there's countless of highlands at yunan.. which itself IS a highland..) we took a tram while some others walked. *SHIVERS* we visited a cactus garden then zhongkui's 12kg knife and some 20kg sword. MAD. after which we kinda ended our destination at some clock tower.
go ahead. laugh. we assumed the english was correct when the building were first built. but the glue was weak so the words dropped and the illiterate gardeners mispelt them.. oh wells. i think it meant: cactus and succulent plant greenhouse.
this is a lake called dian chi.. which covers an area half the size of singapore. it kept reminding me of the sea between singapore and malaysia..
yunan is a beautiful place. but i love shangrila still. people there live without materialism and notes are almost nothing. to quote my guide, money not spend are afterall, still paper. and in times of survival and death, what can money bring?? the zhang tribe relied on their religion to overcome all obstacles in life. indeed. you cant really be on your own under such circumstances.
i was surprised i didnt leave singapore with reluctancy.. then i got it. it is shangrila where i want my soul to live. although the scenery may not be the best, and definitely not the climate, there's this natural attraction at this place which, shall be left unexplained. maybe that's why my heart was aching when i boarded planes to places closer and closer to home.
oh. belated merry christmas babes. in the mean time, it's back to reality to hunt for a job and overcome driving. one day. i'll return to shangrila until i find another place of peace for the body and soul.
All the sleepless nights;
and the tears you cry
at 3:52 PM
and the tears you cry
at 3:52 PM