Gorgeous and serene Huating Temple. If I ever decide to become a monk, you'll find me here.
Sword Peak Pond in the Stone Forest
After dark the Stone Forest is more like an Enchanted Forest. We stopped at the top here to play a round of Euchre and enjoy the scenery.
The cradle of life, ha, no not really. This is in the Stone Forest. We crawled on our hands and knees over precarious high rock passes to get to this 'secret' spot that few others know of. However we had to wait our turn to get photos, as we began to realize that it wasn't so secret, just dangerous and dangerous doesn't deter many apparently.
Here is me on the Heavenly Platform....carved into a mountain and most precarioulsy perched over Dianchi lake, a lake that looks lovely until the sun shines upon it and then it bears an uncanny resemblance to a nuclear waste dump with its radioactive green color. Oh yeah and just to my left was a clever little girl who dropped her pants and pooped in the corner.....yes, that is very typical 'round here.
The night we learned to play euchre....oh yeah and the night I learned to eat sunflower seeds (but I refuse to crack them in my mouth, and really they're too much work to be worth eating....but at the Western Hills, there were vendors selling the whole sunflower top with the seeds in it, so if you're in to the sunflower seed deal and really like the prospect of fresh off the flower seeds, then you had better hop on over to China quick)
The East Pagoda....we later found the West Pagoda to be more beautiful, despite what our trusty Lonely Planet Guide had to say.
Our two-story garage restaurant
The infamous goat-cheese that we ooooooed and ahhhhhhed over
Hmmmk. It's Sunday night and I've just gotten through teaching both weekend days and I've got five more weekdays to go before I get another break....holidays don't come pain-free around here. But I might reiterate that Kunming was more than worth a little 7-day work week pain. What's so great about Kunming?
1) It's the city of Eternal Spring - what cannot be great about that? 65 degree days and 50 degree nights....that's 30 whole degrees cooler than the sauna I am living in now.
2) The people. Everyone was just downright pleasant in Kunming. We walked down the street one morning and an old man was pedaling a bicycle down the road with his wife in a side-car attached to the bike. How often does that happen anywhere else? What about a man pedaling down the road with a bunch of about 100 balloons trailing behind him on his bike? If you want one, just flag him down. Shoe shiners set up work on street corners, next to men who make fresh kettle corn, who park next to the peoples making satay and fried tofu, and steamed yams, and boiled corn. Then at night a particular group of men come out with their special granola to sell, that is truly irresistible. Then after you've had enough food.....men on street corners make animals out of banana leaves to buy for 60 cents.
3) I was obsessed with churches when we lived in London; here I am in love with temples. The fact that there are temples means that there is religion in Kunming...not so much so in Shenzhen. We must have seen four or five temples during our short stay in Kunming, and while I loved them all....I fell in love with one. Huating temple, about half way down the Western Hills Mountain was the most beautiful temple I have ever seen. It was absolutely serene....carved into a crevice in the mountain, impeccably well-kept....it was perfect. There were six or seven buildings that surrounded a little pond where fish swam and turtles...well they sunbathed. It almost made me want to live in solitude right there with the monks for awhile...think about how many books I could read, or scarves I could knit :-)
4) Speaking of books.....we went to a most excellent English book store in the university district. In the Let's Go guidebook it was written up as the "most eclectic" variety of books you'll ever find in China and the shop didn't disappoint. After me having asked two different chinese people to direct us to the particular road....we found it. On the second floor of a tiny shop, English books, both old and new, fiction and non-fiction, classics and self-help, were stacked from floor to ceiling. It was amazing. The books were priced relatively close to their US price, as they were imported, but I found them all compelling enough to but two...and let me tell ya, it was hard to narrow it down. Henry James and Hua Guixin won out in the end, the latter actually being a banned book in this country.
5) Green Jade Lake Park was magnificant. Okay, there might be parks as beautiful in Europe or America, but the park "culture" was unparalleled. On this particular Saturday, in addition to other touristy people and families etc, there were violin players, erhu players (two-string intrstrument), ballroom dancers, multiple pagodas by the lakes filled with impromptu opera singing groups, fish feeding frenzies, children chasing bubbles blown by parents, and some serious games of majon going on. It was a captivating experience no doubt.
6) Where else in the world can intructions like "take the number 6 bus to the end of the line, switch to the 5, take it to the end, get out and catch a minibus" lead to a monumental adventure? This was how we got to the bamboo temple. As soon as we got off that #5 bus, we were bombarded with ladies holding signs with various locations listed in Chinese. Luckily I had looked up the words we needed for the temple and was able to negotiate with a lady in a Little House on the Prarie-type bonnet. She and her husband agreed to drive us the 30 minutes there, wait for us and then take us home for 50 kuai......about 4.50. We figured that was a bit steep...but it looked like it was about to rain and we didn't want to risk being at the bamboo temple indefinetly. The return back to the #5 bus lot proved wonderful too...I got one of the tastiest baozi (bread dumpling) for lunch that I have ever had....all for the pricey total of 7 cents...can't beat that. I also bought some delicious apples.
7) Cheese takes on a whole new meaning in this city. In China....cheese is really not a common commodity..actually in Shenzhen it really can't be found in the store unless you want to buy imported stuff. But....in Kunming they are known for Ru bing, or goat cheese. Man is it tastey. So tastey that the two-story garage restaurant by the eclectic book shop was visited by us twice while we were in the city b/c it's fried goat cheese and stir-fried beef was sooooo good. Mmmm. The first time we ate outside..the second time, we were ushered to the second story of the garage where I had to duck up the stairs and duck to get to our midget-sized table. We were served tea in tin cups....think what prisoners clank on the bars when they want to be served their food :-)
8) I learned to play Euchre. One night, while we drank our case of Snow beer under an umbrella-ed table by the river, while we no doubt entertained all Chinese parties around us, Tim taught us ladies how to play Euchre...and it was all downhill from there. From then on, whenever there was an idle moment, whether it was in our hostel room, or at the Stone forest sitting amongst enchanted trees after dark, or on the train bunks on our way back to Shenzhen....we were playing Euchre. I cannot say that I have any skill, but what I lack in skill I make up for in enthusiam. I think Jenny and I are addicts now, and we made Julia play, b/c four people is compulsory for the game to work....I don't think she shares our crazy passion.
9) The Stone Forest was way more than just a rock garden.....it was downright beautiful. Us ladies found ourselves chasing after Tim all afternoon as we climbed up countless stairs, climbed down into secret passages and took sport in getting lost over and over again.
.....basically I cannot put into words what I beautiful and perfect place this is. Anyone reading this really just needs to see it for themselves...and quick!
*More pictures to come...the ones above are truly random..but blogspot is being difficult at the moment.
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