Andrea's Visit- SuZhou

In June, as we were getting near the end of our time in China, we got our first visitor. Christine's college roomie Andrea made the trek out to see us, and we got a chance to see all of the best tourist spots one last time. We made a special day trip out to SuZhou so Andrea could get a taste of the famous water cities that are all over the place near Shanghai. We got a lot of great pics that day.

Say hi to Andrea. She's funky fresh, China style.

The constant human swarm.

SuZhou has lots of little tourist parks like this one.


A hard earned rest.


This little old lady gave us a ride around the canal. She kept breaking into song.

Relaxin'

I don't know why soldier's babies and their mothers get preference, but according to this sign, they do.

Kunming

It's been a looooonnnnnng time since anyone updated this poor blog. I blame the People's Republic of China. Thanks to "the Anniversary," or as we call it in countries with freedom of speech "the Tienanmen Square Massacre," the government decided to block most of the popular blogging sites. That meant we weren't able to continue documenting our adventures like we had planned.

Anyway, I'll do my best to record the story and put up the best pictures.

We went to YunNan province over a four day weekend in May. We stayed with Kamran, who my Dad used to work with. He now lives in Kunming and teaches English to college students. He was extremely hospitable, especially when it came to food.

Kamran and I posing in his apartment complex

We spent some time just exploring the city. Compared to Shanghai, people were much more polite and seemed to be used to a slower lifestyle. That's not to say Kunming wasn't booming though. There were new roads and buildings going up all over the place, and old buildings lay in piles of rubble in order to make way for something fancy and new.

Spices in the wet market

Hanging out on the ever popular mini-stools


This is a police officer

Because of its southern location, Kunming enjoys temperate weather all year long. The weather makes it ideal for growing all sorts of interesting produce and also helps earn it the title of the flower capital of China. We saw all sorts of beautiful flowers throughout the city. The views were especially striking because the vibrant flowers contrasted so much against the drab, decaying architecture.

Pretty flowers

Kamran called up one of his students to help him show us around Kunming. She was so friendly that she was even willing to take us a few hours out of town to meet her family and see her home town. First, though, we checked out a park in the middle of the city. Since it was a long weekend, everyone was out and about. There were groups of people dancing, playing instruments, and flying kites. This, in my opinion, was by far the coolest park we saw in China.

Christine caught this little girl in mid pout

I thought these guys were rad

Later, we went out to dinner with a big crew of college students. We ate at a noodle shop, and barely escaped a massive downpour. Teen and I both ate stinky tofu for the first and only time. Please don't let anyone convince you that it tastes good despite its smell. It's gross, which should be no surprise since it smells so bad that it makes entire city blocks smell like death. After dinner we ate one of two versions of "chinese ice cream." This type consisted of huge piles of delicious fruit flavored ice. We also played a game where different people were chosen to be "the killer," "the cop," and "the judge." Some caught on to the point of the game faster than others.

At the ice cream shop

This gentleman was supposed to choose who he thought "the killer" was and why. He pointed at Christine and said, "killers are always beautiful." If that comes off sounding smooth, let me assure you it wasn't. It was hilarious.

The next day we were lucky enough to travel to Vivie's hometown. We barely made it to the bus station in time to catch the bus out of town. We literally jumped out of the cab as the bus was pulling out. It was raining hard again, and the windshield wipers on our bus were out of order. The driver valiantly drove on, despite the handicap. We took a detour through a road that was under construction and a puddle that was impassable to most of the other tiny vehicles to go to a mechanic. He poked around and assured the driver that, yes, the wipers were broken. When we arrived in town, Vivie's uncle picked us up in an SUV which may or may not have been borrowed for the occasion. The whole family was gathered at a restaurant waiting for us, and we were treated to an awesome feast. Her Aunt took responsibility for Christine and I, and kept shoveling food onto our plates. It was an interesting menu of Chinese Muslim cuisine, which was a lot like regular Chinese cuisine but without the pork. I really enjoyed it. Vivie's younger brother kept refilling our beer glasses and making us gan bai with him. He was funny since his cheeks got all red when he was drunk. Teen said he reminded her of Mathew.





After the meal, the family was excited to show us the weekend's big event: a dirt bike race. They took us out to a dry riverbed where the entire town had gathered, and asked us things like "Do they have auto racing in America?" It was really a pretty cool event, and it was especially interesting to see that there was absolutely no commercialization of the race. There were no vendors, no beers sales, no mementos to buy. I saw one enterprising couple selling fruit. There was also a total lack of safety precautions. No barriers had been set up, and people freely crossed the track while the race was going on. There was a crew responsible for yelling at people who crossed at stupid times, but it really didn't seem to be much of a deterrent.

This was what greeted us when we arrived at the race. Notice the water buffalo.

After the race, Christine was leaning out of the window to take pictures of the beautiful rice paddies that lined the road. Vivie's uncle noticed our interest, and brought us over for a closer look. We realized what we had done was kind of like a visitor scoffing at the Indy 500 and then pleading to go see the corn fields. We didn't worry about it though, because these farms were really beautiful. We started poking around a small farming town, and were invited into the back yard of one family. There we found a miniature grandpa and grandma, who were hanging out in the old dirt house that they must have built before they made enough money to construct the much larger more modern house they had in front. We all took pictures together, and I think they were just as entertained by us as we were of them.

The town we visited was called Dong Chuan. It was not even close to representative of a normal Chinese farming village, since so many people in town had gotten rich in the copper mining industry. We were told that there were 200 millionaires in this small town of 20,000 people. After seeing a few Hummers, I believed it. It was also interesting to see that despite having such a small population, the town was still built to look like a city.

Here's the whole village from the top of a hill.

That night we returned to Kunming and enjoyed the city. We ate at a really small outdoor restaurant known for a unique dish. Unfortunately I forgot what it was called, but I remember that it was named after a story about a woman who brought food to someone who was stuck on the other side of a bridge for some reason. She carried the ingredients and the soup separately, so the broth and goodies are given to you one at a time.

Christine and I spent the next day relaxing at a park. Please enjoy the Chinglish signs. There was a guy there playing some peaceful melodies on his flute. Next to him was a guy firing a pellet gun into the trees. I wonder if he knows how likely it is that he will take is eye out with that?

This was who we rode next to on the bus back to Kamran's place.

Before going home we made sure to check out all of the gift shops. We spent a long time looking at jade jewelry.

These two were selling ridiculous, totally un-Kunming-related gear on the airplane. I think that lady is holding a knockoff Disney face towel. They did not like the fact that I took their picture.

We had a great time on our trip to southern China. We would have liked to have more time to visit some of the famous cities and attractions in the area, but we were really lucky to get such a personalized adventure. Kamran, thanks for all of your hospitality. It meant a lot to Christine and I.