Kunming City

Your intrepid correspondent under The Arch of the Cock, Kunming China

We keep returning to the same area of Kunming. This is perhaps because it is relatively close to the hotel, or because it is showier than other areas. Certainly, there are a lot of high end shops, Galliano, Vuitton, Cavalli, but you cannot mistake it for Austin, Manhattan, or Quebec. First of all, there are people with no limbs on skateboards. Secondly, there are fast food restaurants that let you know you are not in Kansas anymore.

This is a fast food restaurant with the name translated to "Duck Neck". And, indeed they serve that, along with every other part of the duck. Including the little heads. I spared you that photo.

And, the translation to English continues to amuse, with signs and names.

For instance.

We went to this part of the city for a meal and to wander around the markets. There seems to be a few stores we would consider "grocery stores", but mostly there are local shops and markets, all open air. The shops pull down a door when they close. Sadly, we have even spotted a Wal Mart. I wonder if they sell stuff from the U. S. here?

One of the many tea shops. This mound of black stuff is molded out of tea. The mold tea into all sorts of shapes, but seem to sell it commonly, in a disc shape.

This is a fungus shop. All the bins and jars are full of mushrooms and other types of fungus.

I have bought very little while here, mainly because I don't know what anything is, and asking is futile. I would like to buy some local tea pronounced "Pu-era"(maybe). I'll have to figure that out! I doubt I'll be bringing home any fungus.

At dinner. A "simple dinner". I couldn't tell the difference, except there was fewer dishes. The whitish slash across my neck is a reflection from the large, glass lazy susan. The tables all have one. The dishes are placed-sometimes stacked- on the lazy susan, and you just keep turning them to access the desired dish. Most dishes are served with chopsticks, but it seems some things you are just supposed to pick up with the chopsticks you are using to feed yourself.

We spent the rest of the evening in the shopping areas, trying to avoid the downpours. The goods can be quite expensive here. I found a shirt I liked, it was 630yuan which translates to about $100. This was at the sporting goods store. Of course at the designer stores there was another zero on the end, shirt more like 6300yuan. When we decided to leave we had some difficulty finding a taxi, as most were already full in the rain. Which brings me to a sight we had not really, surprisingly seen before. A traffic jam. Now, driving in China is, how do you explain this? Begori, there are no rules. There are lane lines, double yellows, shoulder lines, no turn signs, one way signs, a sign you see with what looks like a souzaphone with a red line through it, that I interpret to mean "No horns". All this is just mere suggestion. Pedestrians walk down the middle of the road, bikes, electric scooters, rickshaw looking things, cars, buses all mash together, somehow- impossibly- avoiding smash ups. It is unusual to drive in the lane instead of with your hood ornament using the line as a guide. And you honk. A lot. Side streets just shoot cars right out into the road. Why stop? And making a u-turn across 4 lanes from far right to far left over a double yellow during rush hour? Why not? And seatbelts? Often unusable from disuse and the layers of road pollution caked on them so thick they don't move through the surcingle at the shoulder. Today we witnessed a toddler having a lying down temper tantrum in the middle of the second lane in the road, close to the double yellow. Grandpa just waiting for him to stop, horns bleeping, and everyone just going around. I feel more empathetic to the Asian drivers in the U.S. that seem to have no clue. They are just driving as they've been taught. 

All the cars whose headlights you see are heading down a one way street. The wrong way. The one without headlights is not strange, they are only optional as well. The scooters, with raincoats that fit over scooter and driver, just weave between cars and barely miss the pedestrians that just stride right out into moving traffic.

And yet, it all seems to work somehow. We have seen one fender bender only since arriving.

Quite a city.