There and Back Again: The Journey from Kunming to Noto

After another day in Kunming, I said my farewells to Colleen and began my long journey home.  My extensive travel schedule would begin at Saturday morning and would end with my arrival at home Monday morning with transfers at Beijing, Shanghai, Tokyo, Nanao and Anamizu respectively. The first leg of the journey, the flight from Kunming to Beijing started out without a hitch but began to go terribly, terribly wrong when I landed and was waiting for my luggage. After waiting around the conveyor belt for an hour, I made my way to the information booth and started saying “no luggage” “no luggage” over and over in the hopes that someone would understand. Someone did thankfully but all they could get across to me was that my luggage would be coming 3 hours later (I still have no idea why! Did they put it on the wrong plane?) When I heard this my immediate thought was “here we go again Chinese airports let round 2 of your torture begin`` and Lewis Blacks’ AirlineTraveler’s Prayer raced through my mind. When I finally acquiring my luggage after the three-hour wait, I went to the terminal to try and change my flight time as I had missed my layover flight to Shanghai. After being pointed towards the wrong booth five times I finally found the manager and we did our best to communicate. I eventually gathered that there were no more flights to Tokyo that day (really?!) and that I would have to wait until tomorrow to catch my flight. With that I was once more whisked off to another hotel by this airline, this time in Beijing. Unfortunately, I was too far away from all the main sites to do any site seeing but that probably wouldn’t have mattered anyway as Beijing was experience some truly nasty smog and I could hardly even walk a few minutes outside without struggling to breathe.

The next day, I finally made my way to Shanghai and then to Tokyo where I landed around 9 o’clock. At this point, I only had 2 hours to get all the way through customs at Narita to my bus at Shinjuku station, which left at 11 o'clock . The airport bus arrived at Shinjuku at about 11:01pm and thus began my mad dash to the bus with me screaming like a maniac person at nearby people to get out of the way and dashing madly across traffic to reach my bus on time. By the grace of Buddha, the kami, or whatever god I pleased with my numerous shrine and temple visits, I made it to my bus at the last possible minute and was on my way home!

Terrible smog in Beijing

Thus ended my hectic, enlightening, miserable, and fantastic winter break. I had the privilege to see a pretty comprehensive mosaic of what life is like in contemporary East Asia. From the modern and high-tech streets of Tokyo, to the lively and developing streets of Kunming, to the rustic and poor village of Manmai, East Asia certainly is a dynamic and diverse place. However, there is still so much more for me to see and learn, so here’s to the next adventure.

Xishuangbanna: Southeast Asia in China

Deciding to simultaneously explore the surrounding area in Yunnan while basking in warm weather, Colleen and I decided to explore the most southern part of Yunnan called Xishuangbanna. Xishuangbanna is a sort of province within a province and is home to a very large number of ethnic minorities who currently outnumber the population of Han Chinese. The most prevalent minority in the region are the Dai people (language and culture related to Thai people) and the region is known as the Dai autonomous. The region is also very warm with tropical weather that hovers around 80 degrees in January so naturally is was a good place to escape the fact that I hadn't seen the sun in Japan since November.

Large gate at Jinghong, the language written on it is Dai.

Our first stop in Xishuangbanna was the regional capital of Jinghong. As Colleen and I stepped out of the airport and into the palm tree lined avenue with a large gate with the Dai language written on it, it indeed felt like we were in Thailand or somewhere else in Southeast Asia rather than in China. As we made our way across the street, we came across the main plaza where an ethnic minority group was practicing a dance routine for a performance to be held later that night. We stopped at a nearby restaurant and had some food. Colleen herself was a little unsure as to what kind of dish this was but it was some kind of fried bread topped with sugar.

Ethnic Minority dance

Some sort of fry bread

In the afternoon, Colleen and I traversed to the Mekong River, which was the original lifeline of Jinghong. As the weather was nice and toasty, we saw many children bathing and splashing around in the river. Having heard all the horror stories about the pollution in Chinese rivers, I was pleasantly surprised to see how relatively clean the Mekong was (although this may change in the coming years as tourism and industry increase in the region).

The Mekong River

That night, Colleen and I sat down and watched the performance that the women earlier in the day had been practicing for. Evidently, the performance was was commemorating the 60^th anniversary of the Xishaungbanna prefecture and had invited a congregation of local minority dance groups to participate in a dance contest. According to Colleen and her research, modernization and the growth of tourism in the area has created some drastic changes in the area for minority groups such as these. Apparently the Chinese government pays these groups some decent money to perform these dances but it comes at cost tot their cultural heritage. For example, these groups will be obligated to perform these traditionally sacred dances for tourists even when it is not the correct time of year for that particular dance, or a certain group will even be mandated to dance to another minority groups sacred dance. So I guess it’s been a sort of mixed bag as wealth in the region increases but certain aspects of traditional culture are diluted.

Dance Performance in Jinghong

The winning dance team

Early the next morning, Colleen and I boarded a bus to the city of Menghai, located about an hour to the west and closer to the Burmese border. While the stop in Menghai was mostly so we could transfer buses, we nevertheless got to a bit of exploring around the city. Highlights include strolling through the morning market were we were served a mysterious rice porridge thing by a woman working there and stolling through the city limits which became increasingly rustic. We eventually stumbled across a really cool temple. It was interesting because this temple looked quite new, I’m guessing it was a perk of the community making money so recently.

Eldery doing Tai Chi in the central square

Exploring MEnghai

Temple at Menghai

Around noon, Colleen and I took the bus into the countryside and it was here that I the 21^st century began to fade away and one almost felt like they were stepping back in time (minus riding a bus of course). Our destination was the city of Manmai located even further in the depths of the hills and jungles but as the bus didn’t make trips there directly, we had to find the way ourselves. Thankfully, Colleen found a local boy to point us in the right direction and it turned out the best way to get to Manmai before dark was to get out of the bus about 5 kilometers from the village and hike there by foot. So Colleen and I did as he said and stepped out into one of the most epic hikes of my life. The beauty of the mountains, tea plantations and valleys was made even more spectacular when arrived at Manmai around sunset and stopped at temple overlooking the surrounding area. After taking in the scenery, Colleen stepped down to the village of Manmai in hopes of finding a place to spend the night. Using a combination of body language and broken Mandarin (most of the villagers couldn’t speak it according to Colleen) we found a home run by a middle-aged woman and her family who had hosted foreign travelers before and spent the night there. Before we went to bed, the family cooked us up a meal of fish, veggies, noodles, and a super strong rice-liquor that tasted like what I imagine battery-acid tastes.  Colleen and I then did some exploring outside and gazed upon a crystal-clear night sky teeming with shining stars.

Countryside in rural Xishuangbanna

Village in the countryside

Hiking with Colleen at sunset

Now at this point in the story, dear readers, this story gets a little less dignifying for me…I’m still not sure if it was the meal the family served us, the battery-acid wine, or something else that day, but something I consumed made me terribly terribly sick that night. Waking up at around 3:00 in the morning I felt as if my insides were on fire and proceeded to make a mad dash to their outdoor toilet. My endeavor was for naught however as I proceeded to release that nights dinner all across the outside of our gracious hosts house. After a whole night of puking my guts out, I thought the worst of this stomach bug had passed…how very very mistaken I was…the very next morning stage 2 of the misery began and…lets just say that they rest of the dinner chose to come out of me in another violent and explosive way…I’ll spare you the details of this particular suffering although let me just say being afflicted with it and having to use a squat toilet, which incidentally was right next to their pig pen did not a very merry Christmas make. Suffice to say that day I was utterly incapacitated and could barely even eat. The only food I managed to get down were a couple of oranges, which Colleen awesomely scoured the village for. As we needed to be back in Jinghong the next to return home, Colleen asked our host mom when we could get a bus back to the capital. Apparently, the host mom told Colleen that there were only two options to get back: Option A would be to take a several hour hike to nearby village of Bada to catch a bus (which given my inability to move wasn’t going to happen) Option B was to wake up at 5:30am the next morning and to ride on the back of motorcycles driven by her husband and his friend. Guess which one happened!

So the next morning, feeling completely exhausted from having consumed no food and having only expelled nutrients from the past day, I climbed on the back of the friends motorcycle like a helpless baby sloth and we drove through the mountain road under a starry sky. I probably would have appreciated the moment so much more I didn’t feel like I was going to die and compounding the situation was that much of the mountain road was paved with very bumpy and stomach churning cobblestone. Thankfully I neither passed out nor released my stomach contents on my hapless driver (I guess there was nothing to release at that point). We eventually got to the village, transferred buses and were on our way back to Jinghong. As our flight didn’t take off until 10pm, we still had a day to kill in Jinghong. As I was in no condition to hike around, we settled on seeing a subtitled Jackie Chan movie playing at a local theater. The film was a very bizarre movie about Jackie stealing national treasures for the Chinese government and had very strange nationalistic tones in it about how great the Chinese government is and how terrible Western powers were/are for stealing Chinese art. We then finally caught our plane and I was back in Kunming where I could finally get some rest in peace for a day.

Woemn selling veggies in the morning

The Road to Hell is paved with Chinese layovers and Touchdown in Kunming

My destination in China was Kunming, located in the southwestern province of Yunnan. Being so close to the Laos, Burmese, and Tibetan border, Yunnan is renowned for its cultural and ethnic diversity. Indeed, in some parts of the province, one hardly believes that they are in China anymore. This cultural diversity is what brought Colleen to China on a Fulbright scholarship. She is currently studying China’s ethnic minorities and how modernization and especially the tourist industry have affected their cultures and their daily lives. Thus, my experience in China was would be absent of the usual sites such as the Great Wall and the Forbidden City but would be filled with quite a cultural experience no less (China really is huge and diverse!)

My journey to China kicked off with a rather rough start after my plane from Tokyo landed in Nanjing. After waiting for several hours for my plane, which was being delayed due to bad weather, I noticed that all of the passengers sitting next to me started moving after an announcement made by the flight attendants. Thinking that my flight had finally arrived, my moment of euphoria soon turned to dread. After showing the flight attendant my ticket, he started jabbering at me in rapid Chinese (of which I know zilch) but the only word that I caught on to was “hotel!” “hotel!” I soon realized that he was trying to tell me that my flight had been canceled and that they were going to whisk me away to a hotel for the night. Thus, not knowing where I was going, and who was taking me there, I got onto the bus they kept pointing at. During the whole bus ride, which took about an hour and a half! the single thought of “oh god! oh god! what the hell is going on? where are they taking me?” played prominently in my head. The bus eventually dropped all the passengers off at a really dingy hotel with no heat (it was about 35 degrees). The pillow on my bed had a large brown stain that suspiciously resembled poo and several springs protruded from the mattress and into my back. Consequently, not too much sleep was had that night dear readers. Oh and I forgot to mention that they paired all the people traveling alone with roommates…you know that one really smelly, hairy and overall sketchy-looking guy that you pray doesn’t sit next you on the flight? Well guess who my sleeping buddy was! Thus, sleeping on a mattress digging into my back with no pillow, in a room with no heat and a guy who looks like he might shank me if I fall asleep I concluded my first night in China. The next day was thankfully much better. After taking the 5:30am bus back to the airport and fighting my way through the crowd of people who had also had canceled flights the previous night I finally boarded the plane to Kunming and was on my way! This mad scramble full of pushing shoving and yelling really hammered home that I was not in Japan anymore (contrast this scene with the woman who was too polite to push her way through the giant Buddha in Kamakura). I met Colleen at the Kunming airport and was finally liberated from the confusing prison in which I was held.

One of the first things about Kunming that I noticed as we took the taxi to Colleen’s place was how much construction and development seemed to be going on. Indeed, everywhere I looked either a new building was being built or was getting reconstructed. Colleen told me that Kunming is the main hub of the Yunnan Province and has also experienced rapid development in the recent years much like the rest of Chinese urban areas.

Kunming, similar to San Francisco is known for its perpetual spring-like weather. The days usually hover around the mid 60’s with temperatures getting a bit chillier at night. This weather conditions can be attributed Kunming’s location in the southern part of China and given that it is located higher in the mountains so is a bit cooler than other cities on that latitude.

On the first day, Colleen showed me around the city and offered a glimpse into Chinese urban life. One of our first stops was a restaurant that is famed for its dumplings (which were excellent). Our next destination was the Yuan tong Buddhist temple. This temple certainly highlighted Kunming’s cultural diversity. Although the exterior resembled a temple one might expect to see in China, the interior had a pagoda that looked like something from Southeast Asia and an altar to the Buddha that looked like a Middle Eastern influence. There was also another spectacular altar to the Buddha that had a multitude of beautiful statues and mosaics.

Yuantong Temple

Altar to the Buddha 

We also stopped at the Bird and Flower district where an assortment of birds, pets, and other assorted goods where being sold by street vendors.

Clash of Old and New China

Another highlight of Kunming was the next day when Colleen and I visited a temple formerly dedicated to Confucius. The contemporary temple was more like a park where the elderly live out the best retirement I’ve ever seen. The temple grounds were filled with older people playing music, mahjong, and Chinese chess. 

Confucian Temple, now a sort of park for the elderly

Playing a game of Chinese Chess.

Shogatsu and the Journey to Nikko.

The day before New Years, Dad, Will, and I boarded a train bound for Nikko, located about an hour and half away north of Tokyo. Nikko is famous in Japan for its many temples , the mausoleum of Tokugawa Ieyasu (the first Shogun of a  completely unified Japan) and natural beauty. I chose to take Dad and Will to Nikko as it was the New Year or Shogatsu. New Years in Japan is a pretty big deal (think Christmas in the U.S.) and many people celebrate it by spending time with their family and going to visits to shines and temples (called Hastumode). For our accommodations, we stayed at a mountainside inn, run by a really cool guy (whose name, I’m sad to say I have forgotten). The innkeeper told us that later that night, many people would be gathering by Tosho-gu (the mausoleum of Tokugawa Ieyasu) for hastumode. He also mentioned that would be more than happy to give us a ride. So, around 9:30 at night we departed for Tosho-gu and were dropped off. I’m glad that we got there early as, once again, the crowd of people at the shrine was overwhelming. Luckily, we were all able to get a good spot at the front of the line to go and see the main part of the shrine and when the clock struck 12 o’clock, we were let in. The mausoleum was quite magnificent and was all lit up for the New Year jubilation.  At this point, however, we were all quite chilly and didn’t stay too long (I feel bad for the people who were in the way back of the line...at the pace the line was going, they probably had to wait several hours to get in!)

Waiting in line at Tosho-gu

Tosho-gu 

The next day, we all decided to do some hiking around Nikko’s national park and take in some of the winter scenery. We started by taking a bus up a long and very, very steep mountain road and were on our way to Kegon falls. We then hiked around lake Chuzen-ji and took in the outstanding scene of the lake surrounded by mountains. Probably the most spectacular part of the day, however, was taking the bus back around the mountain road during sunset.

Kegon Falls

Ice Rock at Chuzen-ji

Beautiful Sunset at Nikko

As our journey was coming to a close, the next day the three of us took several trains back to Narita airport where I would begin my next journey to China and Will and Dad would return to America. I became a bit ill during this point in the journey and lugging a huge bag around for several hours really took it out of me so I slept the whole rest of the day at our hotel in Narita. Thankfully, I was feeling much better the next day so I said my goodbyes to Will and Dad and was off to Part 2 of my journey. I was off to the oldest continuous civilization in human history, China.

東京 (Tokyo)

On December 28^th, I took the nightbus bound for Tokyo to meet up with my brother and my dad. Taking the night-bus (the cheapest option) would be a harbinger of many uncomfortable transportation experiences to come. The bus left at 11 at night and got to Tokyo around 6 in the morning. For reasons that escape me, the bus stopped for bathroom breaks and subsequently turned the lights on every hour. This made sleep near impossible on an already uncomfortable bus seat.

Anyway after arriving in Tokyo, I had a good 10 hours or so before Will and Dad’s plane arrived so I decided to acclimate myself to the Tokyo train/subway system and do some self-exploration. After a few hours, I was the master of the labyrinth that is Tokyo public transportation. One of the highlights was traveling by myself to Meiji Shrine near the Harajuku district and doing some sightseeing there. I finally met up with Will and Dad near Shinjuku station later that night and we concluded the evening by having some udon noodles at a nearby restaurant.

Meiji Shrine

The next day we went to the Tsukiji fish market and witnessed the thriving market atmosphere there.  Very interesting to see throngs of people gathering to get into very small sushi establishments next to the fish market. I guess sushi that fresh is worth the wait and the lines.
    

Will and I checking out the wares at Tsukiji

After Tsukiji, we went to the Hama Palace Garden, which was built as a retreat for the Shogun and his family, who also hunted duck here. Especially gorgeous was the Nakajima Teahouse where President Grant once sipped tea with the Meiji Emperor in the late 1800’s.

At the Hama Palace Garden

As we left the quiet atmosphere of the garden and the teahouse, we ventured to Tokyo Tower and got a glimpse of the very modern and futuristic buildings of Tokyo.  For lunch, we stopped at  a rotating Sushi restaurant that had the best I’ve ever had.

Tokyo Tower

Dad at the sushi restaurant

That night, I took Dad and Will to the Akihabara electronics district. Both of them were pretty overwhelmed by the district with its blaring lights sounds, and strange things popping such as maid cafes and anime pictures. Will summed up it up as much ”I’m tired and there’s all this weird shit coming at me.” To counter this assault on the senses, we decided it was an appropriate time to have a drink at the Park Hyatt Hotel (the one from Lost in Translation). The drinks were ridiculously expensive but the view from the bar was absolutely stunning. Well worth it for one drink I think.

Akihabara

View from the Park Hyatt

The following day we took a train to nearby Kamakura, which has a smaller town atmosphere and is riddled with temples. Some of the highlights include visiting a temple once owned by the powerful Hojo Samurai clan, a temple dedicated to divorcees, and visiting the Daibutsu, a colossal bronze statue of the Buddha. One amusing anecdote at the Buddha was when we went inside of it (as its hollow). The interior of the Buddha was packed with people and as we were trying to leave, we got caught behind a lady who would not assert herself through the crowd and leave. After about 5 minutes she finally seemed to get the idea that there was nothing to do but shove her way through the crowd and exit before the whole statue got clogged. As I will talk about in a few posts, this reaction of being too polite to shove will contrast wildly with my experience in China.

Shrine at Kamakura

The Daibutsu

On the third day, we ventured to Northern Tokyo and our first sop was Ueno Park, which has an ambience similar to New York’s Central Park, a nature-filled atmosphere with museums galore. Unfortunately, almost all of the museums were closed due to the encroaching New Year holiday.

We then wandered in Northern Tokyo for a bit until we accidentally stumbled on to Ameyokocho, Tokyo’s thriving market, which reminds of the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul. This place was so unbelievably crowded! It took forever to navigate though the crowd. After surviving one congested street, we went to yet another at Senso-ji. This cool temple began with enormous gate at its front adorned with the kami of thunder and wind. Beyond the gate was an extensive road filled with small shops. At the end of this narrow market place was an enormous temple with a beautiful and lavish interior.

Crowded market at Ameyokocho

Strolling around Ueno

The gate to Senso-ji

The long market road at Senso-ji

As it was raining that night, we were walking though one of Tokyo’s underground tunnels when I saw on the most heartwarming things I’ve ever seen. Towards, the end of the tunnel, we began to hear some music being played, which I recognized as being from Hayao Miyazaki’s famous movie, Totoro. When we got closer, we noticed that it was coming from one guy dressed up in a black suit playing on his trumpet. We also noticed that he was playing it for the homeless (who were camping in the tunnel). I don’t who he was or why he was doing it but it was still a really uplifting scene to witness.

Playing for the homeless