Travelogue

| Gateway to the Silk Road | Guizhou Landscape |
| Dream away in Yangshuo | Where memories linger |
| Grand Canal at Hangzhou Ending | Curing Cuisines | Tea Tour |
| A Challenging Trip | Expedition to fairyland |
| Snacks at Kunming | Lijiang Impression |
| A Quiet Village Tour | Splash off Your Bad Luck |
| Summer Escape to a Holy Island | Suzhou’s History |
| In the Heart of a Miao Village | No-frills cruise along the Yangtze |

Snacks at Kunming

Alessandra Carlson

Kunming is known as "Chun Cheng" (City of Spring) in China. So, in my mind, the place should look and feel like a Hangzhou-style city.

But when I saw it, I found that it was totally different from what I thought. On the way downtown from the airport, the city looked very similar to any other modern city in China. That is, it resembled a concrete-jungle. I was a little upset.

But after staying in Kunming for a couple of days, I gradually fell in love with the city, for the beauty of Kunming is mostly hidden from view and needs searching out. It does not look like Hangzhou, with its beautiful lake and mountain skyline providing all the natural beauty. Kunming is more like a shy girl. It conceals its charms in secret corners, and if you do not search these corners out, you may come away a little disappointed.

Cuihu Lake ( Jadeite Lake)

Recommended by one local guy, I went to Cuihu Lake first. The bus passed through many ordinary-looking streets and arrived at a quiet corner near Yunnan University on North Cuihu Road.

I decided to visit the campus first, as the flourish of green trees stretching out their
branches above the university wall attracted me immediately.

This key university, with a history going back to 1923, is famous for these ginkgo trees. In the late autumn all their leaves turn golden and then sparkle in the sunshine. It is said to be the best place for students to study in the morning. Some students said there were several squirrels living in the ginkgo forest, but I did not have the opportunity to see them.

The Cuihu Lake is just a block away from the campus. With willows on the bank, small elegant pavilions in the center of the lake, and red lotus blossoming in the summer, the lake is quite similar to the famous West Lake in Hangzhou. Yet the lake here is much smaller. The most interesting experience is feeding the water birds. Every winter, countless water birds with red beaks settle here. Visitors can buy bird seeds to feed these attractive birds. But to me, some of them looked very fierce and were all too eager to snatch food from my hand rather than waiting to be fed.

During the weekend, the lake is the best place for local people to spend a casual afternoon with their family members. Around the lake, dozens of teahouses, restaurants, cafes and bars have mushroomed around the water.

Memorials of legends

Another must to see is the Jinma (Golden horse) and Biji (Green rooster) memorials on Jinbi Road. These 400-year-old memorials are said to be the true symbols of Kunming.

Their unique splendor sounded too wonderful for me to believe. It is said that, on a certain day, just as the sun is sinking, and just as the moon is on the rise, the shadows of these two memorials, which symbolize two different celestial bodies, will grow closer together until they finally overlap. This sounds very interesting, but it is almost impossible to see it because according to the running angles of the earth, moon and sun, such mirages only appear once every 60 years. It is said that during one day in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) many people here enjoyed this celestial apparition.

Like many other Chinese scenic spots, the Jinma and Biji also has a beautiful legend. You may imagine that the legend here used to be of an immortal golden horse and a jade-looking phoenix living nearby. The people later built these two memorials in honor of these mystical creatures.

Actually, the memorials are not that awe-inspiring, yet because of their good location, one can go to many interesting markets nearby.

For example, a market which is very similar to Shanghai's City God Temple stands just beside the memorials. The old-style architecture, the various types of local hand-made articles, and several quiet teahouses are quite interesting.

The favorite place of many local people is the flower and bird market on Jingxing Road. It is also not that far away from the memorials, a little over 15 minutes on foot.

The local elders have beautiful memories of the street because it used to be the local children's favorite place in the Spring Festival. The street was well-known for selling toys in the olden days. Since the 1980s, the street has become a flower and bird market, which now accommodates about 700 of the stores.

No matter how cold the day is, inside the market, people always feel like it is forever spring because so many flowers scent the air and birds are chirping all around. The price of flowers is extremely low, which almost shocked me. For example, one can spend about 10 yuan for a big bunch of roses! No wonder many passengers at the Kunming Airport hold flowers; they are a good souvenir.

Heaven of cuisine

There is no other place that would leave me with such a deep impression of its local cuisine as Kunming. No matter if you try the snacks or formal dishes, the taste is so delicious and the price is so pleasant.

The first restaurant I would recommend would be the Qiao Xiang Yuan, which is at the crossing of Jinbi and Shulin roads. The best selling dish in the restaurant is Yunnan Mixian (Yunnan style noodle). The price of a bowl of noodle ranges from 3 to 35 yuan. I ordered a 10 yuan bowl of noodles and found a seat to enjoy the dancing and singing performances in the restaurant.

After a while, the waitress gave me a bowl of some dry noodles, and countless small dishes containing meat, vegetables, egg, mushrooms and fish.

Finally, a young waiter gave me a huge bowl of boiled soup. The correct way is top our the noodles as well as the food into the soup. The hot soup would then cook the raw materials and half cook the noodles in seconds. It was the first time for me to eat with such a basin-like bowl, and I was worried that it would become too much, but after a while I felt that I could have another one because the taste was so delicious.

Yunnan's snacks are very well-known.Apart from the Yunnan Mixian, I also liked the Yunnan Ersi very much. Ersi is another type of noodle which tastes more sticky and flexible. Local people's favorite maybe is the smelly dried bean curd. A guy from Yunnan who went to study in a Shanghai university in 1995 said he wrote to his mother and asked her to send him a bag of this smelly dried bean curd. Vendors selling the bean curd can be seen everywhere, but as to the taste, it is hard to comment….

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