Kunming day 2: Xishan/Western Hills Forest Park

July 17, 2013.

Western Hills translates to Xishan (西山) in Chinese. We spent a nice day at the Xishan Forest park with amazing views to the city. We took a bus to the base of the park that has been hailed as "the four major scenic mountains of Yunnan", with the highest peak at 2507.5 meters above sea level. The park lies about 15 minutes away from the city at Western Hills and the lake Dianchi (Dian). To get to the top you take two cableway rides or one cableway and a bus. The main attraction is the Dragon Gate built in the Qing Dynasty straight to the cliff, where amazing views open down to the lake and the city. The area has a lot of pavilions, palaces, gardens, caves, everything from stone; paths, rooms, grottos, Buddhist figures, and also the Small Stone Forest and the grave of Nie Er (composer of China's national song).

The cableway rides offer great views to the surrounding areas and the park itself with the Small Stone Forest visible at the end of the ride. The rides don't take long, but if you're afraid of heights the second ride might be a bit more scary. It's a ski lift (chairlift) where your feet are dangling freely in open air, with only a bar keeping you from falling from the chair to the forest below. The gap between the seat and the bar was wide and I could've easily fallen through it. This might be a scary experience for some Chinese, as they're much smaller than me. The lifts had also seen their best days, so riding the rusty chairs had an own thrill to them.

First cableway ride across the lake Dian

Lake Dian

Second cableway ride with scenery to the city. This is the chairlift.

View to Guanghan pavilion

After arriving to the top we were handed photos of our ride on the chairlift. Before starting to explore the area we bought some potato snacks with spices and searched for a toilet. The toilet turned out to be horrific! In Chinese style it was just holes on the cement floor and the waste dropped straight down to the forest below! The toilets smelled like a waste factory, you didn't want to take too much time doing your business there.

The terrible "toilets" at the park.
Again, bring your own toilet paper!

You do a lot of walking in the park and there are also a lot of stairs, so don't come here wearing high heels. Wearing those anywhere seems to be popular among Chinese women though, as you see them in high heels even in national parks! They often wear beautiful dresses too. Mostly the younger women wear them, who probably dress up for the hundreds of pictures they're taking around every corner for the Chinese equal to Facebook, Renren. I thought the situation with mobile phones, selfies and Facebook was bad in Europe (people being glued to their phones all the time), but it's even worse in China!

A general map of the area. It doesn't cover everything.

Lingxu (Lin Xu) pavilion, where you get the wider
view of the area.

View from the pavilion. The area had a lot of dragonflies.
This picture captured just a few of them.

View from the pavilion to the city

View down to the lake, while descending to the Dragon
Gate. The drop down is several hundreds of meters!

Descending to Tiantai platform

View from the Tiantai platform.

Dragon Gate, the symbol of good luck. Those who enter here will become successful and famous. 

The 66.5m long Dragon Gate Grottoes is carved on the cliff of Western Hill between 1781-1853.

The grotto includes Jiushibao, Luoxuandao, Ciyun and
Yunhua Temples and Datian Pavilion. The path is narrow
and low.

Typical path at the grotto. Good for Chinese size and me.

Rock carvings

Another beautiful pavilion

One of the gates to walk through while descending

Datian pavilion

Datian pavilion

Datian pavilion wishing well

Wishing well from inside

Serene exit with bamboo forest

Stones for sale

You can easily spend the whole day at the park, as it's so big. We only walked the other side of the park and spent a few hours there. We missed the grave of Nie Er and all the temples on the other side. The battery bus back to the main gate passes all of the temples, so you can hop off from the bus if you like and walk to the temples. I'm not sure though if you can catch the bus from the road again when you're heading back. It was hard to find out about anything, as all the people we met only spoke Chinese. Near the main gate we switched busses back to the city. Luckily a young woman was able to help us out in English here, we didn't even get to ask for help before she offered it. She told us which bus to take and how much to pay for it. There are some bad advices on TripAdvisor about these busses, so be careful, some of the busses only take you halfway back to the city.

Heading back to the city in a nice bus

We hadn't been eating too well in China so far. The last three days it was just pizza and McDonald's, stuff we don't eat too often back home, so my body was in shock. It was hard finding decent food, when the internet didn't work all the time to search for restaurants and you couldn't ask for advice from just anyone. You couldn't use the internet cafes either, as they asked for Chinese identity cards. On our earlier visit in China years ago it was still possible to use the internet cafes with just showing your passport. When we finally found an Indian restaurant we were very happy. The Cacaja Indian restaurant can be found in many cities in China. They had many familiar dishes. We liked at least their banana lassi, pakora (the veggies were cooked) and paneer (the spinach was better than normal).

Cacaja Indian restaurant on Zhengyi Road. You can find Cacaja from many
cities in China.

The dishes don't look too good, but they were very tasty

Later we explored Kunming more and saw the Old Kunming quarter and also found the Bird and Flower Market area, where they also sold other stuff. I was curious to see how healthy the animals were. One dog had a mild eye infection, but the other animals were in good health. The dogs were social and I was so happy to pet a samoyed, a rottweiler, a husky and some rabbits and guinea pigs, and see budgies as well singing their hearts out and sharing some love to each other. It was very nice to see some animals during this long trip and it was even nicer to see that not all animals are treated badly in China. We did see some cages and terrariums though which were too small for the amount of animals stuffed in them. Hopefully they are sold fast from those conditions.

The Old Kunming quarter

The Old Kunming quarter

The Bird and Flower Market. Poor birds have little space.

The Bird and Flower Market. Some of the terrariums and cages were way too crowded.

Greeted by this good looking fellow

The normal market next to the Bird and Flower Market

Sisters building close to the Victory Monument on Guanghua Street

Looks like a police car. They use several car models.

Colourful baskets sold near Zhengyifang Shopping Center, near Guanghua Street.

Street market near Zhengyifang Shopping Center.

An old man was selling huge stones at one street and he didn't like it at all when I took a photo of his stones. He started yelling, so I disappeared fast from the scene. He wasn't even in the picture. We noticed that some sellers don't like their products photographed. Maybe they're afraid that people steal their ideas or they're selling illegal stuff, but I just like to photograph everything for fun.

Selling stones. The seller is not in the picture.

Swords and other weapons

We actually walked a lot today, but that's normal for us. We walked quite randomly as we didn't have a map of the center. Later we found someone sharing maps, but he decided to pass us and gave maps to the Chinese people. We didn't bother to run after him. This was another example of how foreigners are ignored in China, many people avoid contact with tourists, especially the taxi drivers. Some were of course delighted to even get to speak a few English words with us, like this student that we bumped into earlier near our hotel. He asked for permission to join our table at a restaurant just to get a chance to speak English and his English was even better than some of the native speakers! Later he asked though if he could be our Kunming guide for free, but we declined the offer. Maybe it was one of the many hoaxes done in China, where you're later asked for money for some cause, but even if he just wanted to help us we didn't want to tag along to a guide. He might've also just wanted to speak English with someone and we talked at least half an hour with him. There was also this old man at the Cui Hu lake earlier we sat next to on a bench, who kept staring at us, and as we left we could've sworn he said "so long". But then again he might've also cursed us into hell in Chinese for all we know!

Jinbi square

Jinbi square

We found a movie theater too. When we don't have nothing better to do at evenings during travels we sometimes go to movies. You might think why do something as ordinary like that when you're at a new exciting place, but on our travels we've found out that even a simple thing like going to the movies abroad can be quite a thrill. The best experiences about movies abroad have been at the Crete island (Greece), Morocco, Thailand and the island of Madeira (Portugal).
The Crete island had an outdoor movie theater, where the loud grasshoppers were making their own soundtrack to the movie and as there was no roof we could also watch the night sky and stars at the same time and smell the night air. It was definitely exotic and even more so, regarding that we were watching Bram Stoker's Dracula under a night sky!
The movie theater in Agadir, Morocco, was a very old one. It was very run-down and burnt all over and the balcony looked like it might collapse any minute, but we still stayed there. The seats were also burnt with cigarrettes. We went to watch some combat movie that had attracted the cinema full of teenage boys, who enthusiastically played along to the movie from start to finish, with kicks and all. We could hardly watch the movie, as it was so exhilarating to watch the boys do their stunts and pretend they were the martial arts stars. What comes to the experiences of Thailand and Madeira movies, well, let's just say Madeira theaters back then attracted the lovers, and in Thailand you have to pay respect for the (now deceased) King by standing up to a national anthem played for the King before the movie. These are just a few examples to show that going to the movies might not be an ordinary experience after all.

We went to see if they had the After Earth -movie (Will Smith) running with original language. It took a while to get the cashier to understand what we wanted - we now used a cell phone translator app - but we soon got the tickets we wanted. The theater seemed quite new and the sound system was very loud! There were only four people besides us and nobody spoke a word during the movie. We whispered some. Besides that the only sounds came from the movie. Nobody was even eating, or spitting, how perfect was that! It felt kinda strange though that nobody had snacks with them, because you're used to people bringing snacks to the movies at least in Finland, where this behaviour is very normal. The theater had a strong air condition, which is normal in Asia, so I had brought a long shirt with me to keep warm. I've never understood it why all the public places in Asia are kept even colder than what we have in the Western countries. We are, after all, more used to the cold than the people here. Even the locals have complained about the coldness to me. The movie was good, although I had more expectations from it what comes to the title. I had already imagined a whole bunch of scenes that could happen with a title like that and this time my imagination was more exciting than the movie.

Kunming cinema

After the movie we tried to take a taxi to our Royal Garden hotel, which is well known in Kunming and only three kilometers from the city center. This time we actually got lucky fast, as the second taxi stopped for us. We had the hotel card with us (written in Chinese) and we showed it to the driver. These Chinese cards help out a lot. The next morning it wasn't as easy as this, when about six taxis declined us. We we're heading to the Stone Forest with local busses.

The funny translations you see in China

Next blog: Stone Forest (Shilin, Yunnan, China).

Kunming day 1; Cui Hu -lake and the city center

July 15, 2013.

We were arriving to Kunming (昆明) by bus. In the earlier post I mentioned a lot of spitting was involved inside the bus and also at the bus station. This is common in China, but it can be even worse than that. We saw someone do their big business right on the street and blow their noses to their hands, even the lady-like women! Our bus was stopped by the police three times. They checked passports etc. While waiting we saw photos of accidents at the police stand. Even trucks had gotten mangled into tiny pieces in the accidents! One truck had been put on show on the side of the road, so people would drive more carefully. The bus trip took nearly 9 hours. We stopped for food once at a roadside restaurant, where we gulfed down tofu, Chinese cabbage and rice with chopsticks like locals. We've used chopsticks for years so it didn't bother us there were no forks around. Again we were the only Western people on the bus and at the restaurant. 

At Kunming no taxi driver wanted to pick us up. How Chinese. Some non-taxi drivers were really interested in us though and offered us a ride. One of them was an older man who looked like he's on drugs and we were suspicious about him. After we saw that he had two women with small children in his car we decided to risk a ride with him. It might've been a family who offered us a ride, but we couldn't ask anything, 'cos they only spoke Chinese.

Later the man turned off the main road into a smaller alley...I hate when this happens, because it's so hard to follow where you're going when you're turning loads of small alleys, especially in China, where you might not have an internet available all the time (for a map), so we were a bit nervous of the whole situation. There was no need to worry though, as it turned out they were nice people who drove us straight to our hotel. Oh well, at least I was entertained by my imagination, getting some excitement from what otherwise was a very casual drive. The 16 km ride cost only five euros, which is good money for a local.

Kunming suburbs at night

July 16.
I tried to speak some Chinese again, but even though I listened carefully how the words are pronounced my speaking didn't get us too far. The locals might expect to hear us speak English and don't understand foreign Chinese pronounciation. So we ended up doing laundry ourselves at our hotel room, because our hotel could hardly help us with anything and we couldn't find a laundry place nearby. We were able to at least switch the room to a non-smoking one. The reception girls giggled when they tried to speak some English back. We were also able to get a taxi to Cui Hu -lake at Kunming center, where many tourists walked with a local guide. I was kinda jealous at them, because travelling with a local guide makes everything so easy here and you get more out of the places. We didn't have any travel books with us, we couldn't possibly carry them for the whole year with all the dive gear and whatnot, so we travelled with only few notes written down back at home or with tips from our travel buddies or the internet, whenever we had the connection.

Covers providing safety for the taxi drivers

Cui Hu (翠湖) -lake park is worth a visit, if you have the time in Kunming. The lakes inside the park are linked by traditional style bridges, there are islands with beautiful pavilions, various vendors selling local food and other things. The park is filled with beautiful trees, plants and flowers and you can watch pieces of performances from Chinese operas with the costumes and listen to folk music. And if you feel like you need an exercise you can join the groups in the park doing various styles of exercises. A lot of restaurants, hotels and shops are found from the edges of the park. We were in the park at working hours, when it was mostly filled with elderly people enjoying their time there.

Elderly people in their daily exercises at the park

A statue to Father of Seagull. Mr. Wu walked 10 km every morning to the lake to see and feed the birds that still appear here early every winter. He spent 50 % of his retirement pay on the birds, becoming so close friends with them, that the birds flew to him when he called them, and was named Father of Seagull by the people. His spirits set a model for man and nature living together in harmony.  

One of many performances in the park

One of many performances in the park

One of many performances in the park

Lotus pond

The few shops inside the park

Fresh juices

Fish House/Viewing pavilion, 观鱼楼.

Snacks of meat, tofu, etc.

Weeping willow trees

The park is quite big and you can spend hours there. We spent a few hours and later headed to an Italian restaurant closeby, where I ordered - or so I thought - a middle sized orange juice. What I got was a huge plate full of fruits though! This plate was actually on the drinks menu with three different prices, which I thought were the prices for different sized drinks. We ate most of it though and laughed that the plate was probably meant for a whole family. The waiters had good fun also watching us eat so much. We also had pizza with strange choice for toppings; broccoli and carrot. It wasn't very good, but it was the only vegetarian food they had.

Broccoli/carrot pizza by the lake

We spent the rest of the day in the city center and some people said hello to us. Again many locals photographed me, which is just normal in China, they love to photograph tourists. We tried to find some normal salted popcorn from the city and I found it, so my day was saved. Asians have various flavours in popcorn and the most common one you can find is the caramel flavour. Salted popcorn is hard to find here. We'd gotten so used to the smell of durian on this trip that it actually now smelled alright to our noses when we found it. Kari swore to try it someday, while I still felt hesitant about it.

Kunming office buildings

Fruits on wheels

Portable police office

Getting a massage etc at the city center

Caramelized fruit

Beautiful flowers at the center

Open air tai chi practise

No entry. The message is clear.

Next blog: Xishan Forest Park, Kunming, China.