My Travels

I am sorry to all of you who are disappointed by the long lapse in writing. I really have just been too happy and busy and consumed by this place and my gallivanting about to sit down and write. But it is time to catch up. Usually I write my own journal first and then when I write my blog it is a somewhat more processed version of my thoughts, but this time it has also been about 2 weeks since I have written in my journal, so I apologize for any scatter-brained-ness that may be the result. I also just have so much to say.
I never know where to start. The last time that I wrote was the night before I left for Kunming, where I traveled with two friends for nine days which we spent eating different and interesting foods, drinking green tea, strolling through the city streets, trekking in one of the most beautiful places that I think I have ever been, laughing at each other(and sometimes at surrounding people), being attacked by hungry mountain goats, following arrows that led to nowhere and breathing in the wonderful clean air that Hangzhou is often lacking. To put it very simply, it was an amazing trip and I really enjoyed every single unreal feeling minute of it.
Kunming (and Yunnan province in general) has a very different feel from the rest of China because 50% of the population is made up of minority ethnic groups, as opposed to Han Chinese which make up the majority of the population. This definitely has visible affects on the type of place that it is, meaning it is a very culturally diverse place and in some ways a little more open of a place than the rest of China. At least this was my impression after spending just a few days there. We all agreed that it just felt comfortable, a littler older than Hangzhou, which sometimes can feel more man-made, manufactured, or tourist driven (if you don't know the right places to go.) But don't get me wrong, Kunming also has a fair number of white people (bai ren) also known as foreigners (lao wai). However, something that I found extremely interesting and that I liked a lot about Kunming was that as opposed to in Hangzhou, where people most of the time assume that I do not speak a word of Chinese, in Kunming people would just start talking to me in Chinese, assuming that I would understand what they were saying. It was a nice change to have people assume that I have the ability to communicate somewhat intelligently. Most of the time, I think that I didn't prove their assumption wrong. In Hangzhou there are a fair number of white tourists, but in Kunming the majority of foreigners who are in the city live there for extended periods of time, and I think that is the difference.
We spent two days in Kunming staying at a Hostel called "The Hump" which had a really cool international traveler atmosphere and a rooftop bar. It was filled with people from all over the world and I had a few surreal experiences that involved hanging out with a bunch of Israelis (not something I really expected to do in China). It was interesting because two different Israelis approached me assuming that I was Israeli (there goes my face giving me away again) and while I don't speak any Hebrew and I don't necessarily connect to Judaism on a religious level, it felt really comfortable talking to these familiar feeling people in a foreign land.
In Kunming I also have a college friend who is studying there for the semester and so he took us around and brought us to this really cool ethnic minorities dance party that happens every Sunday night under a bridge near where he lives. After the dance we ate delicious spicy barbecued shish kababs and had a really interesting conversation about the U.S. economy and role in the world, along with China's changing role in the world with a random older Chinese man who seemed just excited and interested as we were to be having this discussion with random white students who surprised him by being able to carry on an intelligent conversation in Chinese.
From Kunming we took a night bus (8-9 hours on a bus with beds like in Harry Potter) up to Lijiang where we met up with a tour guide from a really cool eco-tourism company and we spent two days trekking with her in a really remote part of the countryside. It was beautiful. The mountains where green and the sky was blue (these things are sadly not always the case in China.) It really did not feel like any China that we know, and we spent a lot of time saying "Ireland, that is what this reminds me of!" or "Africa! we are definitely in some part of Africa!" It is not important that none of us have ever been to either of those places, only that we felt like we were not in China. We spent the night in a rural village staying at a beautiful guesthouse and eating freshly harvested vegetables and possibly freshly killed meat. I am no carnivore, but the meat we ate was probably the most delicious that I have ever eaten. And at night there were so many stars!
We spent another two days hiking Tiger's Leaping Gorge, a slightly more developed (but still extremely uncrowded) path that is scattered with Guesthouses that you can stay in each night. For the cost of maybe $6-7 a person per night you can eat dinner, sleep in a bed with clean sheets, and eat a delicious breakfast (of chocolate pancakes and deep fried omelets), all the while surrounded by towering snow covered peaks that you can see out your bedroom window. Basically, when you are in such a perfect place all you can think to say is, "What did I do to deserve this? Is this real? and, If I wasn't me, I would be so jealous of me." It was the perfect break.
We hiked out on Friday (with a little bit of trouble because of a ferry that was hiding from us and the fact that Chinese people's sense of directions are a bit different from ours...for example they will tell you something is right over there which can mean anywhere from 3 minutes to 4 hours away.) But no problem! We got out eventually and got another night bus back to Kunming and arrived back at our hostel around 7 a.m. And I took a shower.
We spent Saturday eating our way through Kunming. and then Sunday we got up at 5:30 a.m. to go the the airport and did not get home to Hangzhou until 8:00 at night. But the lovely thing about it was that after traveling for a week and coming back it did feel like coming back home, to this place that I have been living for 2 months now, to my bed and my pictures and my roommate and my friends and teachers. It is pretty cool to feel that way about a place that not so long ago was completely foreign and unknown and scary.
Now I am back to classes and playing and a little homework every now and then, and sometimes I sleep. I have a lot more to say, of course, but I think I will stop there for now and maybe go grab some dinner so that I can digest before Kungfu class. I hope everyone out there all over the world is doing well. Happy Halloween!