Angels At My Table 3

Falling For The City Of Eternal Spring

Kunming is really a beautiful city. Considering there's a population of over 7 million, it doesn't feel at all congested. It's got loads of parks and gardens, interesting laneways, gorgeous temples and architecture, and, as I'd hopefully suspected, all the delectable trappings of a swish, modern city.

The food is unbelievable. As the capital of a province which is particularly diverse, there's a huge range of delicacies on offer, all over the place.

Electric scooters ply the bike lanes, there's wide pavements for pedestrians, an extensive and growing metro, frequent pedestrian overpasses and crossings, and everything's organised so people can get around as easily and as quickly as possible.

My first task was to buy a train ticket. While I would absolutely love to ride the whole length of China, from southwest to northwest, there's no way I can do that on a 60 day visa. It's possible to extend the visa, but even then I wouldn't have enough time. I also have somewhere to be in a few months, and it'll take me awhile to ride there.

So I bought a train ticket to Lanzhou, in Gansu province, a long overnight journey from Kunming, and my intention is to ride from there all the way to the Kazakhstan border. If possible. The train company doesn't accept bikes, unless they fold up, so Bewdy and I will be going our separate ways for awhile, I'll have to freight her and all my bike panniers separately. It's not expensive.

The reason I chose to take the train for this portion of the trip (as opposed to elsewhere on the route) is because I've already explored northern Yunnan and Sichuan on a previous trip, so, while there's incredibly beautiful places in those regions, I wanna save my precious visa time for new spots.

So I got my ticket. Unfortunately there were no sleeper class tickets available, I had to book a hard seat, which will make for an interesting 17 hour overnight journey.

Next task was to service Bewdy. I've ridden over 1500km to get here since her last service in Hanoi, and she's definitely in need of attention from someone, given how inattentive I am. I'm such a bad husband.

So I rode her to a bike mechanic recommended to me by someone on a Whatsapp group, it turned out to be a really good tip. She needed new brakes, a new tyre, a full body scrub and a thorough deep tissue cleanse.

Bewdy was gone for the day, so I was on foot.

Ethnic minority clothing store. Yunnan is home to a huge number of different ethnic groups, and is one of the most ethnically diverse provinces in the country.  Historically, due to the huge size of many Chinese kingdoms, when various conflicts erupted in other parts of the country, waves of refugees or migrants would arrive in unaffected provinces like Yunnan.

So, for example, there was a huge wave of migration of Han people into Yunnan during the Japanese invasion of eastern China in the 1930s.

These days ethnic minorities account for 34% of Yunnan's population.

Yunnan is also recognised as the first place to discover the pleasure of a cup of tea. And it also happens to be the region of origin of the plant genus cannabis. Never knew that.

As the bike shop was close to Green Lakes Park, I walked there first. It's a beautiful and peaceful area packed with small lakes, a few temples, and some cafés and restaurants. But mainly it's a whole series of beautiful walkways lined and arched by hundreds of old and beautiful trees.

As in every park in China, everyone exercises there, especially in the mornings and evenings.

I had a long stroll, then sat to have a tamarind juice at a quaint little café. It was quite hot.

My tablecloth.

I had to do a double-take.

This gal was the bravest squirrel I've met. She wasn't timid in the slightest.

Bonsai is big here. Well, big but small.

Love-ly staircase

Some of the lovehearts had things like, "I want to be brave, like a warrior," and other inspiring wishes pasted on them, but most just had the names or nicknames of the lovers (or wanna-be lovers) written on them, like Sunshine Boy, or Princess Guangling.

Fermented pu'er tea icecream. Yummmm.

Dragons all over the shop.

Ok, that's it. Bugger riding a bike across China. I'm gonna take this, and a bunch of friends.

More grilled tofu

Elaborate painted gourds full of whisky

Costume fitting

Oh to have wardrobe space

I eventually left the park and went wandering wherever.

The city's a complete mix of old and new, but of course the new highrises dwarf the old stuff.

Everyone gets around looking smooth, sleek and spotless. Not a hair out of place. Needless to say, I stick out like a grain of truth in a Donald Trump speech. It's been over 3 months now since Frankie attacked me in India with his hair scissors (twice), and now my thinning locks are again wildly reaching for every random corner of the universe.

Given the eternal focus on people's appearance here (everywhere?), it's not a surprise that there's ads like these all over the place.

The Asian Holocaust

I checked out the Sino-Japanese War Memorial, outlining the brutal history of a series of horrible historical conflicts between these two powerful neighbours. The timelines on the display were intertwined with the founding and rise of the Communist Party, and it's eventual takeover of China in 1949.

As Japan industrialised in the 1930s it needed raw materials, and invaded the Chinese province of Manchuria in 1931 to get its hands on them. Over the next few years it brutally occupied huge swathes of Chinese territory, a whopping 25% of it in fact, including the whole of the northeast, all of the major eastern and southern port cities, Taiwan, and huge inland parts of the southeast.

Japanese rule in China, and in other parts of Southeast Asia, was one of the most brutal in modern history, and the result has been referred to as the Asian Holocaust. It's hard to wrap your head around this, but an estimated 4 million Chinese people alone died as a direct result of actions by the Japanese during the occupation period. Millions more died of famine.

The numbers in Southeast Asia were similarly huge.

One of the major atrocities in China during this period was the Nanjing Massacre of 1937-38, when Japanese forces massacred around 300,000 people just in that one city. And that's just one example of the hundreds of massacres that occurred. The Japanese forces found new and innovative ways to make people suffer, and the occupation in the 1930s and 40s was just another chapter in a history of previous Japanese aggression on Chinese territory.

As a result, resentments between Chinese and Japanese people are alive and well to this day, although polls suggest that ill feeling has been declining over time. Some modern political opportunists, however, utilise memories of the brutal past to gain support for their own nationalist movements or political parties.

The inscription reads, "The People's Heroes Are Immortal."

A Train Beckons

I've got some more time to spend in this beautiful city, and then I'll be naked again, without my bike and all my stuff. Just a little overnight bag and my guitar.

Lanzhou, a city of 4 million, is up the road, and will be the starting point for my very long ride northwest, to the Kazakhstani border.

It'll be the first time I've ever been to Gansu, the seventh largest province in China, and one of the poorest.

The area is rich in Han, Tibetan and Muslim culture, and was a major through route on the ancient Silk Road

And of course, I can't wait to wrap my eyes around it❤️

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