Urban Crawl

Parts 1 to 4

I don't know how many cities I've visited in my whole life, but it's been a lot.

I was born in a city, Adelaide, on the south coast of Australia, and the funny thing is that for the first sixteen years of my life, that was the only city I'd ever seen.

So when I finally got to Sydney and Melbourne I was totally blown away by their scale, and by all the things I'd never seen before.

And while there's some things that all cities have in common (lots of people, traffic, high rise, etc), each one is unique, and there's always things you won't see anywhere else.

China has 700 cities, a staggering 145 of which have populations of over 1 million. 23 have over 5 million.

Kunming, with 7 million, is China's 20th biggest city.

I had such a blast wandering around its fascinating streets, like a goggle-eyed teen.

I visited the beautiful main Confucian Temple, it's ancient, simple, and so relaxing to wander around.

It was hot.

Outside gates

Real bamboo

Unreal flowers

Entrance to the main temple

Yuantong Temple

This Buddhist temple, not too far away, was way more spectacular actually, and I visited just at the right time.

Lunchtime.

This building across the road from the main temple is part of the complex, and they were dishing out delicious vegetarian fare for next-to-nothing. As soon as I arrived at the building the old ladies encouraged me to go and eat. Sweeties.

We all sat on the sides of this temple and devoured the delectable offerings.

Entering the main temple across the road.

This is a beautiful type of palm I've seen in a few places in Yunnan. I love it. It's sort of a cross between a fern and a palm.

There's beautiful ponds, gardens, temples, pavilions and shrines everywhere

No photos allowed inside the main temples, as usual lately.

Man about Town

After that beautifully peaceful interlude I kept wandering around the city.

Loads of people have dogs here. Nice ones.

These two buildings must be close to the top of the Kunming Insta Top 100 Must-Post-A-Pic Charts. Just because. I mean, they're skinny and cool, but..... There were hundreds of people flowing through taking the same pics.

Yeah, including me. But only because I happened to walk past and liked them.

Then I had more noodle soup without meat, (so they put chicken in it).

There's a whole part of Wuhua district (woohooo-ah!) packed with amazing laneways, with a million places to eat and another million stalls to shop at.

Imprisoned feathered fiends

Daji hulu, translated as "good-luck-gourds," are popular here in people's gardens or households as decorations, or occasionally used as bottles for various nice things like whiskies and fragrances.

I am an individual. Not a spoke out of place.

The Kunming Shard

Christian church. There was some deep healing going on in there.

There's a few large Traditional Chinese Medicine hospitals around. The ones I saw were all packed.

Despite using a VPN to bypass the Great Firewall of China, it still doesn't keep local advertisers out of my browsers. This one is marketing online gaming.

I went to the Prague Café, where I ordered the realest iced coffee I've had in awhile. It was delicious. I sat outside at a table writing, pretending to be rich, while all the actual rich Chinese around me delicately nibbled tiramisu, and slowly sipped quite masterful coffee creations, intermittently glancing at their latest iPhones, which they nonchalantly pulled from the baggy pockets of their black Gucci jackets.

There's some serious wealth in China, as I'm sure you know, and, whilst most of it's splashing around the east coast of the country, this particular district of Kunming has some pretty generous helpings of it too. You can see it dripping from people's manicured nails.

This sign was in the toilet at the café. Little did they know that I actually had just pooped in the public toilets down the road, and, for the life of me, couldn't flush them down. Well, actually, seeing as you asked, I couldn't get the last one down, it stubbornly clung to the steel bowl like sticky rice does on your thumb, no matter how much you rub it (or throw water at it, in this case).

Once I realised my efforts were futile, I tried to make a quick getaway, but it wasn't to be. As I opened the toilet door and furtively looked out, unable to prevent a wave of toxic digestive death from pouring out of the open doorway, there right in front of me was a young woman, holding the tiny hand of her small daughter. They were next in the queue. The poor unsuspecting innocents. Unsurprisingly I didn't look them in the eye as I rushed off. I just couldn't.

And I'm sure you needed to know all that.

But hey, I guess our arses are just as important as our mouths, in a way, and, compared to my incessant verbal diarrhoea, which I'm sure you can vouch for, (even right now), my butt hardly ever gets a bloody word in.

Quirky bookshop café

I picked up Bewdy. Xiong had done a stellar job. Heading off on her was like cruising back home in a leather seated Merc, after having arrived on an old clunky bus.

It's a shame I'll need to transport her before having a long ride on her first. Things can be jolted and bent on those long freight trips, unfortunately. It's not ideal.

But I did ride her back home.

Kunming was peaking.

And it rained.

But my baby stayed relatively clean.

In the evening I strolled the district, as I like to do.

The apartments are close to a major axpressway and the main railway station. But you can't hear them from the building.

I bought this delicious bread from a Muslim stall. Deep fried, with cinnamon. To die for.

"Be civilised and do civilised things. Civilised people build a civilised city."

And I thought it was gonna be about encouraging people to cycle, as it's so good for your health and the planet.

Flower cakes. They're basically cakes made with edible roses. And they're delicious.

More pipes. Smoking is big here, unfortunately. The government hasn't got that one under control yet, like it has with many other things (eg. spitting, littering, voicing your own opinion etc). Lots of people smoke, and they smoke everywhere, including in hotel rooms (yuk), lifts and eating places.

The tobacco lobby must be big here I guess. Bugger the costs to peope's lives or the public health system.

Another TCM hospital

Necking

A memorial to the many thousands of local people who died in the construction of the Kunming to Haiphong Railway, which was built by the French in the first decade of the 1900s, to provide trading access for European goods to China, and give the French access to Yunnan's huge reserves of natural resources, minerals and opium.

The French were given the right to build the railway on Chinese territory after China's defeat in the first Sino-Japanese War in the 1890s. The Chinese basically had no say in the matter, but Chinese "coolies" (unskilled local labourers) were used during construction. And many died, as the work was outrageously dangerous in the mountainous areas.

Expensive barber. $14 Oz for a cut.

Fear Runs Deep

When I got back home in the evening the strangest thing happened.

As I knew I'd be transporting my bike in the morning, and knew that the freight company wouldn't transport any flammable liquids, I needed to empty  the fuel bottle for my multi-fuel cooking stove, which had unleaded petrol in it.

I could've just ditched it in some wasteland somewhere but I wanted to do the right thing, so asked my host Zhou where I could put it. She wasn't exactly sure, and rang the apartment security guys to find out.

And then it all started.

After the call Zhou was totally spooked, said she'd been interrogated by them, and became absolutely paranoid that the security bureau, which I won't name here, could visit her the next day, which seemed to scare the living crap out of her.

You can't go to a servo in China and get fuel put into a bottle. You need to show your ID at the servo, and only have it put into vehicles. Pretty dumb huh, given that you can't uninvent siphoning.

So after all that, Zhou then told me, that, actually, she wasn't supposed to host foreigners in her apartment, and, as a result, very apologetically asked me to leave the next morning, assuring me that she'd give me a refund for the unused night. She didn't want me to be there if the bureau arrived.

I couldn't believe it. She actually appeared scared.

And then, to turn what I thought was a molehill into an even bigger mountain for her, she told her two young daughters to return the bracelet gifts I'd given them, I assume so that if the security people saw them they'd ask about them, and maybe find out that there was an evil foreigner there.

So there ya go.

I really didn't expect that. Fear and control is alive and well in some places.

I mean, it was no big deal for me, I just found another place to stay straight away. It was just sad, particularly for the kids.

Out Of The Box

Out of the shoebox that is. The next morning I left my tiny apartment bedroom early, to put Zhou at ease. She was grateful, and overwhelmingly apologetic.

I headed to China Railway Express, the freight division of China Railways, and organised for my bike and almost all of my gear to be transported up to Lanzhou.

They went through everything with a fine-toothed comb, but it was all good.

The issue with my bottle of unleaded petrol was resolved with a minimum of fuss. The receptionist just poured it into a bottle, and said she'd use it in her own motorbike. Not rocket science is it.

Bewdy, 'fraid of the freight. It'd been a long time since she was last on a train - a relatively short trip in south Vietnam over nine months ago.

Small fish market

With mudskippers

Old apartment blocks

Dwarfed by the new

Fan dance rehearsal

Steam buns, baozi, so delicious

Dog grooming place

So many chilled walkways around

The occasional Chinese model popped up on the screen. Better than none, I guess.

Fake flower power

Spiralling out of control

Cheap and delicious spicy noodle salad

After I finished the young woman brought me this jelly tea for free. Sweetie.

"Welcome. I hope I can be your niche preference. Hiding joy and being proud when showing off."

Me trying to make my own pagoda shape

A frequent roadside snack of mine. All of them actually.

Water chestnuts, called that because the plants grow in water.

Mushroom mania

Portal to the portal

Pounding rice dough to make delicious sweets. The Japanese make mochi like this too.

I found a real bakery.

With real fruit and nut bread. Absolutely divine. I ate the whole loaf in one sitting.

Rare art deco building

Hippy art, didn't expect that

Did expect this.

The evolution of architecture

Just cos you say it doesn't mean it's true.

The crystally orange Crystal Orange Hotel

There's an anime festival coming up. Anime is massive in China, with an estimated 400m consumers of assorted anime products here.

Straight down the line

This Train Is Bound For Gansu, This Train

Yeah eventually it was time to jump on the rails for an all-nighter.

In the line to enter the platform at Kunming Station, passport at the ready

I honestly don't know how I managed to single-handedly curve the world without blurring this pic

Heading north, through the verdant valleys of Yunnan

The seats might look comfy, but they don't recline, and are classed as Hard Seats for good reason.

A Chinese bullet train, which can reach 350km/hr. Every day, an estimated 2,800 pairs of these trains cross paths as they rocket between Chinese cities. Not an insignificant number, is it.

There were loads of towns on the way.

And renewables, of various persuasions

My neighbour friends were amazing. They're from Lijiang in Yunnan, a famous ancient town, and are travelling all the way to Urumqi in Xinjiang to work. They've got an extra 24 hours on the train after me, lucky devils.

As usual they graciously stuffed me with their food and beers, and were really sweet, and loads of fun - particularly this woman, in her late forties, who I temporarily fell in love with because, not only was she beautiful, but because she was completely playful, interesting, switched on, cheeky, and had the most infectious laugh.

It's so much fun to be around people who are genuinely incredulous of me and my life, simply because it's so different from their own. And, of course, the feeling is completely mutual.

Some of the snacks they gave me were amazing, including some sort of spiced dried fruit, sort of like a stringy date, that made my mouth all numb. It was pretty much impossible to chew, but somehow my friends all still managed to get through a whole bunch of them each, while I was stuck on just the one of my own. Great for the jaw muscles.

The train was full of different ethnicities, with quite different facial features from each other. There were hardly any Han Chinese, who are the dominant ethnic group in China, comprising around 90% of the population. I guess most of those guys were in the more expensive train classes, because, generally speaking, they tend to be better off financially. Us riff raff, though, were all packed into cattle class, and, later in the journey, many had to make do without seats.

Purple sunset

Lanzhou

This city, the capital of Gansu province, hosts around 4 million people, and has an ancient history stretching back more than 5,000 years. It became a major hub on the Silk Road around 550 AD, bringing enormous wealth to the region. These days it's a modern urban centre, and the wider region is a centre for heavy industry, and for the petrochemical industry. Not that you see any evidence of that around town though.

Action at Lanzhou Station

It was wet when I arrived. Ooops, I hadn't thought of that. I'd left my raingear and umbrella in my panniers, to be freighted with my bike, and had only travelled with an overnight bag. I got a bit wet, but it wasn't cold. Cool, compared to Kunming, but not cold.

Drumming band celebrating the opening of a new store

This tattoo parlour's gone out of business. Whilst tattoos are sort of acceptable on foreigners and young people in the more modern cities of eastern China, they're generally frowned upon in the country. Confucian teachings deem tattoos uncivilised, and they've long been associated with organised crime here. Same for Japan.

Interesting convention centre

I found a shoebox for a couple of nights (eventually), and headed out for food.

Lunch was seaweed and poached egg soup, and sweet millet porridge.

The back laneways

Yeah, why not, it's time for a luckin coffee.

This is the most sponge-like sponge cake I've ever had. I literally could've used it to paint a masterpiece.

Er no, no I couldn't've. It wouldn't be a masterpiece.

Lanzhou lies on the banks of the fast-flowing Yellow River, the second longest river flowing solely within China, after the Yangtze. It is the sixth longest river on the planet, flowing for an estimated 5,464km, from the eastern edge of the Tibetan plateau all the way to the east coast, with the mouth in Shandong province, in between Beijing and Shanghai. It provides around 140 million people with drinking water along its way.

People were out and about, given it was Saturday arvo.

The thing to do here is sit on the banks of the river and drink delicious tea. No beer in sight.

A pair of visiting bar-headed geese. These incredible birds migrate between the Tibetan Plateau and Central Asia, and are known as some of the highest flying birds on the planet. Move over Dolly Parton and Beyoncé, I'm talkin' super high altitude here. The birds have been known to pass over the top of some of the highest mountains in the Himalaya, ie. the world. Scientists don't really understand why they don't just take the lower passes. High fliers indeed

The kids were flying kites.

And I was eating fried rice cakes, potatoes, and yams. But they were pretty gross, because of a particular flavour enhancer they use sometimes, which has a distinctive chemical taste and numbs your tongue.

Good ole run-of-the-mill city view

Well used charging station

Custard bliss

They gave me a pair of plastic gloves, tucked in the bag with my custard tart. Couldn't believe it. Plastic usage is alive and well here, they haven't sorted that one out yet either.

I was staying pretty close to the extensive mainstream shopping area in town. Young Chinese were buying bubble teas and getting themselves stuffed toys. None of this beer drinking and getting trashed rubbish - well not that I could see anyway.

White Pagoda Park

The next day I decided to check out the massive White Pagoda park complex across the river.

Dumpling brekky

I joined the throngs, and headed across the Zhongshan Bridge

It was cloudy, but not rainy, thankfully.

Reader quiz:

The next two pics were taken from roughly the same spot.

Q: Which way is the river flowing?

A: Right to left. The wake heading upstream is gonna be a lot longer and rougher than when heading downstream.

Was that too obvious?

Up I went.

The area is beautiful, basically a forest and gardens dotted with gorgeous temples, gateways, shrines, and quaint natural spots to sit and hang out.

And of course, there were lots of views

The white pagoda

The spring blossoms are still beautiful up here in the north. Down in Yunnan many of the trees are already bursting with fresh green leaves, and have lost their flowers.

This ancient drum was a gift from an Indian prince in the 1700s. The original drum was made from elephant skin.

Chinese writing is so beautifully flowery and philosophical. And it's everywhere. Places are often described in terms of how you might feel being there, rather than just giving factual information about the place. Public signs marking important sites have the same vibe everywhere.

I felt the spring, they were right about that one.

The Baitreya pavilion, a massive building and grounds containing hundreds of historical steles (stone tablets describing historical events), towers in the distance.

When in Rome. After the long walk in the hills I sat and pondered life, right here by the river, with this delicious tea. It was the best ever place to hang out.

I pretty much got through the whole thermos of hot water. The tea remained flavoursome throughout. Note the patchy jeans, I finally replaced my other home-made patchy jeans that sadly went missing in India, after Milena had so lovingly and creatively stitched them. I replaced them with more patchy jeans from the night market here.

I basically had nothing else to wear, as all my luggage is stored.

Satays are big here, and this selection, with a healthy number of veg options, was good.

Fall in Spring

As it turns out, Bewdy didn't arrive on time, and, when she finally did, I made the snap decision to leave her, and almost all of my luggage, at the freight company for a few days, as it wasn't an option to store stuff at my hotel. There was absolutely no space inside there even for guests, let alone for an extra bike and panniers.

To A Freezing Wonderland

You see, the main reason I journeyed to Lanzhou was to visit one of the most important Tibetan monasteries in the world, Labrang, a few hours away by bus, and at a much higher altitude.

I read about this sacred place decades ago, and saw incredible pics of monks and devout pilgrims bowing and prostrating, and lighting yak butter lamps, in ancient temples set in a barren hilly moonscape. I've always wanted to see it with my very own third eye.

And I'm so excited that now, finally, I can do it.

There's something incredibly beautiful about fulfilling your own dreams, especially ones you've had for such a long time.

I feel so lucky, and I'm so grateful that I always seem to somehow have the motivation to make things like that happen, if I can.

I'm also ever conscious of the movement of time, and my current windows of opportunity.

Yeah, time's a-tickin.'

If not now, when?❤️

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