It has been only 8 days since I last posted here, but it feels like it’s been a month. My life in China started in Beijing, I then took a train to Shanghai, then another train to Xi’an and finally flew to Kunming where I will be living for the next 6 months.
The Beijing-Shanghai-Xi’an trip was a suicidal rush of tourist sites, restaurants and not enough sleep. That’s now over (thank God). We saw so many sites and ate so many kinds of food, looking back on it everything seems like a blur. I can’t seperate the days in my mind. Most of the sites I had seen before, and even Kunming has a familiar feel to me (I visted in 2004), but for my fellow classmates everything was new. The smells, beggars, Chinese girls, buses, beer, chicken heads and everything else is new to them and it has been interesting watching them experience it for the first time. Some are doing a better job than others, and I know I shouldn’t judge but frankly some people’s attitude is starting to piss me off. You make your time in China what it is and if you want to focus on the negatives and feel lik shit that’s your choice. To be clear I couldn’t be happier here.
Though the grand tour of China was great and full of interesting incidents I’d rather people just look at my photos (Flickr Photos). What I really want to talk about is Kunming. I thought that I had it made in Burlington Vermont and Beijing, but Kunming really trumps them all. I’ve read great things about Hangzhou, Shanghai, and Dalian but for me Kunming has quickly risen to the top of my favorite cities. The sky is clear, a rare occurance in Beijing, the people happy, the weather always at the right temperature and my school is wonderful.
Our first day here we spent 3 hours at Kunming’s main branch of Bank of China, a place I loath. But with that over we ate a big banquet met our teachers and hit the Camel Bar. We’ve also been paired with language partners who are graduate students at Yunnan Normal University (云南师法大学）. My language partner is Qiu Yonglei, a 32 year old Chinese masters major with a wife and four year old daughter in Jiangxi province, he’s great. Today we hit the sites here in Kunming: Green lake, Flower and Bird Market, and Wal-Mart (check out the photos). The photos are loading slowly here at Salvador’s (an American owned bohemian cafe with wireless internet and homemade ice cream), so it may be awhile till the photos come online. Anyway, all the Qingdao beers and ample Chinese food are starting to make me tired so I think I may walk back to the international student dorm. But I will update this blog more regualrly and on monday I start classes so I will surely write about that. Night.