Contents:
The Train Trip
Kunming
Travel Partner
The Train Trip
I leave Shanghai the afternoon of August 8, a Friday, after returning Lili's ticket to get eighty percent of the 288 RMB ($35 US) ticket price back.
Kunming is a long ways from Shanghai, way down south. The train to Kunming takes 44 hours, from Friday afternoon to Sunday morning. It is hot, crowded, and filthy. There is a women with two toddlers, a boy and a girl, sitting with me. The children are dirty and smelly and have various scars and injuries. The elbow of the girl's left arm is nothing but scar tissue all the way around.
The woman with the children doesn't have a ticket; she claims she's lost it. The conductor says she has to get off the train, but she makes a fuss and says she has no money; they let her stay on. The little boy likes me a lot. I let him look at the Jiqimao (Robotic Cat—Doraemon—translated to Chinese from the original Japanese) comic book that I bought in Shanghai to help me practice reading Chinese, although the little boy can't read any Chinese characters himself. In the end, I don't see my comic book again, but that's okay because I've already finished reading it and don't want to carry it around with me anymore.
I find it impossible to sleep crammed on the seat, so I take my inflatable Therm-a-Rest sleeping mat and put it on the floor in the space at the end of the train car where passengers board. I am able to sleep very comfortably like this.
Kunming
I get to Kunming and find a room to stay in for 20 RMB ($2.40 US) per night. The quality is poor and there are a few mosquitoes, but I simply use my mosquito net to keep them away. The hotel employees treat me like a family member. When I ask where the post office is they give me detailed directions. When I ask where the closest Internet bar is they walk me there. When I ask where the grocery store is they take me there and help me shop for food.
I communicate with Lili via text messages a lot, and she hooks me up with a classmate who shows me around Kunming for a while. Everything in Kunming is very inexpensive. There are many interesting things to be bought, for example handicrafts and clothing from the many various Yunnan ethnic minority peoples, all kinds of strange fruit I have never seen before, and strange houseplants and pets. There are whole streets with nothing but vendors selling pets, and whole streets with nothing but plants. And of course the food is excellent—supper spicy hot, just the way I like it.
Taking the bus in Kunming is a bit different than in Beijing. Here there is no person on board selling tickets; you just put your money in the box like in Seattle, and can't get change if you don't happen to have the right amount. Every trip is the same price: 1 RMB (twelve cents US). Everywhere I go in southern China I can't help noticing how much more efficiently they do things than in northern provinces.
Travel Partner
I am really set on finding a friend to travel with me in Yunnan, so I spend much of the next day searching for one, but without much luck. In the evening I go to a street vendor cooking various kabobs over a barrel of coal and tell him to make mine as hot and spicy as possible. I eat some lamb ones, beef ones, and tofu ones. They are loaded up with hot red pepper as well as Chinese huajiao pepper. I like the tofu the best; the mild flavor doesn't get in the way of the flavor of the tasty spices. There are two young girls, sisters, serving the food. I talk to one of them for a while. She is 18 years old and very cute. She shows me her sketchpad full of pencil drawings.
Internet bars are common in Chinese cities. There is a big one right next to the place I'm staying. It costs 2 RMB (24 US cents) per hour. The computers are not too primitive, although they still run Windows 98, not 2000 or Microsoft's newest concoction XP. The download speed is probably about what you'd get with a cable connection in the United States.
I spend several hours a day chatting online, trying to find friends to travel with in Yunnan. In the end I give up and get a train ticket to Dali, 300 kilometers (190 miles) west of Kunming. Before I leave, Lili sends me a text message with a stern warning about traveling by myself in western Yunnan. She says I'd better watch what I eat, because criminals might drug me and take my stuff. I'm not worried, but I resolve to be careful anyway.
