Return to Kunming, the Spring City

We got off the train and immediately I was starting to feel much better. I didn’t know exactly where we were in Kunming, but I had recognized the red dirt from looking out the window of the train as we came in. I didn’t know where in Kunming I was at that moment, but I’d find out soon.

We soon found a taxi, after several tried to cheat us (of course), and we made our way to the hostel we would be staying at. When we were talking about our plans while still in Xiangyang, I had recognized the name of this particular hostel, it being a hot-spot for foreigners living in Kunming. But I didn’t know what it looked like so I didn’t know whether I had been there before…there were a bunch of places that I’ve been to in Kunming whose names I didn’t know or remember.

When the taxi let us off, I realized found that we were at the city center, a place called Jin Ma Bi (金马碧) or Jin Bi Lu (金碧路) (they mean, “Golden Horse and Rooster” and “Golden Rooster Road”, respectively). This was an area divided into maybe three or four huge plazas, with several traditional style gates set in the middle of them. You’ll find a lot of people here looking to make some sort of money: people selling pineapples, strawberries, lychees, and more, people carrying tool kits for cleaning shoes, beggars or invalids begging for money, children selling items or singing karaoke, young guys doing dance performances or singing and playing guitar with an amplifier for the sound, people wearing random Disney costumes, people doing tricks, and more official performances on small stage platforms.

Here there are also many malls, a movie theater, and many restaurants of foreign and Chinese food alike. There are also Western chain restaurants like McDonald’s, KFC, and Starbucks. I had to walk through one of the city center’s plazas all the time when I went to or from martial arts every day. It was an amazing feeling to be back.

But not just this, it was as if the weather had changed JUST FOR US…we had heard (and it was confirmed later by a Kunming friend) that the whole winter had actually been very cold and that it had even snowed…which is very uncharacteristic in Kunming…it had snowed a foot. But this week the weather had suddenly gotten much warmer. And it stayed that way the whole week until we had to leave. The weather must’ve been 60 degrees in the sun, and it got cooler at night. Immediately, I felt so much freer, like a huge and heavy weight had been lifted off of me…and my depression was gone. Me and Melissa decided that as soon as we got to our hostel and found our room, we would change into shorts…even though it wasn’t particularly hot…it's just that it was just so much better than Xiangyang and we needed just a little sliver of time to just embrace the newfound freedom we were feeling.

Our hostel was right off the side of the road from where our taxi dropped us off. The place was called The Hump Hostel, named after an airbase in China for airmen of the 2^nd World War. I didn’t realize until I went in and took it all in for a moment where exactly I was. I had been there once before, only it was at night. The place was a bar/hostel, so the front part of it was a bar/restaurant/cafe, and to the back was the hostel part.

Apart from the large traditional Chinese style gates that were located at Jin Bi Lu, this was the first place I had really recognized here in Kunming. It was a great feeling, even though I had only been there once, but a bunch of memories of Kunming friends and life here came flooding back. And it was really a beautiful place, more beautiful than I even remember (having only seen it at night). It was very open concept, with plastic ribbons hanging down instead of doors, and the environment was designed like a Chinese kind of tropical looking paradise. And inside the hostel part, the place was constantly being cleaned so it never smelled bad (I’m hyper aware of really clean places and good smells now since I’ve been in Xiangyang), and in the mornings walking down the hall the area was filled with a beautiful, fragrant, exotic flowery perfumy smell. It was an amazing place.

This is the sign outside on the ground level before you walk up the stairs to where the hostel is located on the third floor.

This is where residents or customers can sit and eat or use the internet...Wi-Fi isn't offered in the rooms. I'm starting to think that was on purpose, to encourage people to come out of their rooms and hang out in the common area...that way, they are more encouraged to socialize and mingle/network with other customers and residents. And hey, it worked. We all managed to mingle with a bunch of really interesting people on different journeys here in Kunming: some for travel just passing through, some for study.

Half of the cafe/restaurant/bar was inside, the other half was outside. I mean it when I say this place was quite open concept. The outside part had a roof, but no walls or doors, and there was a balcony that you could sit at and look over.

This is the bar counter, where you can order things or just chill. Pretty self-explanatory.

Kunming was better than I remembered it, and I had remembered it quite fondly. I'd had really really great times here. And the reason why it seemed better than before to me was for several reasons: 1. Because I had just got off of a train from sad, cold, dirty, semi-rural Xiangyang, and at this point anything was better than where I had just come from. 2. Because Kunming had in fact (at least at the city center) become better…the place had improved greatly; buildings that were only under construction while I was there, covered in green nets and scaffolding were now complete and running, FAR more Westerners had come to visit or live in Kunming and WAY more black WOMEN…I could probably count on one hand the number of black women in Kunming when I was there and now I was seeing them WAY more. Kunming was turning into a little Shanghai, and it was just going to keep getting better.

Last time I was here, I was just witnessing the last glimpses of what old Kunming used to be: a city very much like Xiangyang. The airport I arrived in was small and it wasn’t international (I believe), and the airport I left in was IMMENSELY HUGE and now international. When I left that time, I was seeing the first glimpses of what Kunming was going to turn into: a fully modernized city like Shanghai. It was really wonderful seeing the changes and I’m really proud to have been one of the early foreigners to have stayed there. People don’t even stare at me anymore…I could count on one hand the amount of stares I got while we were there this time, and only one person called us “Lao Wai” (“foreigners”) the entire time we were there. It’s changed and I am really glad I got to say I was there when living there as a foreigner wasn’t so easy.

Anyway, digressing. So we got our room, a four bedroom kind of hostel suite thing…the upper room had two beds and the lower room also had two beds. And the bathroom was REALLY open concept…it didn’t even have a door, it didn’t even have a roof. There were a few curtains there for when you wanted to take a shower or go to the bathroom, but that was it. We all made the unspoken decision to use the public bathroom down the hall if we wanted a little more privacy than was offered. :P But other than that the room was beautiful, the walls were painted a rich tropical blue, there were Chinese roof tiles at parts of the room and except for the bathroom, the floors weren’t tile but a wooden looking linoleum…so the room was warmer and more comfortable than the cold hard floors of my Xiangyang apartment. There aren’t a lot of heaters in Kunming (if any) because it’s generally quite a warm place. But in the hostel the bed mattresses had cords running through them so that they could heat up at night if ever you got cold. That was really useful. And the room also smelled amazing, filled with that sweet exotic flowery fragrance that the halls were filled with.

So we tossed our stuff down, Melissa and I changed into shorts, and off we went to explore the city for just a little bit, since it was evening and would be dark before long. We went off to a place behind the city center that I had never been before, I believe it is called the Bird and Flower markets. It’s a place I must have passed a million times while I was here in Kunming, but it was on a road behind some buildings so I never saw it. It was a place like many other places you see in China that sells a lot of souvenirs and tourist merchandise. They sold weapons, ones with traditional designs and toy weapons, cigarette lighters, animals, cheap and expensive jewelry, sculptures and paintings, and much more. It was an interesting place to walk around, and while we were there some of the Chinese people there were talking about us nearby, wondering if we must be cold wearing shorts. It was getting a little chilly by night, but it had been fine in the day…what we were thinking though was that we just came from a frozen city and we just need to break out in shorts for a moment to kind of shake ourselves free of that. We switched to pants by the end of the day.

After that, we went to get dinner…and we had all made the unanimous decision that we were all going to eat anything and everything but Chinese food this entire time, having Chinese food only when we needed a break from indulging in yummy and rich foods. Nothing against Chinese food, we just needed a break from it and we wanted to try all the delicious foreign restaurants that Malcolm and I had been raving about the entire time since before we came to Kunming.

Before we left to go out and explore, we took a moment to sit at the balcony of the hostel and look at the view.

You can see the entire section of this side of the city center, and you can watch the action that goes on there. It's really nice.

This is taken from sitting at the balcony. That's the Hump Hostel below, and there's a tall building (I think it's an apartment) hovering above. You can see the people hanging out at the balcony here, it's a really chill kind of bohemian-feeling place. And all of the foreigners that frequent this hostel are generally pretty much free-spirits that are looking for the adventure in life...very much like myself. This leads to some very interesting conversations about past experiences and future goals for new adventures. I don't think I've realized how much I fit into this kind of free-spirited wanderer persona more than now. When I walked into the hostel and saw all these backpackers and bohemian foreigners, I realized that I'm kind of even dressed like them, with my combat boots and jeans, looking like I'm ready for a long-distance hike. It was an interesting realization, but not unwelcome.

I haven't smiled that genuinely in months. Even though my hair is still just no. #findinghappinessinthesimplicityoflife

So tonight we decided to check out a Thai restaurant very nearby our hostel…we could see its big restaurant sign from the balcony of the hostel’s cafe/bar. It was actually the same Thai restaurant I had gone to on one of the last days of class at Yunnan Normal University...my whole class and our main teacher had hopped a public bus together and had a great family-style dinner there. We went over there and had delicious Thai food and wondered if the food in Thailand was any different than what this Thai restaurant serves. Chinese restaurants in America and Chinese food in China is not necessarily the same, so maybe this Thai restaurant had differences too. But anyway, we had a great meal and then went home…deciding that the next day would be nothing but seeing old familiar places and tasting the delights of the city.

This was a chicken and vegetables in a kind of coconut sauce...really delicious! And healthy too! That's my favorite kind of meal.

Breaded and fried pork with sauce on the side...om nom nom.

This is also minced pork, and that's a fried egg on top of sticky rice.