Day Ten

Today was primarily a travel day as we ventured out of the mountains - from Li Jiang to the tropical Guilin. However, we did manage to have quite a few interesting encounters along the way.

For starters, seeing as how we thought the day would hold little to no adventure, we decided to take one last trip to Li Jiang's Old Town in the morning. Not everyone was up for the excursion, so it ended up just being me, my mom, and Dotty. As soon we we arrived we stumbled upon a town square that featured a lively group of locals doing Ti Che. At one end of the square was a group of older folks who were practicing a slower and more fluid dance. At the other end we saw a much younger group, led by a bandanna-clad guru who was taking the morning practice to new heights.

After browsing through the various bazaars and market stalls, we each purchased a few local handicrafts. I got myself some fine yak-leather belts (apparently it's fire resistant?) for only a few yuan (Chinese currency).

Our flight to Guilin wasn't direct, however, and we had to stop in Kunming, the capital of the Yunnan province. We had a pretty long layover and our guide Fred actually managed to snag us a tour bus earlier in the day so that we could take a short tour of the city. Kunming is a small city by Chinese standards, and I'm sure you've never heard of it. Oh, did I mention that it has a population of 6 million people. That's right - three times larger than the population of Nashville, nearly six times larger than the population of Richmond, and even bigger than the city of Atlanta. Kunming is only one of the numerous massive Chinese cities that most of the world is nearly oblivious too.

After driving around Kunming and seeing many of the important historical sites, we stopped at Dr. Tea - a famous Chinese tea house (Yunnan province is also apparently famous for its tea). We watched a fascinating demonstration about how to prepare and drink various types of tea. Yes, there are different ways to drink tea. In fact, we learned three separate ways to drink tea in only a short amount of time. Of course the way you drink the tea depends on the tea itself, you should "chew" Puerh tea, "kiss" leeche nut tea, and "slurp" ginseng tea. I also learned that, in the Yunnan province, a tea's age can drastically increase it's price. After 10 years of age, a tea's price goes up 9% a year! While we were at Dr. Tea, we heard a story of someone who bought a barrel of tea aged 99 years for over a million yuan in an auction. In case you were confused we are talking about dried tea leaves and not the drink itself.
The remainder of the day wasn't much to write home about, but I do have one anecdotal story about the Kunming airport. I have to warn you - this story is not for the weak of heart. Before launching into the story itself, it's important to tell you that in China kid's don't wear diapers (where is this going?!). Instead they merely have a slit cut in the back of their pants, and they simply plop down and let loose if they need to use the bathroom. Anyway, when I was walking into the men's bathroom at the Kunming airport, there was a father with his young daughter. You might have thought that he would take her into a stall and help her out, but instead he was holding his daughter over the drain on the bathroom floor, right in front of the sink, while she happily made use of the bathroom. Nothing reminds you that you're in a foreign country more than strange cultural differences like that!