Islamic snowball fighting

Kunming is China's city of eternal spring, but we arrived and snow began blanketing the city for the first time in two years.

We had been on the train for twenty three hours, a journey enlivened by meeting an Australian family who were living in Kunming while the father taught English. His wife was Malaysian and their three daughters were adorably lovely. We spent the journey giving them piggy backs, playing I spy and I gave two of them their first chess lessons.

Myself and Tim had met three other travellers on the train - two Canadians: Steve and George and an American: Brian, so the five of us got a room in the Cameilla hostel together.

There is a big sameness to cities in China - arriving in one I wonder if I have really left the last one. Kunming was apparently much more attractive a few years ago, but the progress enveloping China had made large sections of it zombie neon. Kunming's life comes at you in unexpected pockets, in groups of old men playing board games and tiny crowds by the sizzlingly scewers of a kebab stall. One old heart of the city that still beat was the Islamic street market - from grills, broth bowls and great wooden baskets of dumplings white steam billowed into the falling snow. We ate in a Kasgari street stall/restaurant - a young man in a white muslim cap wove fresh noodles from thick lumps of dough. It was awe inspiring: he held a thick tube of dough as long as a chocolate bar and stretched it out to maybe half a metre. He kept doubling the proto noodle back on itself - two strips, stretch, four, stretch, eight... Within seconds he was tossing thin noodles into the waiting bowl of beef soup. The result was uncomparably delicious - noodles as fresh as it was possible to eat, chunky beef slivers, heavy lumps of fat, piercing spices, cilantro and onions all floating among glistening oil. It felt like eating at life itself, it felt like I was sharing in an older, wilder time where animal fat was eaten as an essential, not an enemy. We ordered three bowls of noodle soup, two plates of dumplings and a helping of flat bread - at a total cost of sixteen yuan (one pound fifteen pence).

We were surrounded by benevolent curious faces and the bustle outside. Tim had by now developed something of a love (or perhaps a dependency) of the cheap Chinese hard drink "baijiu" - it tastes like paint stripper but doesn't go down as smooth. He noticed the soldier opposite us had a bottle sitting by him - Tim produced his own four yuan bottle and offered it out, but the young man grimaced and shook his head. Clearly we were drinking crap that not even the Chinese army would touch.

We emerged and the stalls on opposing sides of the road had drawn up battle lines and were pelting each other with snow balls. The throws were serious but the mood was joyful and anarchic. We had to walk through the battlefield to get back to the main road and, as more and more peole spotted us, a gleeful roar went up. From each side of the street tough ice balls were hurled in volleys - I angled my umbrella Avengers-style to deflect any damage. As we exited the street, I turned back to see a small boy, weighed down by the thick puffy jacket every child in China seems required to wear, running as fleetly as his little legs could take him. He stopped a few feet from me and threw a snail-sized nub of snow at my widely grinning face like a javelin; it landed miles from my feet and he pelted back to safety, his heroics done.

Muslims came to Kunming with the conquering Mongol horde - and other minority groups of modern China abound in this most south westerly province. The faces in Kunming range from the pale Han Chinese majority to ruddier central Asians and Tibetans - reddish gold faces, sometimes with hot scarlet cheeks were hints of the peoples further west. Were these the descendants of nations that had met Genghis Khan, Marco Polo and Tamerlane? It filled me with anticipation for further exploration of Western China.

Swapping stories

Cameilla hostel deserves special mention as perhaps the worst place I have yet stayed in. I've had rooms with damp stinks, infuriating noises, curious stains, untiring mosquitos, but Camellia's idiotic beaucracy - e.g. we had to ask permission each time we wanted to enter our room - and the dilapidated building we were put in just irriated me like nowhere else had.
But it was fun swapping stories and travel advice. The five of us stayed up late the first night and the globe revolved around the room as we talked about where we had been and where we were going. Steve spoke about how tourist trail focused and money grasping Vietnam had been, Brian debating going to Cambodia or Myanmar, Tim talked about vomiting on a mountainside in the Chinese province of Sichuan. I had a proud moment as their eyes widened when I explained where I had been so far, how I had no plan to return home and might spend the next year exploring Asia.
My strongest memory of that night was the sense of freedom, as the discussion moved across the compass points: Vietnam and the Philipines to the east, Laos, Thailand and Cambodia to the south, Myanmar and India to the south west, Tibet to the west and Sichuan province to the north. It was that night that I realised I couldn't leave China yet - I had to see more of the country before heading to SE Asia.

My sensuous feet

Brian had been telling Tim and I about the joys of Chinese massages, and one night, disappointed with what we could find of Kunming nightlife, we three pulled open sliding doors and sat in a foot massage "parlour"'s reclining seats. Two huge reflexology diagrams of feet livened up a dull white room - there was little seedy about this place other than some odd pictures of David Beckham stuck on the walls. There were five seats, two typically shabby suited Chinese men were already there, feet wrapped in warm blankets. A tall smartly dressed man agreed a price with us and we sat down as white coated young women brought in buckets of hot water for Tim and Brian. By the time I realised there were five customers and only four women, the tall man was rolling his sleeves up and bringing a bucket to me.

Given that my previous intimate contact with men has I think consisted of hugs, the occasional kiss on the forehead and being the number eight in school rugby scrums, this was going to be something of a new experience. After my feet had softly scalded in the dark herby water, he started working my calf muscles just below the knee, first the left leg, then the right. I realised two things immediately: this was going to be a world away from the vague rubbing that is generally the English idea of massages, and that it was going to be intensely pleasurable. My feet were then laid on a padded stool so that my legs were lying comfortably straight and my right foot was wrapped in blankets to keep it warm. I did feel decidedly awkward as he smoothed oil onto my left foot and began the massage in earnet, and initially I figured I'd relax more if I shut my eyes. But the ridiculousness of that hit me, and deciding to put all this in proportion, I had fun watching him work. His left hand helded the foot steady, the right massaged. Parts were wincingly painful, such as when he was digging his thumb into the central underbelly of my foot and heel, other times he was pummelling my foot with the flat of both his palms at once. In the end, I think I got the best deal of the three of us - he probably had a lot more technique than the doll-faced teenage wench my imagination had been anticipating. The massage had lasted an hour and had cost 30 yuan. The result felt wonderful. I stood up and although my my lower legs quivered like creme caramel, I felt I was standing taller, I felt as though my feet were flatter and more in contact with the earth. Putting my sweaty socks back on after feeling so clean was a horror.

To go to Kashgar?

China has the same kind of quality that Mexico had: I imagined I would shoot through the country on the way to my real destinations and slowly found I couldn't leave. China also is like Mexico, but more so, in that in contains worlds. Great cities like Shanghai and Hong Kong, mountains, gorges, deserts, grasslands, the world's second lowest point (?), Han Chinese imperial culture, Tibetans, Mongols, Muslims and seemingly dozens of peoples whose name ends in "Gar". Realising I wanted to explore the natural wildness of Sichuan province, it occurred to me - why not go the full way? Why not go to the crossroads of Central Asia, the city of Kashgar, on China's far western frontier?

Cons - there are a few. It is a horrendously long journey - through the provinces of Sichuan, Gansu, Quinghai and Xinjing. Those endless bus and train journeys would likely be very draining. It would cross snowy mountains and yellow deserts - so could be far more hardcore a kind of travelling than I've done thus far. Aside from whether that would be "fun", it could well mean becoming the kind of person that knows what Goretex and season two sleeping bags are. And Kashgar is hardly undiscovered, there is I read an airport and a few cafes selling Western food.

But there are lots of pluses. It would be a fantastic journey. I would pass through Tibetan valleys and see all kind of Chinese minority groups. I would see my first desert, perhaps to ride a camel among oasises? I could learn basic Mandarin while I taught in Chengdu, then as the weather improved, set off in March/April. I would pass incredible sights and I'm sure see fewer fellow tourists than if I headed to Laos/Vietnam. It would surely be more of an experience, more of a challenge, more interesting to write about. It would also be cooler - to have gone from China's SW corner to its NW. And it might complete a teenage love of mine: reading about the Mongols and Genghis Khan. Now, Kashgar is not in Mongolia. But might its minarets and immense bazaars selling knives and woven fineries not be a better memorial to the times of the Khans than visiting the endless steppe?

Still deciding. Click here to see where Kashgar is on the map.

Daniel, 13 February 2004, the town of Dali