Alright, alright everyone... here's the next installment :) This wasn't an easy article to write, and still very much wondering if I am making the right decision. But, perhaps time will make things clearer.

China, everything is forgiven

I am, unexpectedly, still in China - Kunming is proving very hard to leave.

I decided that I wanted to get the last of the recommended vaccinations, for Japanese Encephilitus, and so I had a week's wait for the second injection.
And what a wait! Oh lovely Kunming, the girl in the teen movie who only needs take off her glasses to be beautiful. How a second visit changed everything! The weather is that perfect warm springshining we had read about but had never, on our first visit two months ago, been caressed by. The inhabitants revel in their city's beautiful clime. I see now that I had been staying in the dead, new-China towerblock shopping mall bit of Kunming - acting on a suspicion, I am now staying in the north west, by Green Lake Park and the University area. Staying in this area is perfection. I feel like a fat kid locked inside a cake shop, I feel almost wicked for enjoying this so much. North west Kunming is many coloured little shops, impromptu street markets, open air restaurants, small poorer side of town neighbourhoods, with friendlier people that seem pleased to see me, students pouring out of dispersed lecture halls, comfortable It Girls and Boys walk hand in hand around Green Lake's evening. I find endless ways to get lost. The people walk their Ramblas, shopping for silly little bags, fighting each other in internet bars, buying cds and dvds. People seem happy, there is a buzzing sense that life might be about fun.

Plus, after having said how difficult it is to find traditional Chinese culture in China: morning tai chi classes of old women weave their moves with glittering swords; a dance group practice slow steps on the walkway around the lake, red hand clappers ringing out each stance; an instructor and student practice smooth staff fighting techniques, again around the lake; as the evening world bustles past, two women, perhaps eldery mother and middle aged daughter, adding lit incense sticks to a bright burning ball of paper, placed in the nook of a long drab street wall; in the dawning night darkness, I watch for a few minutes a small Kunming opera group sing and play their instruments to no audience but me, seemingly keeping their music alive for the love of it; a group of retired musicians sing Kunming opera by a river: two blind masseurs walking home after a midnight of tending customers' muscles, the man flicking a white cane back and forth, the woman holding his arm as her guide.

I go to a public hospital, as those Tibetan pills turn out to be largely a temporary cure - a few spicy Sichuan dishes back in Chengdu and my pooing is no longer normal. It is I think the best experience I've had of a hospital anywhere in the world. I walk in, a young nurse asks me what I am looking for. She walks me to another building, up a lift to the fourth floor, explains to the reception desk my situation. She departs, within the merest minutes, an English speaking doctor appears, examines me for a while then decides I probably have some kind of infection in my intestine, and walks me to the hospital pharmacy to buy a course of antibiotics - come back if symptoms persist. The cost for all this near instantenous medicine: sixty yuan for the appointment, ten to register with the Chinese medical system, another forty for the pills, so under seven pounds in total, reclaimable with travel insurance. At the cashier's desk the doctor smiles at me, "Not like the hospitals in your country, eh"? He is referring to the cost, and in a burst of patriotism I correct him that we in England have a National Health Service - perhaps you are thinking of America, sir? But, undeniably, he was right, it was nothing like using the NHS.

I get talking to a lawyer/travel agent while on a bus. He says, "In America, if you want to be a judge, you must quit belonging to any political party - in China, it is the opposite"! He tells me it is his dream to visit London. I assume this is just a general dream of travel that I hear from a lot of people, but he starts reeling off from memory catchphrases from some tourism program, "Take in a West End comedy! Spend your money shopping in Knightsbridge! - tell me, what is a West End comedy"? He angles the conversation towards me booking some travel stuff through him. I ask him what are some of the sights on the way south to the Laos border. "Well, it is the Golden Triangle - lots of heroin"! Hmmmm.

I meet up with an Australian family that I had first met on the train on my way to Kunming the first time - they are in China for a year as their father is teaching in a school near the city. The father is from Tasmania, the mother Malaysian, their three daughters (9,5,5) are all very beautiful. We meet up in the Camel Cafe, I tell them about where I have been since we met, the parents invite me over for dinner one day, the girls quickly turn this into sleeping over. I stayed overnight at their house some days later, we watched Spy Kids 2 on DVD, I had a really good sleep, finally away from the disturbances of my dormitory room for a night. For breakfast I got fed peanut butter on toast and gave the girls rides on my shoulders.

There are more Westerners wandering Kunming than I remember from last time, perhaps migrating in with the warmer weather. I feel something of an outsider from them, largely I think they are language students and teachers. I get the impression they've invested a lot of effort settling here in Kunming, and as our eyes meet passing on the street, pretty much see me as an univited tourist.

It all so nearly wasn't. I arrived in Kunming more than happy to leave China, the three days needed for my Laos visa a irksome imposition. I had reached the stage where I would begin lecturing (with wild gesticulations) Chinese who overcharged me... I debating staying to get that vaccination, or just heading into Laos and getting it in Chiang Mai (risk to travellers is said to be low and I was travelling in the dry, non mosquitoy season). But I decided I'd be happier with it pre-Laos, agreed to stay, and slowly, Kunming kneaded the tension out of my shoulders. The things that were so frustrating me about China seem much rarer here, vastly increased are friendly smiles and random English speakers who come up and help me out in restaurants and photo developers. It is a week of good Yunnan coffee, strolling in pleasant streets with a smile, de-stressing, eating under parasols in restaurants that in the warmth have melted and oozed their tables into the street. La Dolce Vita.

Six days later

Six days in, my time in Italy is starting to get a bit tougher. While Kunming is the city of eternal spring, the season they are referring to turns out to be an English, rather than an Italian one - bring an umbrella and a coat for the evenings. And I am, it must be said, starting to wish for some human company. For six days, I've pretty much kept to my own thoughts - I've been socialable and happy whenever I met someone, but few people I've felt a connection with, so haven't pursued anything. I don't get a great feeling from many people here, especially all the not welcoming people who pass each day in the foreigner central "French Cafe". Feeling like there is little in Kunming that I want to stay for, ready to head south to jungles and elephants.

--

“Wouldn't a love story make your diary more interesting”?

Well, that was my first week in Kunming, what happened in the second? I feel a bit like the boy who cried wolf, as I compose this account. But as I think will become obvious, what follows is pretty personal – I actually wasn’t going to tell you anything about it, but, well you’ll see…

By the sixth day in Kunming, while happy, shunning and being shunned by fellow travellers and foreign English teachers had left me lonely. In the Iamliving bar, drank coffee as English lessons proceeded all around me, went to use a cornershop’s phone, called three Chinese people whose numbers I had acquired in strange circumstances, each call resulting in nothing, wondered what to do. I decided to return to the Iamliving bar and use their toilet before I attempted anything else. Walking in, a student reading out a hesitant speech at the top of the steps above me, I was frustrated once more to find the toilet being cleaned. As I stood by the bar waiting, I became conscious of someone next to me. I was standing beside the most lovely girl, and, turning to face her, instantly felt an incredible "wow" attraction. I smiled at her, she smiled back. It perhaps sounds cliched, but I no longer heard the student reading out her presentation above us, the only light in the room seemed to be coming from the Chinese girl next to me’s full lips, large alive eyes and a tight beige shirt pulled around her appealing figure. I have felt this way, this constricting, rest of the room dimming emotion only once or twice before. In each case, the effect on me has been similar. Something inside me clicked and I just decided to myself, I’m going to talk to this girl. Beyond that, I thought nothing. Whether she didn’t like me, didn’t respond, had a boyfriend, what age she was (she seemed too calm and poised to be another student) – those were suddenly inconsequential. This put all those “maybe” pulling attempts into the shadow – the grasping hands of “Will I look stupid?”, “What line should I use?” were leaves cast aside by a terrible storm. We began talking, she spoke with a soft voice out of a Jane Austin adaptation, we leaned over the bar to look at my map of China and where I had been. Her name was Louise. Above us, the halting speech finished – everyone clapped. I turned and clapped too, the tense silence of class over, and Louise called out to an English woman who had been leading the class, “Hilary, he’s from England too”! Hilary, English teacher and, it turned out, informal leader of Kunming’s English speakers, was extremely welcoming and she and Louise invited me to the post “English Corner” lunch. Everyone cycled there but Louise and I. She, I discovered, was 23 and worked as a tour guide for the Kunming area, principally for Chinese tour groups, and taught some of the foreign language teachers Chinese. She said she liked her job, it allowed her to work the hours she wanted and take holidays whenever she felt like. I think now a little uncomfortable with the intensity of my staring, she wrapped a light cardigan around her shoulders.
Lunch was lovely. Lunch over, I asked her if she was free later that day, she said she was free now and took me to a noisy street market. We walked past the victory palace celebrating Yunnan's rather late acceptance of the Communist party, she bought an oxygen pump for her tropical fish tank. I wasn’t sure what was going on here, whether she wanted to spend time with me or whether I was employing her as a tour guide. I considered asking what the deal was, but decided either way I was happy to be in a pretty girl’s company, so just waited to see what would happen.
After the afternoon, we ended up in a cafe facing a river. Louise was applying for a masters’ degree in International Tourism at Queensland University, and asked my advice on how to write a personal statement. I tore off at high volume, detailing my opinions for her application form. By the time I paused for breath the night was over – she asked me, “So, would you like my phone number”?

We met the next day at her family's flat. Her parents were out, brown wood floors, white walls, her endless tropical fish in a bathtub sized oblong tank circulating calm. She was wearing a very Top Shop precrumpled purple blouse, that did up in a knot at the side of her waist. Although the chest constricting thing of yesterday had faded and I was able to see her as a human being, she still looked really quite lovely.

To a wide park in the west of the city, air heavy with planned rain, perhaps why almost no one else accompanied us along the paths, wet grass and a vast, rather polluted lake by our side.

On the bus over, I had explained the saying, “It was meant to be” – meaning how we had caught the bus just in time. She mused with an odd expression, “So maybe us meeting was meant to be…”? It turned out, she had only been standing by the bar because she had gone down to use the toilet, and then the way back up was blocked by that student reading her prepared speech to the class. Her expression became even harder to decipher, “Why did you start talking to me”? I believe I replied with words like, “you were very pretty and I wanted to get to know you”, deciding there was little point in ducking and diving at this point. She didn’t react – which I decided to interpret as a good sign, at least better than screaming at the bus driver to let her off.

We sat on a bench facing the water, the skies released a rapidly falling lake above our heads, and we ran to a nearby posh restaurant. We somehow had become entangled with an extremely weird couple – a man wearing white trousers with big brightly coloured flowers, and a black top that had various zips running along it (for a Chinese man, this really was out there) – the woman was some kind of journalist who kept assuring us she would buy us lunch and put it on expenses. We were paralyzed, unable to leave because of the rain, unable to order anything because the waitress explained we had to spend at least two hundred yuan if we wanted to sit upstairs, unable to go downstairs because the odd couple were insisting we eat with them. While we sat on a sofa feeling awkward and the uniformed waitress stood waiting, they lounged around the room, taking photos of each other for at least ten minutes. When the rain stopped we escaped. We walked on, we found a dry bench strangely oblivious to the passed rain. Louise sewed up the right strap on my day backpack - a strap that had hung uselessly since Oregon. I told her I liked her and wanted to kiss her, she was clearly embarrassed and looked away. I hastily returned to what I could barely remember of the preceding conversation. But she was not, I felt, upset with me, and we walked back with my arm around her; at the times where we paused she leaned her head back to rest on my shoulder, which felt wonderful. On the bus home, she told me that the man in the flowery trousers had thought she should wear makeup, to make her look beautiful. I told her truthfully that I thought she did look beautiful. She said to me, "But I don't want to be beautiful, I just want to be an ordinary woman... and live a simple life".

We met the next evening. A meal in a street restaurant, we went for massages and then walked to a bench in the moon lit darkness of Green Lake Park. Alone with all the other nocturnal couples, we sat down and talked - I told her funny stories about my brother. Suddenly her face was facing close to mine. I leaned forward - and her mobile phone buzzed with a text message. The message responded to, I went to kiss her again and she retracted, leaving me feeling somewhat embarrassed. But suddenly there was an immense tension/electricity between us, she was trembling, and I kissed her, we kissed holding each other for a long time, until a park security guard told us it was closing time and we had to go.
I walked her to a taxi, she told me, "Call me in the morning, tomorrow you will meet my mother".

Right now I'm staying in Louise's house, sleeping in the spare room - her father is away and her mother is a willing participant in the conspiracy. In fact her mother seems extremely supportive, keeps feeding me vast meals, tells Louise I am a good natured even tempered man and tells me to stay in Kunming - although she is convinced my name's Peter. Louise and I have spent the last days walking in parks and Kunming's streets. One morning, in her apartment, she embraces me and whispers, "I'm sad". I ask why. "I'm sad because I think I've fallen in love with you and I cannot see how you will stay with me". We talked on the sofa for a while, I didn't know what I should do, feeling both that I didn't want to stay in Kunming, but I didn't want to say goodbye to her. "I've been reading your diary, you said you were ready to leave China, I don't want to persuade you. Perhaps you will end your travels - then decide", she finished her thoughts. I felt my emotions in great conflict - to go out with her more seriously it would have to be very serious - and explaining me to her father would by all accounts be very hard work. Were it a different city, were there more things I could think of that I could do here other than teach English, I might stay, but there felt nothing holding me in Kunming but her.
She asked me, "Will you write about me in your diary, like the Korean girl"? I laughed and told her that actually no, I hadn't planned to mention her at all. She mused, "But, wouldn't a love story make your diary more interesting"? After a little thought, she decided, "I would like you to write about me, to remember me and make me part of your story".

So, we've spent the last few days together, one afternoon and evening sitting in a tea house, me typing the above events, she writing her personal statement to Queensland University and occasionally leaning over my shoulder and giggling at what I was writing - "When you said that, I actually thought"...

I plan to leave Kunming tomorrow.

Daniel, 12 April 2004, Kunming