My last day staying in Louise's house before I have to flee the return of her father. Louise has told him about me and asked if I can stay, but he has not relented. Still, I am supposed to come back and visit the flat during the day while he is at work, so things won't change that much.

As the days remaining on my Chinese visa tick down, I have a growing sense of warmth and a feeling of home about Kunming and Yunnan province in general. So even as anticipation for continuing my trip grows, already I feel a bit of nostalgia for south west China. Perhaps I am speaking only with the ignorance of one who has never been to SE Asia, perhaps Thailand etc make Yunnan seems boring and colourless - but I suppose I am shortly to find out one way or another. Something which illustrated both how little I have seen of Yunnan / China, and how much it has to offer, was a brief encounter with an old woman in the Yunnan Provincial Museum. One of the museum's departments is a large collection of folk crafts - and everything is for sale. The woman was bringing her wares to Kunming for the museum to buy and sell on. Louise told me she was of the Miaow people (sure that isn't how it's really spelt), in a mountain area east to Yunnan, a train and two bus journeys away. The Miaow women wear high silver headresses, much of the woven articles in this part of the museum seemed to be from them. The old woman lunged up upon seeing us, waving a couple of rather nice pieces of weaving. I didn't, however, want to pay the hundred yuan price she was asking for, under the impression this was vastly inflated. Later, walking the museum, we saw some weaving so similar it must also be Miaow people's work, yet the museum had added a quite considerable mark up to what it had bought for (at most) one hundred yuan: it now cost one thousand five hundred.

It would be wonderful to feel I had seen and more importantly, understood, something of the world of the Yi, Dai, Miaow, Hani, Bai, and all the many other peoples living in Yunnan (and there are over a hundred branches of Yi culture alone). Yunnan is a colossal area, especially in comparison with the most popular SE Asian states, and given the meandering way I like to travel, on reflection I'm not too upset with not seeing more of it. Perhaps for another time.

You don't understand, I've seen the real version of this...

To see the caverns of Jiuxiang, I went on a real guided group tour. After all this independent wandering, it was quite a change to go on a package day trip, and quite a fun one I found. Well, to be accurate, it was fun once I'd got through agreeing a price.

It seems in Kunming there is either the formal bus station, where one can queue for a ticket in relative calm and transparency, or the unofficial mini-bus station. If Hell doesn't bear some resemblance to Kunming's minibus station, well, then it has room for improvement. A week ago, Louise and I had attempted to go to Jiuxiang, and after loud crowding men had shouted at us over and over that there was no official bus, we ended up in the meaty fingers of a chubby brown skinned woman. We were however, that day, too late for a bus, so I was now returning by myself early in the morning to finally see this spot. As I walked towards the station, the minibus ticket selling hyenas spotted me with a look on their faces as though they had spotted a limping gazelle, and the same chubby woman with her money wrapped up in a blue apron ended up listening to my destination. A week ago, she had told Louise it cost eighty yuan, now she told me it cost two hundred. You can imagine I wasn't pleased, but repeating that I wanted eighty didn't seem to be getting anywhere. I wasn't going to give her two hundred even if it meant not going - I knew I would only then spend the day fuming. I turned and walked away, hoping they'd call me back, they didn't. I called Louise but couldn't get through, the meaty woman approached me as I was using a cornershop's phone and now said 160. I tried to lower the price but for naught. Part of me knew, "There is a way I can get this ticket for eighty"; another part knew, "I have no idea what that way might be". I weighed up being ripped off versus another day in Kunming very much like the previous one. By now the other apron wearing minibus women were calling out to me as I walked the street of con, "Laowai, Laowai..." ("Foreigner, foreigner...") - I actually had to control the urge to swivel and punch one of them in the jaw.
Making up my mind to go, I said "OK" to the woman, and as we walked to the bus, was quickly regretting it. I got to the little bus, full of Chinese faces. I knew then with certainty none of these people had paid anything close to 160. As I, reluctantly, got out my 100 yuan notes, the ticket woman's eyes locked on to them like she was starving and my hands held a fat wriggling fish. Even her partner laughed out loud at how round those eyes became. Revulsion grew at this whole situation, but I realised I could get a lower price now, she was not going to let me go this close to closing the deal, so I now shook my head and scribbled, "120". They refused - but I didn't care after seeing all that pulsating greed, and walked off - they followed me. Then the price was 140, then, after a tiny discussion, 120. I was still being ripped off, but it was now at a level I could accept, and bought the ticket more or less at peace. I decided the extra forty was the price of the lesson in haggling, and resolved to try harder next time.

Strangely, it was all rather nice and comradery after that. It was fun to be part of a group that meant nothing beyond the day's activities, so there was a relaxed ease about us. After two stops at jewellery outlets, which entailing me waiting outside in the shade for everyone's lacklustre shopping to finish, there was a visit to a restored temple in a "scenic spot". While very pretty and large, red arches climbing a forested hill, it was all very touristy and somewhat fake (the old temple had been destroyed in the Cultural Revolution, these walls were ten years old). An old monk in brown robes with an unimpressed expression placed a silk scarf (red with white swastikas running along the edges) over each visitor's bowed head in quick succession. He was clearly only just suppressing a cry of, "Pagans, pagans, get out"!! His face became even more sour when he saw me, "Bloody hell, you're not even Chinese, let alone a Buddhist"...

In the unflinching sunshine, I didn't feel like clambering around this part of the tour. It was a strange feeling that, well, while this all looked nice, surely I'd seen the real version of all this during my months of travelling this country. So I sat on the first level in the shade and relaxed, there was something peaceful in the air despite all the kitsch and crowds. I handed back my scarf to the dour monk, which brought out a genuine smile from him, and sat down. The younger of the two tour guides seemed to be required to look after a small Chinese boy who was on the tour with his grandparents and she walked him over to me and the three of us sat for a moment. Then she went off somewhere, and so the toddler and I, he enraptured by his green ice cream, sat calmly side by side for a while, prompting bemused stares from passing Chinese.
After the temple, lunch, then the huge caverns, two underground waterfalls, a ride on a rowing boat among sheer limestone walls, a cable car ride over the hills to get us back to the entrance and a foot massage in some kind of hospital to round the day off.

All in all, everything one could have asked for in a day trip. But it would have been nice to have bought it for eighty.

One highlight of the day for me had nothing to do with caves and rivers. After lunch, the granny was holding that little toddler in her arms, and after I had made some silly faces at him and made him laugh, he called me, "Shu Shu". The simple translation of Shu Shu is "uncle", the more precise one (the Chinese language is very, very precise when discussing family relations) is that it is a nice term of respect for someone older than you, but younger than your father. I know all this because Shu Shu is what I am supposed to call Louise's father if we ever meet (he being a little younger than my dad). Being called Shu Shu was so nice because it felt like being included in this complex social world, having someone look at me and work out which of the universe of polite addresses I merited, rather than always being referred to / dismissed as "Laowai" - essentially "outsider".

Daniel, 22 April 2004, Kunming