David's Big Adventure in China

The school had a big Olympic style sports meeting last week from Thursday through Saturday. This is something they do every year. I got a call about a week before asking me to come to the office to get measured for a sports suit (running pants and jacket) then the next day I got a message saying they changed their mind and were going to give us money to go buy our own sports suits. The next day I went and collected the money and went shopping over the weekend and found a nice sports suit for less than the money they gave me. On Tuesday I received a memo saying to attend a practice meeting on Wednesday wearing a business suit. Then on Wednesday morning I got a text message saying the practice was cancelled and just show up on Thursday for the opening ceremony. Originally they told us all classes were cancelled for Thursday and Friday then at some point changed their mind and decided to cancel classes on Thursday afternoon and Friday. They failed to notify us of this change and thus students showed up for class on Thursday morning with no teachers present. I don’t have any classes on Thursday mornings so it was not a problem for me but some of the other teachers were upset when they got calls Thursday morning asking why they weren’t in class. This level of disorganization and lack of clear communication is quite common here and from what I’ve heard not unique to this school.

Since I didn’t have classes Thursday night or Friday I took the opportunity to get out of town for the weekend and headed south to Jinghong. I left Thursday (Thanksgiving) night after having dinner at an Italian restaurant with some of the other teachers. I took an overnight sleeper bus that cost me 200 yuan (about $27) for a 10 hour trip. The road on parts of the trip was quite rough so I didn’t sleep too much. I noticed along the way that there were many trucks and busses lined up waiting for fuel at the service stations on the highway. At one of them I counted 130 vehicles sitting on the road parked waiting for fuel. It didn’t appear the line was moving at all so the station must have been waiting on a delivery. There were service stations on both sides of the road and the station on the other side of the road must have had many more than 200 vehicles waiting. I can only surmise that there must be a serious diesel fuel shortage here.

Jinghong is the center of an area called Xishuangbanna (pronounced She shwang banna) and is located on the Mekong River near the borders of Myanmar and Laos and also near to Thailand. There are many minority people in this area and the weather there is sub tropical. Some of the minority men wear skirt like wraps instead of pants. Jinghong is a city but not a big city (I didn’t see any McDonalds’, KFC’s or Wal-Marts) and there is not that much to see in Jinghong itself. It serves more as a starting point for visiting the areas around it. I visited the Tropical Flower and Plant Garden and a local park (see pic’s). At the local park many people bring their birds in their cages to visit with the other birds (their must have been about 40 cages). I also went to the Banna Wild Elephant Valley that is part of the Sanchahe Nature Reserve. They have a small zoo there and an elephant show. I didn’t see any wild animals during my 2 hour hike through the park except for a quick glimpse of some monkeys playing in a tree. Many people use Jinghong as the starting or ending point for a multi-day trek through the countryside and forest areas. The local people are very friendly and invite trekkers into their homes for meals or to sleep for the night. Some request a small payment but many do not. If I go back to this area I would like to do a 3 or 4 day trek.

The building I live in is next to the auditorium/theatre. They started a couple weeks ago tearing that building down and it has been interesting to watch them. They are basically removing and apparently recycling almost everything from the building. They removed the roof one board at a time then knocked the walls down. The walls are brick with stucco exterior and there are several women working to remove any stucco or masonry from the bricks before throwing them in a pile. The piles are then neatly stacked in a truck for removal. Well that’s about all for now. I’ll be visiting the states in January and am looking forward to some good home cookin’ and seeing many of you!

I recently went to the Stone Forest (Shilin) which is a little over 2 hours south of Kunming by bus. It was a bit expensive to get in at 140 yuan (about $19) but it was worth seeing (see pic’s). The limestone pillars are quite impressive and they have made some very interesting paths under, around and over them…….one false step and you would be seriously injured! Yesterday I went to the Minority Village (like a small theme park) here in Kunming. It was interesting but probably not worth a second visit. China has about 56 recognized minorities and Yunnan province has about half of them within it. I really enjoy seeing the colorful clothing of the minorities. Perhaps next time I’ll post some pic’s from the Minority Village.

Last week I started teaching accounting to my Listening class students. They were much more interested in the accounting than they have been in the other lessons. One of the students had a copy of the textbook (240 pages) made for me at a cost of 16 yuan (about $2.15). Paper and copy services here are very cheap. The university does not provide me an office and I don’t have access to a printer or copier so I copy files onto my USB drive and take it to one of the local shops where I can print and have copies made.

It’s time for me to get my teeth cleaned and I’ve been asking around about dental care here. None of the foreigners I have asked have had any dental care here…..they are afraid to get it here and prefer to wait until they visit home. The locals that I have talked to tell me that they only go to the dentist when they have a problem. I haven’t decided yet if I’ll give the local care a try or wait until I’m back in the U.S. I’m about out of the floss that I brought with me from home so I tried to buy some while shopping and found that very few places carry it and it’s very expensive when I do find it. It costs about $3 for a small package of it. Even with minimal dental care and not using floss it seems most of the locals have decent teeth. I do so many people with badly stained teeth and that seems to be mostly from tobacco and poor water.

I have learned that apartments here in Kunming can be rented for $100 to $300 per month and can be purchased for $30,000 to $90,000. Kunming is still pretty cheap compared to the big east coast cities. Anybody want me to shop for one for you?? Well that’s it for now.

What is that bright thing in the sky??? I asked my students this question and they told me “sunshine”. It had been so long since I had seen the sun I forgot what it ... [Continue reading this entry]