Kunming: City of Bling
Tuesday, May 29th, 2007Gateway to the new
Thurs-Friday (24-25 May 2007)
The smutty “guesthouse” (frankly, it would make a crack den look stylish) where I crashed for my first night in Kunming, overlooked one of the busiest roads. Strangely, the traffic outside was like a murmuring stream compared to the beastly roar that I’m used to in Hanoi. I soon discovered why. Everybody drives electric bikes, pollution and noise-free. Why haven’t they introduced this in Vietnam??
Kunming is the provincial capital of Yunnan and is a modern, bustling metropolis. Towering billboards advertising everything from Luis Vuitton to lubricant decorate the steel and glass shopping malls. On ground level it’s more hum-drum: dumpling stalls emerge from clouds of steam, Yunnan Muslims with colorful scarves grill lamb kebabs, squatting men concentrate on a game of Chinese chess.
I walked into a bookshop where all the books were in Chinese but curiously the cover titles were translated into English. Most of the books were self-help written by financial gurus. I couldn’t help smiling at some of the titles: “How to be a perfect staff”, “The company is your ship”. With books like these, no wonder China is a booming economic hive fed by corporate drones.
It started raining, so I had to dive into a shopping mall. Every shop was a luxury label boutique adorned by immaculately preened shop assistants, standing at attention outside. As I walked past in my bedraggled cargo pants and day pack, they rambled off a long Mandarin greeting, delivered in complete unison. Scuttling from shop to shop I triggered off a reverberating chorus throughout the open-plan mall. Very unnerving… [read on]
vynckemichelle