The previous post is Kunming (July 25).
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Kunming (July 26) · Jul 28, 10:09 PM

The fever broke after midnight. I woke up in a coughing fit. By morning the pillows are soaked with sweat. I was in bed for nine hours.

At the downstairs cafe I wolf down “French breakfast” first and a plate of sweet and sour chicken second. I guess I’m hungry. There’s a crazy lady who yells at foreigners, walks off, then comes back. She does this all morning. I walk off myself to spend more time online making phone calls from Skype, also transcribing journal entries (a never-ending task), then mail home junk I don’t need — two wool shawls from Kashgar and three full notebooks that I don’t want to risk losing.

Kunming is a beautiful little big city. I have no plans to see any of the temples, pagodas, or tourist sights, but I also don’t want to waste the day watching dry paint (“What’s less exciting that watching paint dry?”). I set out from the post office towards the downtown, walking very slowly. It’s a bright, open avenue. The city is lively and green. I walked all the way to Green Lake Park, which is crowded with visitors. They stroll under parasols or the shade of a bamboo and trees. They sit by the lake, crowding around men playing cards or checkers. They gather to listen to any of the musicians playing solo or in small groups. I stop, too, for a short while, but the university district is adjacent to the lake, and I’d like to walk through that, too. I find young people, a fair number of foreigners, international cafes on Wenlin Jie, and funky clothing and music shops on the side streets. There’s also a lot of new street food. I sat down for an unsatisfying bowl of cold noodles as I left the lake park. By the university I find a lady hand-tossing crepes. She makes a wide, flat burrito with egg and banana, then deep-fries the things for thirty seconds. It’s drizzled with sugary cream, then chopped into bites, stuffed into a styrofoam box, and drizzled with more cream. She shoves a couple toothpicks through the lid for you to eat with. I found a shady street on campus and sat down to eat about as many calories as you can expect for $0.375 US.

I walked back to my room, stopping briefly at the edge of the university district to catch an English-language showing of Mission Impossible 3 at six thirty. I liked the twelve minute break-in that was implied instead of shown, but my favorite part was the preview for Dragon Tiger Gate, opening on the 28th. Three young men save the world from a bad guy with kung fu. Something along those lines, anyway; it’s all in Chinese.

I sat down at western cafe down the street from my room. It’s late, almost closing, and they forget my order, so I had to settle for an unyummy hotpot around the corner. When I came back to the City Cafe, the lights were out, the doors locked. I had to scale a car barrier to get to the stairs to my second floor room. It’s half past midnight.

I like Kunming. It’s very pedestrian. Shops, restaurants, pharmacies, parks, offices, tea shops, everything is always within walking distance, or a bus-ride away. No city has New York beat for being twenty-four seven alive, however.

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