Staffordshire, Quebec and Kunming: Coping with a Cold Snap

Different Countries with Different Weather Problems and Different Failures

Snow on the roofs of North Staffs

I went swimming yesterday morning, as is my thrice-weekly wont. Driving home about eight o’clock, I glanced at the thermometer and saw it registered -6°. ‘Wow,’ I thought, ‘that’s cold.’

Why the extreme cold had not registered as I walked from house to garage, or to and from the doors of the leisure centre, I do not know – maybe it was too early in the morning to notice anything. It certainly registered on the walk from the car back to the front door, all five freezing paces of it.

But I was being a wuss. In February 1998 I went skiing in Quebec. Watching breakfast television one morning, I heard the newsreader say: ‘It’s going to be a mild one today, with a top temperature of –7.’ Yesterday’s top temperature was a balmy +2, but I was still shivering.

Several weeks ago I was complaining about the cold in Kunming, when the temperature was - only just - in double figures. Perhaps I was justified, nowhere in Kunming - with the merciful exception of our hotel room - had any heating and the cold and damp seemed to seep into your bones.

This morning I woke up to a clear pale blue sky and a light dusting of snow. The rest of the country had snow yesterday, and along with it came the predictable chaos. Equally predictable was the moaning about how it is only in Britain that a little snow brings everything to a halt and how everywhere else deals with it so much better. Canada is always held up as the example, and indeed they cope with snow admirably – but then, it lies around for months on end, so they have to. This is the our first November snow for over twenty years; most years snow lies on the ground for two or three days in January or February, sometimes there is none at all. If Staffordshire spent the same money on snow shifting as Quebec, there would be letters in the local press moaning about expensive equipment sitting idle for 360 days a year. They would probably be from the same people who moan about the current situation.

A dusting of snow on my back garden

We had a conversation with Wang about snow in Kunming, which is as frequent as snow here. ‘It’s chaos,’ he said, ‘the schools close, the buses slide off the road, everything grinds to a halt.’ The only difference between here and there is that the Kunming authorities do not have to put up with carping and ignorant criticism in the local press. Indeed, they do not have to put up with criticism at all. ‘The price of freedom,’ said Thomas Jefferson, ‘is eternal vigilance.’ It is also eternal moaning, but he never mentioned that.

Back to Quebec for a final thought. That week in 1998 eventually became so mild it rained. Not proper rain, but the sort of drizzle that might make you think about putting up an umbrella. What happened? The schools were closed, there was traffic chaos and the firefighters had a backlog of cellars to pump out that would keep them busy until the thaw.

The observation that there ‘is no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong clothes,’ has been ascribed to Roald Amundsen, Billy Connolly and Dr Johnson, among others. I prefer Dr Johnson because he was earlier – and from Staffordshire – but whoever said it, it seems they were right, both literally and in a much larger sense.

Shilin to Xingyi: Part 2 of China's Far Southwest

From the Stone Forest to the Guizhou Border and Beyond

China

In the morning, we set off for Xingyi, three hours away and just across the border into Guizhou Province. Here we would part with Wang and Mr Ma and pick up a new guide and driver for the next part of the journey. As we left, the clouds parted, the sun shone and the temperature started to pick itself up from the floor.

This post is about a journey from Shilin in Yunnan Province to Xingyi in Guizhou

Yunnan

Motorways and Countryside

Setting off along another empty motorway, Wang started giving us dire warnings about the state of the roads in Guizhou, a province he regarded as at least ‘backward’ and quite possibly ‘primitive’. The three lanes of the excellent Yunnanese road were labelled – in English and Chinese – ‘Overtaking Lane’, ‘Main Carriageway’ and ‘Non-motor Vehicle Lane’. This third lane was well populated by ox-carts. The Chinese economic miracle is something of an urban event and oxen, clearly, still played an important part in the agriculture of relatively advanced, civilized Yunnan.

Mr Ma drove us past pointy Karst mountains, and terraced fields. Tobacco, the main crop, had just been harvested and the leaves could be seen drying on balconies. The small fields contained rice, which was just being cut, maize and many other vegetables we could not recognise.

Stooks of rice straw after harvesting, Yunnan Province

Guizhou

We entered Guizhou about 11 o’clock. Although the motorway did indeed end, we continued on a well-surfaced two-lane road. Visiting China so often involves being whisked from one urban centre to another, and we were pleased to find ourselves in deep countryside winding through a series of agricultural villages. We overtook a string of packhorses hauling newly felled logs up to a village depot.

A Guizhou Village Market

Ten kilometres short of Xingyi we joined a traffic jam caused by a village market. We left the car and walked down the street. While the traffic hooted and snarled in the centre of the road, the edge was lined with stalls of all kinds. There were fruit and vegetable stalls, baskets of live chickens...

Chicken in a basket, Village market near Xingyi, Guizhou

... and a trestle table laden with pieces of pig.

A trestle table laden with pieces of pig, village market near Xingyi, Guizhou

There were wads of tobacco like ginger wool and the water pipes used to smoke it,...

Smoking a water pipe, village market near Xingyi

...cheap clothes and wooden ploughs and there were things we didn’t recognise or know the use for.

Ploughs on sale, village market near Xingyi

In urban China the time has long passed when foreigners were routinely stared at, but in this village Europeans features were still a novelty. One old man with a thin wispy beard stood in front of me, staring stony-faced. Realizing I was probably staring back I said, ‘Hello, ni hao, nice to meet you’ and stuck out my hand. He blinked and then his stare slowly turned into a beaming smile. He was a wizened old man, his Mao jacket hanging loosely on his thin frame, but the hand that shook mine was large and roughened by a lifetime’s hard work. I smiled back, not something my face does naturally, and wished him well. Unfortunately I had unwittingly ruined Lynne’s photograph by stepping in front of her subject, but I think it was worth it.

Spice stall, village market near Xingyi, Guizhou

Tiguan were available at several stalls. They resemble turnips, except for apparently having a root at each end, but are actually a fruit that, like the peanut, grows underground. They are easily peeled with your fingers and although it is disconcerting to bite into something that looks like a raw root vegetable, they are sweet and juicy. They have a texture somewhere between water chestnut and apple and a flavour between apple and melon. The Chinese call them ‘underground watermelon’. I know of no English name; typing ‘tiguan’ into Google leads only to the Volkswagen Tiguan, which is not, I think, the same thing at all.

A cart full of Tiguan, Village market neat Xingyi, Guizhou

To Xingyi for Lunch

Xingyi is a strange shaped town, penned into a series of valleys between the karst hills. Entering through the industrial quarter it looked grim, but after a tunnel took us into the next valley, we found ourselves in a pleasanter if still down at heal central area. After much asking of directions, we eventually drove out to a recent, smarter extension on the town’s eastern edge.

​We had been looking, Wang explained, for a particular eatery rather than a hotel, though when we found it, it seemed a small unexceptional family restaurant. We sat at a table, which had just been wiped with the usual filthy cloth and were handed a vacuum-packed plate, bowl and cup. It has become fashionable in the last year or two to take the crockery from the dishwasher – human or mechanical – and vacuum pack sets for each individual diner. It looks hygienic, maybe it is.

Wang took us into the kitchen and we chose some smoked beef, chicken, mushrooms and broad beans. It takes a remarkably small time to turn simple ingredients into dishes that are complex and full of flavour. When the food turned up, a huge bowl of soup and a dish of minced beef had been added to the order. Buying lunches was Wang’s responsibility and he felt the need to compensate for yesterday’s very moderate fare. ‘Never eat in hotels’ he said, ‘unless you have to.’ We knew the general standard of cooking in China is high, but Wang wanted to prove a point, and we were delighted to let him.

With six dishes on the table, not to mention rice, Lynne, Mr Ma and I were full long before all the food had gone, but for some time after we had downed chopsticks Wang kept on picking a morsel from here and a bite from there as though he had not eaten for weeks. The driver thought it was as funny as we did but Wang just laughed along with us and kept picking away. He may have been slight, but he had a mighty appetite.

Goodbye to Wang and Mr Ma, Hello to 'Dylan'

Well fed, we checked in to the nearby Haiyu Hotle (sic). The automatic doors had ‘Welcome’ etched on them, and less explicably ‘Feeling Sea Treasure’.

Our Guizhou guide, a rotund and eager young man, introduced himself as Dylan. ‘I was late for class the day English names were handed out, and it was the only one left.’ he explained. We never quite got the hang of his real name, so Dylan he remained.

We said goodbye to Wang, whose name was easier to cope with, and Mr Ma (Mister Horse) our cheerful and friendly driver and, a freshen up and a rest later, set out with Dylan to see Xingyi.

China's Far South West (2010)

Part 1: Kunming and The Stone Forest
Part 2: Shilin to Xingyi
Part 3: Xingyi and on to Huangguoshu
Part 4: Qingyan, Guiyang and on to Kaili
Part 5: Kaili, Xijiang and Rongjiang
Part 6: Rongjiang, Zhaoxing and on to Guangxi
Part 7: Chengyang Dong Villages and the Longsheng Rice Terraces
Part 8: Guilin and the Li River
Part 9: Hong Kong
Part 10: Macau

Kunming and Shilin: Part 1 of China's Far Southwest

The City of Eternal Spring and a Stone Forest

27-Oct-2010

Kunming with the Glass Half Empty

China

Kunming, the capital of Yunnan, China’s most southwesterly province, styles itself the ‘City of Eternal Spring’. We stepped out of the airport into an afternoon of cold, hard drizzle. Eternal Spring is, I suppose, much the same as Eternal Autumn, in a glass-half-empty sort of way, and at that moment Kunming looked a glass-half-empty sort of place; its 3.5 million shivering inhabitants apparently wandering around in search of somewhere warm.

We checked into our hotel and had a nap. After twenty-eight hours travelling and a seven-hour time change even the pneumatic drill in the adjacent building site could not keep us awake. Later we went for a recce to find an ATM and choose a restaurant for dinner before returning for a cup of tea, more rest and a discussion about what time the man with the drill might knock off work.

Happily, drilling stopped before we went out. Most restaurants and many shops in Kunming are open-fronted and the main appeal of our selected restaurant was the wall between us and the elements. We sat down, eager to apply our limited knowledge of Chinese characters to the menu, only to discover there was no written menu. Fortunately, our waitress rose to the occasion and led us into the busy kitchen. In one corner a young man wielding a fearsome cleaver sliced bacon from a large joint. Another youth twirled what seemed a lifetime’s supply of noodles in an immense wok using drumstick-sized chopsticks, one held in each hand. On a shelf at the side lay a selection of cabbages. We pointed at the bacon, cabbage and noodles and returned to our table.

Dog tired but still eating - what a guy!

Choosing the basic ingredients was one thing, but by the time they had been prepared, sauced and spiced they had, as so often in China, turned into a sophisticated and satisfying meal. For the first time that day we began to feel glad to be back in the country.

28-Oct-2010

A Self-Guided Walking Tour of Kunming

Yuantong Buddhist Temple

Next morning, wrapped up well, we set off to see Kunmimg. We had decided to take a taxi to the north of the city and then walk south back towards the hotel. We have taken many taxis in China, but today’s was the first we had encountered driven by a woman, and not only that but a woman who understood my verbal request to be taken to the Yuantong Buddhist temple – though not until she had correct my pronunciation. The little bell hanging from her rear view mirror suggested she was herself a Buddhist. It ting-ed when she accelerated, it ting-ed when she braked and it ting-ed when she went round corners. Long before we reached the temple it had become quite an annoying little Buddhist bell.

The most ‘important Buddhist site in north Yunnan’ (rather faint praise, I think) is approached through an impressive marble archway...

Entrance to Yuantong Temple

..beyond which we picked our way round a partially constructed new hall to find the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) temple. Beyond an incense burner an octagonal pavilion sits in a startlingly green pond. Circumnavigating the pond in the approved clockwise direction, we came across of group of pilgrims in a side room chanting as they processed round and round in single file. We paused to listen and record.

'An octagonal pavilion in a startlingly green pond, Yuantong Temple, Kunming

In the main hall at the rear, two dragons support an ornate wooden ceiling over statues of the Buddha seated in front of faded thirteenth century frescoes.

Dragons supporting the ceiling, Yuantong Temple

Behind the main hall is a newer, smaller pavilion where fearsome stone animals protect a gilded bronze Buddha donated by the Thai government.

Guilded bronze Buddha, Yuantong Temple

All around people with burning incense sticks were kneeling before the Buddha or bowing in the cardinal directions. The Chinese are not a notably spiritual people – indeed Taoist devotion often seems entirely concerned with ensuring good luck - but Yuantong had a peaceful, even reverent air.

Much work with incense sticks, Yuantong Temple

Some Thoughts About the Pace of Change in China and the Dates of World War II

Having started in the north, we walked south through an area of modern apartment blocks and clean shops. We were heading for the Muslim quarter but found the promised maze of streets had been bulldozed and replaced by a shopping mall. We should not have been surprised, our Rough Guide is a few years out of date and nothing stands still in China.

A shiny new mosque stood next to an older Christian church dedicated to those who fell in the allied cause in the Second World War, 1937-45. The Sino-Japanese conflict was an integral part of that war and it was a reminder that our 1939 ‘starting date’ is somewhat parochial and euro-centric. the Japanese 'Rape of Nanjing' (Dec 1937-Jan 1938) is still a sore point to the Chinese, as we learned when we visited that city in 2016.

The Provincial Museum

The nearby Provincial Museum is crowned with a spire and a red star in the ‘Stalinist Gothic’ style we had only previously encountered in Russia and Poland (we later encountered the fabulously awful Academy of Science building in Riga). The museum should have been open, but the ticket office was deserted and the doors padlocked. Closer inspection, however, revealed another door hidden behind an advertisement for the ‘Accounting through the Ages’ exhibition. Inside, a notice told us that today the museum was free.

Yunnan Provincial Museum, Kunming

The journey from tally sticks to double entry booking was less than riveting, particularly told in a language I was too ignorant to read. The centrepiece was an elaborate cowry box, dating back to the Dian Kingdom, which ruled Yunnan two thousand years ago and used shells for money. Upstairs a much more interesting collection of Dian artefacts; bronze weapons, agricultural implements, grave goods and more cowry boxes, gave a fascinating insight into life in Yunnan’s earliest civilization.

A Spicy Lunch and Two Ancient, Though Rather Ugly Pagodas

Further south, we huddled on a bench in an open fronted restaurant. Choosing a dish of beef and chillies was easy, but ordering it presented a problem. It is well known by all educated Chinese that no Westerner likes spicy food, so the girl kept pointing at the symbol for chillies (one of the few we actually know) and I kept nodding my head and saying ‘yes’. The harder I nodded the more emphatically she pointed but eventually she gave in and we enjoyed an excellent - and distinctly spicy - lunch.

Continuing our progress, we visited two Tang Dynasty (618-1206) pagodas, standing fifty metres apart near the city centre. Despite their age, they are neither beautiful nor particularly interesting. One stands in a small garden, the other beside an alleyway. There is little more to be said.

The east pagoda, Kunming

By this time we were flagging, so we taxied the rest of way to our hotel where we sat in the warm, had a cup of tea and listened to the pneumatic drill

Dynamic Yunnan

Later, after a bowl of warming soup in another cold, open-fronted restaurant, we rendezvous-ed with Wang, our guide for the next day’s journey to The Stone Forest. He had met us at the airport ans suggested we might like to see a show entitled 'Dynamic Yunnan' he had come with his driver to transport us to the theatre.

Dynamic Yunnan - some of the cast

The Chinese government recognises fifty-five ethnic minorities living alongside the Han majority, many of them in the southwest. ‘Dynamic Yunnan’ is a performance extravaganza based on the traditional dance, music and costumes of the local minorities. Choreographed by the ‘world famous’ Yang Liping the show has toured China, Europe and the USA. It was certainly very professional with a lot of high energy dancing, screechy singing and very loud drums. The brochure quotes the New York Times on Yang Liping’s Peacock Princess Dance: ‘she dances so fluently like a spirit from nature, using her slim figure, extending her arms, fingers and legs, resembling a youth full of live (sic).’ She was extraordinarily graceful, but my first reaction on seeing a woman that thin is to administer an emergency bowl of noodles, not watch her dance.

It was not raining when we came out, so we walked back. Watching people bedding down in doorways, reminded us how fortunate we were to have a warm hotel room waiting.

29-Oct-2010

Shilin, The Stone Forest

The drive to Shilin (literally: Stone Forest) took a couple of hours. The roads were motorway standard and, once we had left the city, largely empty. Kunming’s spring-like (or autumnal) climate is the result of its warm southerly location and its 1800 metre altitude. Our journey through rich agricultural land involved a number of long straight descents and we passed several lorries with smoke billowing from their brakes.

Shilin, The Stone Forest

Eating China's One and Only Cheese

Despite the drop in height, the temperature remained unchanged. At Shilin we checked into the only hotel and found our room had cooling but no heating. We mentioned this to Wang, then repaired to the unheated restaurant, which was full of tour parties from Korea, Taiwan and France. The food was mass catering and the duck was lukewarm but one dish was truly remarkable. Traditionally the Chinese have not used dairy products. In recent years, milk has been promoted as a health drink and is now frequently consumed at breakfast, but butter and cheese are unknown – except in Yunnan. The Yi (pronounced ‘jerr’) ethnic minority make China’s one and only cheese and Shilin is a Yi village. We ate a hard goat’s milk cheese pleasantly similar to Ribblesdale. The most exceptional thing about Yi cheese is that it is unexceptional.

The Great Stone Forest

Approaching Shilin the quality of the farmland had deteriorated and we had seen many fields containing tall stones, clustered like conferring menhirs. The National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site, covers 350 km² but at its heart, the Great Stone Forest is an area of stones, typically 4 or 5 metres high, crowding together like trees in a forest. It is an extreme example of Karst geology and a truly extraordinary sight.

Threading our way through the stones on well-made paths, there were corners that looked like the approach to ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ at Disneyland, and we had to keep reminding ourselves that that was fake and this was real. The crowds were reminiscent of Disneyland, too. We think of tourism in China as involving Europeans, North Americans or Australians, but one by-product of the Chinese economic miracle has been the explosion in home grown tourism. The few Westerners were vastly outnumbered by the Chinese visitors who arrived on tour buses in their thousands, each group obediently following its flag-wielding leader who kept up a running commentary via a portable loud speaker strapped to their waist.

'The Chinese do so like a crowd,'Shilin Stone Forest

The Chinese do so like a crowd, but Wang led us along quieter paths, past limpid pools and up low hills where we could see the forest without having to listen to five competing commentaries. In China there is always a crowd – and nearby there is always somewhere quiet and peaceful.

The 'Shadows' Walk', Shilin Stone Forest

This area was once farmed by the Yi, and a difficult task they had wresting a living from this stony land. There is little or no farming in Shilin now. There is plenty of work for attractive young women who dress up in brightly coloured traditional costume and act as guides. Every Chinese tour group acquires one, though what they can tell them that their voice-amplified, flag-toting commissars cannot is a mystery. Older women work as photographers, snapping each member of a tour party in front of their chosen rock. Their menfolk park their motorbikes on the nearby road (‘they’ve got better bikes than me’ said Wang with a touch of envy) and rush the camera cards to the printers in the village, returning before the group leaves the forest. Every tourist carries their own digital camera, but for reasons deep within the Chinese psyche, the business thrives. Elsewhere, four young men strummed three-string guitars while strutting ‘The Shadows’ Walk’ (for those old enough to remember) and a group of girls danced a homespun excerpt from ‘Dynamic Yunnan’. The older and less comely members of the Yi community can be observed in dirtier and less colourful versions of traditional dress, sweeping away litter or hacking back vegetation, but you are not supposed to notice them.

Undoubtedly most of the Yi in Shilin are financially better off and have much easier lives than they did before the tourists came. Perhaps they sometimes wonder how living in a World Heritage Site came to destroy their heritage. I have no idea if they ever regret it.

We returned to the hotel to find a heater had been placed in our room. Whether any of the other guests had one, we do not know and decided not to ask.

China's Far South West (2010)

Part 1: Kunming and The Stone Forest
Part 2: Shilin to Xingyi
Part 3: Xingyi and on to Huangguoshu
Part 4: Qingyan, Guiyang and on to Kaili
Part 5: Kaili, Xijiang and Rongjiang
Part 6: Rongjiang, Zhaoxing and on to Guangxi
Part 7: Chengyang Dong Villages and the Longsheng Rice Terraces
Part 8: Guilin and the Li River
Part 9: Hong Kong
Part 10: Macau