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Our very last night in Kunming happened to be the night of the Lantern Festival, marking the end of Chinese New Year.  After a great final dinner with the Fulbright gang, three of our families headed over to Grand View Lake for the big celebration.  CRAZY wild taxi rides to get there… mobs of people… louds sights and sounds everywhere… and the entire lake lit up like Disneyland… oh, and more fireworks.

Nina and Cece at the lantern festival...

A few shots from the bus ride to the Stone Forest…

farmland...

pretty...

not so different than the view off the 10...

On our last day in Kunming all of the Fulbright families took a trip out to the Stone Forest, known here as ” the first wonder of the world” and somewhat similar to Joshua Tree National Park.  Glad that Art was able to join us as he’d missed a lot of the Kunming activities and this was a great park to hit with the kids…

(note: internet connection is wonky, AGAIN… this is all the pix I can post right now…)

Happy Cece in Kunming...

Elle, Lindsey and Alison...

Rare shot of me and Artie... arriving at the Stone Forest...

Stone formations everywhere...

Intact above us...

And stretching for acres...

While there was nothing strenuous about this excursion, the park is quite large... so there are these friendly reminders (this one is for you, mum!)...

As you wander through the labyrinth of rocks, there is the occasional pool of water...

Kids (of all ages) had fun winding through the rocks and finding secret hiding spots...

A beautiful day in China for us...

Quilt image 4

Well y’all… we’ve reached the point where it truly feels like we are living in China and no longer just visiting.  Routines are slowly being established (in large part because the girls are in school, which is great for them, and taking them in the morning and then collecting them in the afternoon will be a big part of my day), the apartment is coming together (today I hope to buy a toaster, and duct tape to hold together our couch which is really three low waiting room chairs pushed together), bills are being paid (online), laundry is getting done, and I am feeling the need for a break.  Art is so much better than I at being “out there” and “on” day after day, but I am in need of a solitude fix, and this afternoon is it.  In the absence of solitude, one thing that’s been helping me to stay sane is the amount of walking we do every day in Beijing: just getting to the metro or local stores is a nice little workout…

And so… 5 days after returning from Kunming, I am still trying to post those pictures.  I suppose this is just how things will get done here: a slower pace, things out of order, and with interruptions that I can’t control.  The internet began acting up on Sunday, and for several days was really unpredictable.  Maybe this was a result of so many students returning to campus after the big holiday break (this used to happen at Redlands in the fall) or maybe the government really was blocking access to sites outside of China.  There were rumors that a protest similar to those in the middle east was being planned in China, and that authorities were blocking news and non-China sites.  When an IT help desk guy arrived here in our apartment on Monday, he appeared dumbfounded.  He couldn’t get to CNN or gmail for me, but could get right to the local pizza delivery online site.  So he shrugged his shoulders and left telling us something like: “see, it works…”

In any event, we now appear to be back in action (for the moment) and I am seizing the opportunity.  In addition to internet service, and a working VPN, our neighbor Jack hooked up a wireless router for us (Art, Cece and I had been haggling over our single internet port for several weeks…) so technologically, we are (fingers crossed) up and running…

A word about neighbors: we are living in an 18 story building, in which the residents of the first 16 floors are all Chinese women graduate students.  The 17th and 18th floors are all foreigners, and mostly families.  Jack and Cherie are upstairs.  She’s a funny, vibrant 30-something woman from Philadelphia married to Jack, a witty, handsome Chinese guy.  They’ve been exceptionally helpful to us, and are really delightful people.  Cherie was a nurse who first came to China on a 3-week trip to assist an American surgeon… now she teaches English (specifically speaking English) at Renmin.  Their beautiful sons Jonah and Luke are 6 and 4.  Americans Sue and Dave are immediately next door to us.  They have been mostly living in China, and teaching at different universities since 1984.  They raised their daughter in China and seem to have no intention of leaving.  Very nice people, though we rarely see them.  Americans Aminta and Chris (from Washington state, both teaching here at Renmin) and their three children (Katherine 9, Grace 8, and Andrew 6) are just down the hall.  Katherine and Andrew are bio kids, Grace was adopted in China when she was a baby (just months before or after we adopted Cece).  They’ve been living in China for four or five years, and all three kids go to a local Chinese school.  Also on our floor are Anna: a mysterious Russian woman who teaches (duh) Russian, and Sebastian, a French guy who teaches French.  We never see either of them.  Upstairs too are Michael (American) and Gracelin (Chinese) and their kids Sarah (7-ish) and Josiah (4-ish).  All nice folks…

And just yesterday I met Americans Dustin and Marcia (I think… many names to remember…) who live immediately above us in the best apartment in the building.  They are here for at least three years and scored one of the “renovated” apartments.  Same floor plan as ours, but whereas ours is a sort of “bachelor pad meets Motel 6” their place looks like something out of a Pottery Barn catalog.  What makes the most striking difference is that they have actual paint on their walls, and in such a lovely warm shade of wicker.  Our walls have this sort of dirty, chalky whitewash applied around the time Nixon visited China.  They also have real furniture (likely from IKEA, but still, it’s not falling apart and mismatched), beautiful fabrics (our curtains are harvest gold polyester), and no bizarre telephone cords strung and dangling haphazardly from wall to wall.  Anyway.  I digress.  I sure didn’t come here for posh quarters and don’t plan to spend all my days in the apartment… (nonetheless, I will do a full apartment tour post with pictures soon for those of you who love these kinds of details).

So here is part of the Kunming wrap up.  I will try to jump back on later… (also note: on the day we took a side trip to an old ski lift, I forgot my camera, so unfortunately, I have no shots of that fun afternoon, or me hanging on to the chair bar…)

One of a number of fabulous variations of steamed pumpkin that was plentiful in Kunming...

This spicy mushroom dish was divine... though I still cannot get Art to partake in fungi...

Posting because I don't want to forget this delicious warm corn juice...

Spent a morning at the Golden Temple in Kunming, so named for the bronze work that abounds, these doors (and much of the temple) are carved bronze...

Golden Temple tree art...

Unlike the Yuantong Temple (the largest Buddhist temple in Kunming), the Golden Temple is Taoist, and its collective buildings much smaller. It sits, however, inside of an enormous, beautifully landscaped park...

Blooming at the Golden Temple. Spring was in the air this day...

Cece and Nina (a sweetheart of a girl, from Louisville, KY)...

This man insisted on helping the girls with their incense...

Who wouldn't want to help such beautiful girls...

Pretty lines...

And sunshine...

Within the same park as the Golden Temple sits this impressive bell tower...

We all climbed to the top of the tower for views of Kunming...

From one side of the tower is this view of Kunming. A bit overcast but if you click on the picture (enlarge it), you can begin to see how expansive this city is...

From the other side is this glorious view...

Big fish clapper in the bell tower...

Elle had a go at it...

That was fun...

Then the requisite incense lighting...

And umbrella purchasing (because you know, we just haven't acquired enough of these from Chinatown in LA)...

Beware the dragon turtle...

Had a great internet connection early Sunday morning, then poof! …no internet for a more than a day.  Which is kind of debilitating for me here, on a Sunday evening when I want to post and have a bunch of emails to send.  Also the reason I haven’t yet gotten to those Kunming pictures (but will do so soon).  Sneaking in this post while I have a live connection for more than 45 seconds…

The girls started international school this morning and both of them had wonderful first days with such warm welcomes from their new teachers and classmates. In Cece’s class in particular, the only two girls (one from Italy and one from Singapore) were more than thrilled to see Cece and immediately took her on a full tour of the school.  Her teacher is a delightful, kind woman from Ottawa, Canada (hey Nicole: two points for teachers from Canada!).  And after school, the first thing that social butterfly Elle said as she ran over to me was: “can I have a playdate with my new BFF?!” Always a good sign.

Cece is back to homework (including Chinese review) and tonight did it happily. Coincidentally, she had to review a play about the solar system in which she’s been assigned to play Saturn. Just a few weeks before we left California, she had finished and turned in her 3rd grade model of Saturn.  Small world.

The girls arriving for their first day. Cece was a nervous wreck. Elle, as usual, was completely unperturbed.

OMG.  We have been on such a wonderful whirlwind here in Yunnan Province.  Lots to write about and many pix to post but that will have to wait for the weekend as we are flying back to Beijing today.  The city of Kunming has been such a wonderful surprise.  It’s huge, but feels small and comfortable, and has lived up to its reputation as the city of perpetual spring.

Tourism, tea, tobacco, fresh flowers and jade are the major industries, and we landed here during the final week of Chinese New Year… so it has been festive and loads of fun.  Last night the lantern festival marked the end of CNY, and fireworks continued to explode outside late into the night.  I’m certain that in the last 11 days I’ve heard and seen more fireworks than all the 4th of July’s of my life combined.  And then some.

A few other thoughts before I have to pack up this computer: the population of Beijing is 22 million.  Kunming (a city I’d never heard of before this trip) has over 6 million.  This compares with 2.5 million in Pittsburgh, half a million in Fresno, 4 million in LA, and 7 million in the combined cities of San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose.

We’re talking tight, dense, quarters, people.  Everything is squeezed in just so.  It’s incredible, and oddly enticing to me.  A very complicated sort of simplicity thrives in the cities of China.  I like it and am thrilled to be a city dweller for these five months.

I suppose there is nothing even close to civil litigation in China.  It seems to be understood that you are “on your own.”  Don’t lean over that wall, out that 9th floor window, along that ledge on the bridge… watch out for those steep, slippery mountain steps, and don’t even look out the bus window as you are winding up a mountain side … as there is generally nothing (ever) to catch you.  I just haven’t seen the safety railings and the “caution, caution, caution” you see everywhere in the states.  Here, you do what you want at your own risk.  There’s good sense in this, yet a number of times this week it was quite clear that we were not in Kansas… and one day, on an old open ski lift chair with two kids not my own, and jagged, rocky mountain below us, I was pure white knuckles…

Still loving my green tea, but now on to Pu’er tea, a special aged tea grown here in Yunnan province.  Pu’er provides many health benefits, including lower blood pressure and better sleep.  It also promotes weight loss.  I’ll let you know how that goes.  ; )

Today I went jade shopping with Ma, one of the Chinese reps from the embassy (Ma of the Pu’er tea recommendation; he is super fit and healthy).  Great to shop with someone who really knows jade.  In the first store, the stunning bracelets we looked at were $9,000 to over $20,000USD.  Way.  In the next store, I found an equally beautiful one for $3,000USD… which at this point seemed like a steal.  Still.  No deal.  I’m happy to look and learn.

Just as Miami is to New York, Kunming is much more laid back than Beijing.  The locals say:  “If you wake at 6:30am in Beijing, you are lazy.  If you wake at 6:30am in Kunming, you are crazy.”  Nobody in Kunming starts work until 9 or 9:30.

On a tour today to the Stone Forest, we spent about 2 hours each way on the road, and I was surprised by how wonderful the ride was.  The highway out of Kunming is fabulous: super smooth and a really beautiful drive.  CalTrans could learn a thing or two about how to improve the 10 if they came over and talked to these folks…

OK foodies.  Our dining this week has been SO amazing.  Many variations on the theme of steamed pumpkin (steamed with tremella is especially good), lots of sauteed lotus leaf (sometimes quite soft, sometime more crunchy), to-die-for mushrooms (including wooden ear), warm corn juice, warm walnut juice (watch for this one to start appearing in Starbucks), bean paste pancakes wrapped in green tea and sesame seeds, little sardine-like fish wrapped in long, wafer thin cucumber strips, and deep fried earth worms (I did not eat the worms, but Art did, thereby confirming for the girls that “boys eat worms”)…

Off to the airport… I will post pix this weekend.  For those of you also following Cece’s blog, she will post tonight in Beijing (Friday morning in Calif).  She has MUCH to talk about.  It’s been an amazing week for her and Elle…

More surprises in Kunming as cold weather returned yesterday (drats), but… we’ve been meeting one terrific Fulbright family after another, from all over the US, many with children, and having a great time.  It’s good to connect with other families like ours, and I’ve instantly liked them all.  I suppose it helps that we all have a similar mind set… all with the same sort of need to see and learn more about China and to do whatever it takes to make it happen.  All of our lunches and dinners this week are group activities, and the Embassy has spared no expense.  We are dining at all the great places in Kunming, including, so far: Moonlight Corner Thai restaurant and the Jiamuxuan Restaurant (an old authentic, recently restored tea house, which incidentally is the building with the great paint job that I photographed yesterday).

While Art is off at his orientation sessions, the girls and I are participating in the Fulbright sponsored “family activities.”  Yesterday’s activities included a trip to Kunming’s Grand View Park (tulips abound. plus many locals practicing tai chi) and a boat ride around it’s foggy lake, then an afternoon craft session making clay rabbits (everything is about rabbits and bunnies as it’s the year of the rabbit).  The girls are thrilled to have other kids to run around with (at last count, the kid round up includes this group all close in age: Cece, Elle, Nina, Lindsey, Alison, Francesca, Jonah, Reed, Ethan and Ivan… plus adorable 4 year old Lyra-Anne… and very cool 14 year old Amelia who of course is not hanging with the young ones) and they all are literally running around the hotel… having a blast, establishing secret headquarters, swimming, etc.  I am strangely relaxed about letting them run off and out of site…

And yesterday at the pool, Mary Kaye (mom to Nina adopted from China) and Barb (mom to Lindsey and Alison, adopted domestically) and I sat and had a beer while the kids swam… talked about adoption and parenting… and facebook, of all things which I still can’t access from here.  VPN is the secret, but my work VPN doesn’t seem to be connecting, so I am going to try a different VPN utility (turns out everyone does this; cheap and easy, right off the internet).

On Friday we will all separate and go back to our respective host cities.  Only one other family returns to Beijing with us.

A few other observations this morning: 1) we are eating like royalty, and I am feeling so virtuous for all the dark greens and green tea I am consuming.  Haven’t had a diet coke or guilty bite of anything since arriving in China.  That said… Elle, who has never had a single soda pop in her life, has discovered Sprite.  2) Making up for the Sprite is the fact that the girls have watched zero TV since we arrived, and don’t seem to miss it.  3) I will never again live without an electric teakettle.  How have I survived all these years?  4) The Embassy gave us two rooms at this high end hotel, but they are not adjoining.  So this week, Art is “king for the week” with his own room down the hall, while Cece and Elle and I hold fort in the “girls room.”  The girls love this.  ; )  5) I so under-packed and now have to buy so many things that are sitting home in Redlands.  Desperate for my danskos, work out clothes and extra fleece jacket…

Locals at the Grand View Park

More tulips!

Grand View Lake view from the tower...

View 2

Courtyard of the restored tea house...

Professor Svenson

Walking back from the tea house...

Making rabbits...

Hand art...

Green Lake Hotel swimmers...

We were up and out of the apartment really (really) early on Saturday morning in order to make our flight to Kunming.  Just a 3 hour flight from Beijing, but I have to say, arriving in here is like arriving in Miami after a winter week in Toronto.  Kunming is the city of perpetual spring, and it does feel kind of jaunty that way.  Flowers everywhere (tulips, poppies, pansies, daffodils, lavender…), people strolling around the lake, and still that lingering Chinese new year holiday feeling, so we are still feeling like we are in vacation-mode, though we are here for Art’s first official business in China: his Fulbright orientation program.  That begins tonight, so more on that later.  In the meantime, we’ve been having fun exploring Kunming.  The Bird and Flower Market this morning was a hoot.  A sort of farmers’ market/flea market with beautiful produce, common house plants and all kinds of pets for sale (bunnies are popular pets this year of course)… a dirty fascinating place with delicious smells everywhere… though Art still won’t let us eat street food.  I took loads of pictures, only a few of which are posted below (I am trying to temper this blog, if that’s possible…).  Then we were off to a great vegetarian restaurant (we keep scoring great food… using the “point and shoot” method as we have no idea what the menu says, nor can we tell what the picture is… Honey, do you think that’s fish, or pig’s tongue?), then to the Yuantong Temple, with thick clouds of incense, more wonderful ceilings for me to look at, and building after building housing gigantic Buddhist deities.  We’re back here now at the Green Lake Hotel (quite nice — heavenly beds, a bathtub! and laundry service!), and Art has the girls down at the pool with several other Fulbright families, trying to wear them out a bit…

Some observations about Kunming: unusual fashion sense (will try to capture a few pix of this), everyone smokes in this town, permed hair is very, very popular, we stand out here in ways we didn’t in Beijing (Art in particular), and the one child policy is very evident.  Families everywhere out and about on this Sunday: each with one child.  I’ve never felt or observed this more vividly than here in Kunming.  Maybe I haven’t been watching closely enough…

Early morning wait at the airport. I think Art looks like a famous movie director...

Our plane. This whole scene looks like 1972 to me...

Found...

From snow to tulips...

Great farmer's market...

Daffodils for sale...

Kunming scooters...

Old China...

Bunnies for sale... she wants one bad...

Market shop...

Market art...

Yuantong Temple

Love the wood on this archway

Incense offerings...

Cece prepares her offering...

Cece's offering...

Inside the temple compound are a dozen buildings surrounded by this lake (moat?)

One of many...

Possibly the most important one at this temple...

Colorful ceiling at Yuantong Temple...

On the walk back to our hotel from the temple, this building jumped out at me: so China... yet so familiar... I see southern California here...

After the markets and temples and all that smoky incense, it was good to dunk the kids in the pool...

The sun was shining again on Friday in Beijing.  We opted to stay local in our own district (the Haidan district) and explore the Great Bell Temple, less than 5 miles from Renmin.  Like many Chinese temples, this one is a series of building that seem to go on and on… and just when you think you’ve seen it all, there’s more around the corner.  The temple is home to bells from every dynasty, displayed inside and outside, with the great bell from the Ming dynasty at the heart of it all.  As usual, for me, I can’t keep my eyes off of the ceilings (some painted, some wrapped in colorful paper) and the red paint…

Incidentally, we had the place to ourselves.  Beijing is still quiet as many folks are still off on their new year holiday.  We’ve been told this will all change next weekend when the holiday concludes and everyone is back to work…

Great Bell Temple 1

Great Bell Temple 2

Great Bell Temple 3

Great Bell Temple 4. This building houses "the" great bell...

Great Bell Temple 5

Great Bell Temple 6

4 of us with "the big bell" from the Ming Dynasty behind us...

Elle in one of the galleries. Beautiful displays...

In the hall of "friendship bells" (gifts to China from other countries), Cece located the Korean Friendship Bell and was immediately excited to share with her friend Anna...

Great Bell Temple 7

Quilt image 3