We arrived in Kunming, the capital of the colorful Yunnan province of China. The Yunnan has the largest density of Chinese minorities and is known to be very laid back and beautiful. Kunming is a rapidly modernizing Chinese city where development has driven minorities and culture out to surrounding villages and left the city feeling somewhat stale. We tried to stay in a modest hostel but the room was too smoky; we dragged our backpacks and ourselves for kilometers and failed to find a place that seemed right - finally a cab driver accidentally took us to a 5-star hotel by a lovely park with a lake and away from the congested city center (we were trying to go to Yunnan University housing). We were so exhausted that we just said screw it and stayed there. The luxury, including a 50-dish buffet breakfast, was pretty nice though certainly not what we imagined we'd be doing on this trip. The hotel had such an overwhelming Christmas theme it was unreal: the porter was Santa, Santa figurines with parachutes were hanging from the ceiling, there were Christmas trees everywhere, and Christmas songs were playing constantly. This was strange until we saw similar though less intense celebrations of Christmas throughout China - it is a sort of strangely secular commercialized holiday here, kind of like it is in the U.S. We visited the very nice Bamboo Buddhist temple where we saw stunning life-size statues (called arhats) - ~500 of them - with the most interesting (sometimes bizarre) facial expressions and great detail. We also saw the first of many people playing cards with a special gusto - they slam the cards to the table and say something like "neeeeyaaaaa" (see picture below with woman in the act) , which probably translates to "how 'ya like that" in English or "beeya bebinam" in Farsi when I play cards with my family. It was a blast to watch. Again, it was men with women, young with old, all playing together - this is an impressive aspect of Chinese culture.
Later we saw an amazing series of tunnels and temples improbably carved centuries ago from sheer mountain faces in the Dragon Gate of the Western Hills - touristy but very memorable: Madhavi and I looked down from this precarious structure and felt that drop in the stomach like we both did when we were kids and first peered down from the top of the Empire State Building.
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