Thursday was the first day in a solid week without rain, so I took the opportunity to run around outside taking pictures after I was finished with Chinese stuff for the day. I went with a few others walking around Culture Street and then ended up at Green Lake again, this time before the sun went down. For some reason I don't tend to see many foreigners at all outside of the university and culture street. Even when I go downtown there are barely any foreigners to be seen, even though they are everywhere on Culture Street. Anyways, I got home Thursday night just as the sun was setting and I ate the most amazing cup of instant noodles ever! They were seafood flavored and had cabbage that was crunchy and squid that was chewy and imitation crab that was soft. It was delicious. Friday morning I felt pretty funny because of laduzi and ended up going home partway through morning class. I felt better by afternoon class though. Friday afternoon during language partner time I went with some other people and their language partners to visit Kunming's twin pagodas. On the way we stopped by Kunming's famous gates at the center of the city. One gate has horses all over it and the other has chickens. Karolyn met us at the pagodas, which were on either side of a long plaza of restaurants and souvenir shops. The West and East pagodas were built in the ancient city of Kunming during the Tang Dynasty, in the 800s CE, I believe before Han Chinese people were really present in the area. The pagodas, towering probably 20 stories tall, were each part of a Buddhist temple. Both pagodas have been destroyed and rebuilt over the years, but they impressively survived the Cultural Revolution. We visited the West Pagoda first, where my language partner met up with us. we took some pictures and walked across the plaza to the East Pagoda just as a thunderstorm rolled in. we took shelter outside of a building in the little park where some old people were playing games and hanging out. Once the rain lightened up we headed back to the university. Yesterday (Saturday) was another day trip like Shilin. This time we went to Jiuxiang, which is a series of caverns about 2 hours away from Kunming. We stopped for lunch on the way at another tourist-trap restaurant, where we also had Yunnan roast duck, this time with the cooked duck head on the plate too (for show, not for eats). It was pretty much the same kind of food that we had two weeks ago on our way to Shilin. We arrived at Jiuxiang in the early afternoon. Again this place was a bit of a tourist trap and we were the only foreigners around, but I liked this trip better than Shilin. First we took an elevator down to the valley floor, where there is a sub-sub-branch of the Pearl River. We then got to pile into rowboats and paddle up and down the river. Along the way there were a lot of Chinese tourists in other boats taking photos of us, but unlike Shilin we just decided to be friendly and wave hello to them, which is more fun anyways. We thought the rowboats were going to get us to the caves, but it turned out just to be a ride up the river and back. Still fun though. Then we descended into the caverns, which were enormous. From the riverbed to the ceiling of this cavern entrance must have been 20 stories tall. The rock formations inside were lit up all different colors and the walkway was paved and pretty nice. It felt a bit like going to wait in line at a Disney attraction, except without the ambient cave music. I missed some of the details about the caverns and how they were formed, but I believe it's similar to Shilin with how millions of years ago (I think even before dinosaurs) an ancient river started carving out what is now the valley and movements in the earth's crust helped shape the caverns. Throughout the caverns I became increasingly impressed with my camera's ability to take low-light shots, and I got some good pictures down there. At one point we came across a huge hole in the cave that was the size and shape of a train terminal, complete with an underground snack bar and souvenir shops. We also saw some cool underground pools and waterfalls, which were really roaring since this is the flooding season. At the end we climbed up several hundred stairs through a man-made tunnel to resurface and then take a chairlift ride back to the park entrance. Weeee~ Luckily the weather cooperated with us the whole day. At one point there was a pretty heavy shower that we could see from inside one of the caves, but once we were finished exploring there the rain had stopped. The park was really crowded with tourists but we all managed to stay with our group. I figured that now that summer vacation for Chinese students is in full swing, there would be more crowds at the tourist spots. There's a phrase I learned in Chinese class before that's come up again this week: "人山人海，" or "people mountain people sea," which refers to huge crowds of people. Jiuxiang yesterday probably wasn't really a people mountain people sea, but our tour guide said that yesterday was the most crowded day she had ever been there. Pictures will come soon :D Today (Sunday) I think there were plans to go to KTV. My roommate was super sick yesterday with food poisoning though (no clue how she made it through the caverns), so I guess today is a play-it-by-ear kind of day. I am looking forward to KTVing at some point though. I also need to start getting souvenirs and gifs for people...hm.
