It's Better to Rest Here for A While

(Mark)

This has been such a long day that I BARELY even remember the morning, but fortunately I took a few notes that should help…

We had to wake up relatively early this morning, as we had to be in the lobby with our bags, ready to check out by 9 AM. I headed down to breakfast early, then went back down with Lianna when she was ready. Fortunately, I was feeling fully recovered from yesterday, but Lianna still wasn’t feeling her best, and thus didn’t eat much. Anyway, after breakfast, we headed out to meet Michael, and hopped in for the first of two hour-long drives. The drive took us out of the main city (which is quite nice, by the way), through a countryside of rolling fields and farmlands, to the small village of Yang Zong, named for the lake around which it is situated. The village actually boasts a variety of different things. For one thing, the soil is full of iron, which generally makes it hard to grow anything, but allows tobacco and tea to thrive. These two crops are thus the two biggest exports of the village (and I think the province as a whole). There was also what looked like a nuclear power plant on the outskirts of the village; it had two large reactor things that you always see in textbooks and such. Michael laughed at us when we asked if they were nuclear, saying “it would be dangerous to have them that close to the road.” He told us that it WAS a power plant, but that it produced power from the coal… not really sure what that means or how it works, but he didn’t seem able to explain any further. Michael also told us that the golf course renowned as the best in the province was nearby. He also told us that golf was actually once an abbreviation, standing for “Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden,” but that now it commonly referred to as “Grass, Oxygen, Light, Friendship.”

The main attraction of the village, for us at least, was an embroidery museum, where they made and displayed all kinds of things, including pictures, carpets, and clothing. It was actually quite amazing. We walked in and were greeted by a woman who was once an English teacher. She told us that everything in the museum was made by her family, and proceeded to take us around and tell us about the displays. The pictures were much like what we’d seen at the Chen Family House; completely silk embroidered, with amazing detail and color. As we walked through the gallery, she told us how long each picture took to make. Some took only one month, while some took up to eleven months. The longer ones were much more detailed, and often featured people. One human face alone takes about one month to embroider with detail. There were pictures of everything—ships, the Great Wall, and even a remake of the Mona Lisa. She then brought us to the carpet-making part of the museum. Some of the carpets (those meant for decoration, not for walking on) were even more detailed than the pictures. She told us these took up to two and a half years to make (can you imagine spending that long working on the SAME thing every day?). When we noticed a half-complete carpet featuring a dragon, we realized just how renowned the embroidery of this family must be, as it was specially ordered from Israel. After the carpets we headed to the gift shop, which featured shirts, shoes, and many other trinkets, which, she told us, were all made completely from hemp.

After that, we got back in the van for another hour-long drive to the stone forest. Attractions along the way included the China’s first-ever international railway. Funded by the French, engineered by the Italians, and built by the Chinese, the 865 km (1392 miles) railway snakes through the mountains from Kunming to the capital of Vietnam. Oh yeah, and there was also the minor inconvenience of a bridge being closed, and our driver clearly not knowing how to go around it. We ended up going through another small village, though this one was much worse off—it was completely filled with slum-like houses, and the roads were BARELY big enough for our van (much less two lanes of traffic). We made it through though, and continued to the stone forest. We stopped for lunch on the way, which was as delicious as ever (though much too big, especially as Lianna still wasn’t feeling up to eating much). We had our second experience with a whole fish being placed on the table, but just as last time, it was quite delicious.

After lunch, we made our way into the stone forest. At first, we didn’t really know what we were getting ourselves into. At the entrance, there was a small pond with a bunch of rocks sticking out of it. Apparently, the rocks were completely natural, but the water was added when Zhou Enlai toured the forest and said it would be more feng-shui with it (rocks are positive and water is negative. Or the other way around. Can’t remember which). We then proceeded up a staircase made of stone, which was very slippery, as it had been raining recently, to a small pagoda from which we could see all of the stone forest. We were shocked at what we saw.  The stone forest covers an area of 360 square kilometers. Within that area are some of the strangest, yet coolest, rock formations on Earth. A few years ago, a blogger described the forest as something out of Lord of the Rings; when we saw it, that was EXACTLY what Alex and I jumped to, particularly the scenes around Mordor, though without the volcano and black clouds and such. The stairs are comparable to the path up to Shilob’s lair, both in size and slipperiness. Anyway, the rocks are completely natural, and, if I understood a sign correctly, are made of limestone from corals over 200 million years ago. There are now pathways running all through the forest, though in some parts they were barely wide enough for us to fit through them. As we made our way through the forest, we felt like celebrities; at one point we were mauled by a crowd of eager Chinese, all of whom wanted pictures with us, one by one. After escaping that crowd, a pair of Chinese girls who wanted their own picture with him grabbed Alex, and Lianna was snatched up by a teen dressed in a pimp outfit. We FINALLY made it through that crowd, though not alone. We soon discovered that we were being followed by a pair of old Chinese women (we weren’t just being paranoid, they LITERALLY followed our every move…at one point, we had to turn around, and they were RIGHT behind us and turned around as soon as they saw us do so). So that all was a little funny. We thus made our way through the forest, doing all the things that Chinese tourists were doing—touching certain rock formations for health, luck, and safe travels, and sitting on one that’s supposed to make you immortal (hence the title of this blog).

By the end of that walk, we were all pretty tired, and didn’t notice much of the “small” stone forest, which was basically just the path to the park exit. We did encounter a group of minority people, however, who were having some kind of celebration that involved chanting, dancing, and playing a guitar-like instrument with only three strings, and drum as a body. After all that, we finally headed back to the van, which took us aaaaaall the way back to Kunming, and then to the airport. We arrived quite early, and ended up having an hour and a half just to chill. About 4 hours after we left the stone forest, we finally boarded the plane for a whopping 50 minute flight that took us to Lijiang. 

You will probably not be reading this until well after we’ve left Kunming, as the hotel here does not have internet in the rooms, and charges 150 RMB for one hour down in the entertainment center. Oh well. It is now almost midnight, and I think I’ve given enough detail to this entry (am I right dad?), so I shall say good night.