Kunming: Leaving the British Empire and English

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  Kunming, Yunnan, China
Friday, November 7, 2008

I arrived in Kunming late day on Nov 5 to watch the end of the election coverage.  My first time in China, Kunming was a great entry point as it is the capital city of Yunnan province (to the east of Tibet and north of Vietnam), but is relatively lightly populated, has little pollution as all the bikes/scooters are electric and wide boulevards.  Yunnan province has many ethnic minorities, much like Tibet and Xinjiang, and would visit the Naxi town of Lijiang during my time in China.  However, it is still China, and as I soon learned not a soul speaks English, understands pantomimes, or even understands any non-Chinese person's pronunciation of Mandarin transliterations.  As Sachin had mentioned, even after a month in India and month and change on the road I finally felt like I was beginning the tough and rewarding journey that is long-term travel.  I stayed at the Hump Hostel, which is a classic backpacker's joint and was a measly $3.85/night. 

As an aside, I saw an excellent HSBC commercial while watching the election coverage that reminded me of my lovely month in India.  Some company is trying to figure out why washing machine sales are through the roof in some random town in India, so they send a rep.  He struggles to find the source of demand and suffers through the heat, food and rikshaw drivers before ending up at a random restaurant/lassi shop.  Confused, he enters for a cold beverage and the owner is elated to see the rep from the washing machine company.  He takes him to the kitchen and the washing machines are used to mix up the frothiest and tastiest lassis around.  The tagline was HSBC is the local bank and knows the people wherever they are.  Classic. 

I used my couple of days in relatively unintersting Kunming for some first class R&R and blog updating, but ended up having a rewarding and unique experience.  On Nov 6, I linked up with these Canadian dudes Dan and Conor staying at the hostel.  Dan has recently left the financial sector in Toronto and Conor, who recently completed his undergrad in biology, is delaying the inevitable and on the road for some time.  Until I met these guys, for the first time, I was feeling a form of homesickness.  In all my travels, I have never felt more useless communication-wise than in China.  My time in Kunming also coincided with the longest I had been away from the US/home.  Such questions as whether I had done the right thing, whether I could be away for such a long time entered my mind and I longed for some comforts of home like a Seinfeld rerun or a slice of pizza or a day with my family or friends.  Alas, it would take only a day or so for me to get reinvigorated for the experience that I chose. 

As part of a cure for the homesickness, and upon Dan and Conor's suggestion, I joined them to check out the new 007 movie on opening night in China.  I later found out it didn't come out in the US until a week or so later, which is pretty sweet.  Contrary to most beliefs, it was an extremely high quality (almost Blu-Ray esque as I think it was a DVD and not a reel) version with Chinese subtitles.  The theater was fully legit and when you purchase tickets you actually get an assigned seat, so you can show up just before the flick starts.  It was extremely action-packed and entertaining and I'm now sold on Daniel Craig as the new Bond.  Given the Chinese subtitles, we would react before the audience and for the few scenes in Spanish and other languages, the Chinese would laugh before we did.  It was definitely an interesting movie theater experience. 

Nov 7 reinvigorated me and really expanded my experience in China as I met and hung out with a few Chinese people.  I woke up in my dorm room to meet Yen Bin, who is studying English in Kunming, so that he may go to University in Canada.  He was a really nice guy and incredibly diligent and hard working.  He comes from a small town in Yunnan with 30,000 people where you can rent an apartment for only 50RMB a month (just over $7).  I soon came to realize that just as every other Indian in internet cafes is getting MSFT and CSCO certified, many Chinese (particularly younger ones) are voraciously trying to learn English.  It was awesome as as I asked Yen(surname is first, given name is second in their culture) for a tissue, which he did not understand, and that set off a little tutorial session where we got to "Head and shoulders, knees and toes".  He eagerly wrote down the spelling and pronunciation of everything I taught him and never needed anything repeated more than twice. 

I met up again with Dan and Conor, who were taking off for Laos later that day, for some first class 5RMB dumplings for lunch.  I spent the early part of the afternoon tearing through "Three Cups of Tea", but I'll write more on this incredible book later, before I met Shaked (Israeli), Jenni (Finnish) and Samir (Egyptian)  for a game of cards.  We played the equivalent of Chinese deuces as I got to know these three English teachers in China.  I learned a lot about teaching English abroad, and how the system works in China.  Most schools require an ethnically-Chinese teacher to chaperone the classroom (though Samir, with four years of experience, refuses), will prefer Western-looking teachers, will really belittle their students and will get into fights and talk trash about the actual English teachers in the classroom.  Most of these ethnically-Chinese teachers, who are supposed to be English teachers as well, know next-to-nothing about the language and they as well as many of the children's parents attend the class to learn themselves!

Before I met my English teaching friends, I was interrupted while reading by Wang Xiao.  He asked if I spoke English and sat down to the table with some homework.  I thought he was taking English classes, and he spoke reasonable enough English, but it turns out it was his daughter's homework and he was reviewing her answers and wanted to make sure he was right.  For the second time that day, Professor Hari came out and I spent about an hour working through sentence completion, multiple choice and reading comp questions.  It was fantastic, but also eye-opening, as I have taught many things, but it is a challenge to actually think about the language I take for granted and have known since birth.  It was also very insightful as the passages were meant to teach American English ("Dude", "Cool with that" and such colloquialisms were all over the page), but also were somewhat critical of some aspects of our culture (I didn't disagree at all).  The passages would point out ideals about being a good and worldly human, minimizing materialism and being cognizant of spiritual well-being/happiness, doing random acts of kindness and keeping face versus having courage in adversity (they recounted a Chinese moral about being a hero even if it means death versus being a coward and surviving).  Fascinating.  This day also rekindled my life of educating - whether in a formal classroom or outside - and further endorsed my respect for teachers.  Arturo, and the other teachers reading this, you are doing the great and thankless work. 

Wang invited me out for dinner with his family, and I met his wife, his adorable 16-year old daughter Fanglan and her friend Qingwen for some good Yunnan rice noodles.  The restaurant had a traditional ethnic minority dances going on with people and clothing from the various ethnicities.  Wang is an EE with a master's degree and spent two years in Italy about a decade ago and his wife is a high school geography teacher.  His family was incredibly sweet and the girls and I got along well.  They were so curious about what it was like to live in America.  Both of the girls play sports in high school and love movies/internet chatting/video games just like every other kid in the world.  Either because Dad was around or because they still maintain their wonderful innocence, neither of them would admit to having boyfriends or liking boys for that matter.  Fanglan was blown away when I described Facebook and said she wanted to check it out.  Man, kids are the best.  Fanglan wants to study economics/business in Hong Kong and then live in Europe.  Qingwen wants to study law in the US.  It was fascinating to hear all this and then learn that the lapel pin on Qingwen's school uniform was for the China Youth League.  The whole family was captivated by the US election and was keen to know who I voted for and blown away by the ability to vote absentee.  They were in awe of the ability to throw out an old and bad government peacefully, but much like everyone in China, there was a deference to the state and no mention of any of the problems with the CCP.  It dawned on me why Fanglen and Qingwen were only children and I learned from Wang that both of their families were subject to the one-child policy.  Wang's generation was not and he has a large family.  He told me that if you break the law and have a second child or more, you are slapped with extremely onerous fines (at least they don't throw your baby off a cliff!).  This will pose a huge problem for China and they are considering changing their policy as there is now a 4-2-1 crisis in the country where every child will soon have to support (either directly or through entitlements) two parents and four grandparents, since the average life expectancy is so long in China.  The conversation moved to my own culture and how India/China are slightly similar in the absolute discrepancy and dual economy between rural and urban areas.

I bid farewell to the family and exchanged emails with the kids, so I could send them pics, help them practice their rapidly improving English and give them any advice when it came time for college applications.  I then made my way to the bus station for my first overnight sleeper to the ancient and Naxi town of Lijiang.  Bus travel is not cheap in China as travel is in India, but alas, the roads are far superior!  My first fleecing happened as some station dude convinced me to pay him 10RMB per kilo gas charge for my luggage (I later found out this is complete BS).  Thankfully, I only had my small backpack and left Big Bertha in the Hump Hostel since I would come back through Kunming!  Onwards and upwards...

My time in Lijiang would also allow me to go for a strenuous hike through the Tiger Leaping Gorge.  Man was it beautiful. 

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