We were very keen to see a rural and scenic part of China; Yunnan seemed to fit the bill. We’d see interesting places.
We’d meet interesting people.
There would be opportunities to do some wonderful walks.
We could stay in high quality hotels; unlike our fascinating but hardy experience in Tibet eight years earlier. Steppes East put together an excellent itinerary for us – here it is available for download: Harris – Final itin dep 4 Apr 2010.
We took some great pictures, divided into three albums:
As usual, there are loads of notes waiting to be written up properly. If you are desperate to see them and try to decipher them before I get there – feel free to download and have a go:
Packed and took breakfast at DuGe – quirky & good in parts. Peppery sausages were nice.
Sophie met us and took us off to see the Olympic stadium (birds nest) and then on to Chinese medicine centre.
We met lecturer Doctor Hu (you couldn’t make it up) who told us all about it and insisted that Ged must be Shakespeare reincarnated.
Uncanny resemblance.
Dr Hu also arranged for some trainees to massage our feet and for an aged professor to tell us what ails us & sell us some very expensive Chinese medicine cocktails, which we politely declined.
Hardly able to walk now (okay I made up that last bit) we wandered to back to the car and headed off to 798 district – art complex formally factories.
Some very interesting some not so interesting but all a great atmosphere.
Took some refreshments at an outdoor café, then off to the airport.
First class flight Kunming – service excellent, food terrible.
Met by Martin “Mr Fixit” who insists I look like a movie star he cannot name – Lucien from Underworld – that’s Michael Sheen.
Kind words, Martin – in my dreams I look like him – click the picture to see the fandom wiki
Took us to surprisingly splendid Green Lake Hotel and even hung around to help us order our dinner.
Ate some local style pork and Cantonese chicken, gai lan and rice washed down with a very palatable Montepulciano.
We did a little bit more sightseeing in Beijing before dashing to the airport for an internal flight to Nanjing.
Lama Temple
18th – Beijing to Nanjing – went to Lama Temple & briefly Confuzi Temple. Then on to airport for flight to Nanjing*…
*amazing business moving us from Gate 16 to Gate 19 & then back across the tarmac
I think this is the Confuzi Temple but this photo was not labelled at the time, so I might be getting “confuzied”
I remember the business at the airport, because we were solemnly told we needed to relocate to another gate in order to be in close proximity to our plane, then ended up wandering rather haphazardly across the tarmac to our plane, which was close to the original gate. Frankly that was one of my lesser health and safety concerns about the internal flights back then – more on that topic anon.
…straight on to coaches for trip to amazing bird market and then on to hotel – 5-star Jinling Hotel.
As yes, the bird market.
Live birds…
…not only birds…
…and many deceased birds on sticks
Janie and I found it fascinating and I’m sure these days Janie would have taken dozens and dozens of photographs there. Still, enough above to give you an idea. Some of our fellow tourists found the place unsettling; it certainly didn’t smell like a place where you’d want to try the street food. It’s probably highly regulated and much safer hygeine-wise now.
Dig the rabbit-skin hat and rattan slippers. I still have that short- sleeved shirt in my “holiday collection” 25 years later.
My memory had Janie’s hairdryer debacle happening in this hotel, but my notes have now sent me to the Holiday Inn Beijing for the electrical debacle and I now recall that the incident occurred before our peking duck dinner, not before the music concert, so I have moved that anecdote to the previous day’s write up – click here or below:
…we only had one of the two scheduled days in Beijing, at the start of our 1993 China tour.
Never mind. Kuoni would try to squeeze as much into one day as is humanly possible…possibly more than that.
Forbidden City
No time to hang around in the throne room
Closonet Factory
17th – Beijing – went to Tianenmen Square and Forbidden City in morning – then closonet factory – then lunch on the way to Great Wall – food slightly spicy this time but still more Cantonese style than Beijingese. Great Wall in afternoon – walked up a bit bought a rabbit skin hat on the way up for ¥10.7 (£1.30) – straight back for Peking Duck dinner. [indecipherable added note]. Mr Poll Tax explained how to complain about anything.
Great Wall
Ah, so the Peking Duck was the second night, not the first night…still, everything I wrote about the Peking Duck meal (and the Park Inn) still applies.
My abiding memory of getting ready to go out for that meal was Janie’s hairdryer moment. I don’t mean her chewing me out Alex Ferguson style – that sort of hairdryer moment would be more predictable than memorable – no, I mean the moment when Janie, who insisted on schlepping her own hairdryer half way around the world, plugged in said hairdryer and made an entire Holiday Inn’s electricity go “pop”.
OK, it is JUST possible that something else in the hotel made the electricity go pop at the precise moment that Janie flicked her hairdryer switch…but what are the chances of that happening?
I don’t think Janie dared try to use her hairdryer again until we got to Hong Kong.
The Thomas Edison Award for electrical cabling – the Holiday Inn Beijing
I don’t remember much about Mr Poll Tax but I suspect he was a seasoned, semi-professional complainer.
All the photos we took on that big day – just 17 between the two of us would you believe – in those days it was rolls of film and rationing our supplies – can be seen in raw form in the Flickr album below:
