Crossing the mountains of Lijiang: part 3

The second school

Curious Kids

Playing field

 The second school was about a half an hour drive away through some of the most terrifying road I have been on. We had a driver who though he was an extra from wacky races and cliff on both sides of the car. It was a hair raising experience. When we arrived at the school we told the driver about our silent screaming and clinging to each other and he couldn't stop laughing at us.

The second school was a boarding school with about 100 students aged between 6 and 15. Just after we arrived we were treated to lunch of chicken and veg and some homemade rice alcohol, one of which was tasty and the other not so tasty. The alcohol burnt for a long time after drinking, in true rice wine tradition.



Grade One

Kevin suddenly announced that he wanted us to teach a 40 minute class in five minutes time. Several break downs in communication this weekend! Anyway, I pulled a lesson out of thin air and taught Grade One (six to seven years old) who all seemed to enjoy the class. I only managed to teach them "hello", "goodbye" and "one to ten" but we had a giggle and their regular teacher seemed to have had a laugh too. I bullied him into playing basketball and the kids thought it was hilarious when their teacher was rubbish.

After the class we gave out new school bags and pencil cases to each of the students and sporting equipment to the whole playground. We felt sorry for some of the kids as only about half of them got the cool back packs and the rest got the crummy Shane ones. we tried to even things up by giving the kids with the boring back packs the more interesting pencil cases but it didn't always work. After the gift dolling out we went and played football on the playground, but first we had to clear the broken bunk beds and oil drums off the pitch. We were at some serious altitude so running about nearly killed us. I only played badminton for about fifteen minutes but it made a huge difference. We packed up, said goodbye to the kids and teachers and piled back into the cars to make our way back to Lijiang and our return train. We were scared stupid for the return journey but our driver was much nicer and drove like a nun. 5 hours in a car and we were all shattered and looking forward to nothing but bed. We stopped a few times on the way home to take some pictures of the view, which was amazing!

Mountains, just in case you were wondering.

Back in Lijiang Kevin took us for one final meal, a famous fish restaurant by the old town, so we tucked into the speciality dish of raw salmon slices and dipping sauce. I think Nat and I finish a whole plate between us, it was so tasty. Also the restaurant had an automatic Lazy Susan so the food just kept wandering past looking tasty, it just wasn't our fault.

The train was due to leave at 10:30 and I was tucked up in the bunk by 10:15, I only woke up as we pulled into Kunming station.

The road we travelled

A shattering weekend but I am so glad we were given the opportunity to see the schools. We have now set up a charity organisation in the school to try and help out and raise money from within Shane. Fingers crossed we will be able to help out.

Cossing the mountains of LiJiang: Part 2

Day 2 of our trip started earl in the morning, long before the sun was up. We piled into a car and tried to get some sleep. we failed as the road soon became twisty and roller coaster like. The three of us on the back seat kept smashing into each other and so no sleep was had by anyone.

We travelled for about three hours before stopping for breakfast in a tiny place in the middle of nowhere. Four foreigners in this little town at the crack of dawn caused quite a stir and the locals seemed quite excited/confused.

Another hour in the car and we arrived at the first school. A primary school with only ten students, one classroom and a small courtyard perched on the side of a mountain. We turned up armed with basketballs, badminton rackets, pencil cases and skipping ropes and met the kids. Their teacher has been teaching in this school for the last seventeen years and he is in charge of the donations and money the school get, he has to split up and dish out the cash.


We kicked balls about with the kids for a while and then Stefan taught them for about twenty minutes.

One of the students took us ten minutes down the hill to see the house where she lives with her Grandmother and brother. there were about four or five little houses or huts in a collection and a  bunch of animal pens. Most of the land in the mountains is too rocky to grow anything so the majority of people make money with their animals and sell them once or twice a year for meat. The parents are usually off in local cities sending money back when they can.

A few minutes looking about her house and the area and we were back to the school to take about a thousand photos and say goodbye to the kids. We were off to another school, this time a boarding school further round the valley.

Crossing the mountains of Lijiang, (part one)

Back story: The school I work for is involved in a charity organisation that supports several rural mountain schools in northern Yunnan. Our school has been helping them out for about 4 years and this year foreign staff were invited on a trip to met the kids, visit the school and deliver some school supplies and sporting equipment that the school was donating. No-one else in our school was interested so Nat and I jumped at the chance to get another trip and see somewhere we would never have been able to get to otherwise.


Snow Mountain

We met at the train station on the Sunday night, already a little shattered after a weekend at work but ready for our 8 hour journey to LiJiang. From the western staff it was just Nat and I from DianChi (our school) and Stefan and Harriet from TaoYuan (the older school) plus about 6 Chinese staff and the big boss Kevin so we made a fair size group.

I've been to LiJiang before but not in a long time so I couldn't remember much of the place. It turned out we were staying in ShuHu which is about 20 minutes away and coincidentally where we went for my first Christmas away. We were staying in a little hostel somewhere though a  maze of alleyways and fences. The place was really nice and had some comfortable and cosy bed, so we were happy.



Dr Ho

Kevin played tour guide for most of the day and we had a jam packed day. Our first stop was another village called BaiShan (I think) in which we went to meet a local Doctor who has become something of a celebrity. This guy has met hundreds of very important people including Michael Palin, members of European royal families and more. He is a 94 years old and has fantastic self taught English. He made us all take pictures of his advice for a long and healthy life, picture here. Basically don't drink/smoke/stay up late/eat meat or sugar and drink lots of herbal tea, we might have to make a few adjustments to our lives?!


Then we shipped off to meet the woman who live somewhere just outside of Lijiang who organises all of the charity donations and fund raising for most of Yunnan. From her we picked up all of the stuff were taking to the kids the following day.

Our final stop was old town LiJiang where we were set free to wander about and explore. Kevin had taken us for a huge meal so Nat and I were walkign very slowly and slightly uncomfortably, also by this time we were completely shattered and as it was nearly the evening we didn't spend much time there. Nat and I got very lost and had to stop in a tourist information and look at at map, we were only about a 40 minute walk from where we wanted to be. The lesson here, Nat's directional instincts are not as great as first though, always consult a map! We were basically in the old town long enough to wander about and buy some yac steak pieces.

We headed back to the hostel and decided on an early night as we had to leave at about 4am the following morning.




DianChi does DaLi

Having been re bitten with the mini trip adventure bug, I was keen to get out of Kunming for the weekend again. So we got straight to work on the next one and decided on the old faithful DaLi.

Pretty much the same group of us who stormed LuoPing, plus a few additions, made the epic journey on the overnight sleeper train to the neighbouring city. We jumped on the train with my own special brand of specialised coke/sprite/Pepsi (with a little something added to help with the stresses of the journey).

After the recent attack at the station we were advised to get there a little early because of all the extra security checks. We only came across a few extra guys with big sticks and a little more of a touchy feely guy at the metal detectors.

Anyway, no problems and we were on the train bickering about who has to clamber up onto the top bunks. We ended up in the part between the carriages as we were being too noisy and before going to bed we were told off a further three times by slightly grumpy and pissed off looking train security guard who was obviously not enjoying his job that night.

Anyway we arrived and jumped into a little mini bus thingy and headed for the old town. getting close we realised that there was a festival in the process and the roads were closed off, so we had to walk the last part.

Having been to and witnessed several Chinese festivals I know that I don't particularly like them. The majority of the stuff available is inflatable hammers, candy floss, silly hats and so on so I avoided like the plague. Apparently it is one of the longest running annual festivals in China but this may have been made up to make the thing seem more impressive or it may have been true, who knows!

As is always the case when we head away as a group, things tend t get childish. David for example taking an iron on a 24 hour trip and ironing his trousers on the bed earen his the name Press Man and an elaborate back story involving radioactive irons was invented. Also a mammouth crap joke and pun sesson was started, which thanks to Mam and Dad I was more than prepared for.

We did all of the DaLi essentials, Bad Monkey breakfast and beer (not at the same time of course), shopping for silly earrings and jewellery, the bakery and a relatively new addition to the DaLi routine, an e-bike trip to the lake. I am not hugely confident on e-bikes so the first and last part of the trip are usually pretty hair raising. About the lake though is a very quiet and chilled out road so we can take it easy and chilled. Sadly on the way back we got lost and ended up in the middle of the festival i was telling you about earlier. The road was basically a car park with buses honking horns everywhere. As we squeezed through the tiny gaps between buses and truck, all I could think of was the scene in Star Wars where the walls begin to close in on them. It was not a pleasant experience and I took my bike back to the shop feeling a little frazzled and so thankful to be on feet again and not wheels.

Being a mini-adventure, we were back on the train the following evening heading back for Kunming.

Mellow Yellow in LuoPing

Just a few pictures were taken. 

Me and Nat sporting this years must have hat.

LuoPing is a little place about a 4 hour drive from Kunming, which for a few months a year is swarming with tourists and travellers attracted by the blooming Rape Seed flowers. There are only two or three months a year in which these flowers bloom and suddenly the whole countryside is turned yellow as far as the eye can see.



Mound/hilly outcrops

Six of us packed up and made the journey in style, in our rented van complete with driver, for a mini weekend trip away. Day one was filled with views of flowers and plagued with bees. The weather was fantastic so we managed to get some beautiful photos. There seems to be one very famous scenic point which was rammed with people. If you google LuoPing it seems to be this one place that comes up first. We were dropped off for a few hours whilst our driver went for a snooze in the van. The area is a huge expanse of fields of flowers with little mound/hilly outcrops all over the place, which gives the area a bit of a weird look. There was also a much larger and higher viewing platform which involved a heck of a climb. About twenty minutes later and on our hands and knees we crawled onto the platform and posed for photos from all directions. The whole place smelled like a car full of little tree air fresheners with millions of bees swarming in all directions. we were told that if a bee landed on us we were told to just leave it be and not swat at it or that would piss it off, I could understand that people hitting me upsets me too. We spent the entire time we were at the flowers covered in bees and feeling a little nervous. Only David managed to get stung much to his disgust and our amusement and relief. Because of all the bees the area was literally dripping in honey, most of which we sampled, and I left with some fantastic honey for my breakfast toast.


The view was incredible and unlike anything I have seen in China to date. Our pictures inspired a whole host of people from Kunming to make the journey and now almost everyone has visited the flowers in bloom.


One of my old TA's is from LuoPing town which was about half an hour from this flowers scenic area and she had found us a hotel to stay in for the night. The whole town was about four streets big and yet somehow it still took us ages to find the hotel.

The next morning we got up and the weather had changed from beautiful blue skies to cloudy and sometimes drizzly, so we headed off for the JiuLong waterfall (Nine Dragon waterfall). From the car park it was about a twenty minute walk along the river to the main waterfall. Luckily the weather stayed dry and we managed to get some nice pics and a pretty decent view. It had got a little colder so coats were broken out and we carried on in true tourist mode. The tallest of the waterfalls had a large pool at the bottom with little bamboo boats floating about for our photographic and seafaring needs. We jumped on the boat and the Chinese couple with us, who were scared of falling in, stayed on the shore and watched us giggling.



Not sure what David is doing.

We left the waterfall a little cold and damp and started our journey back to Kunming. We only had one more stop on the way, other than dinner of course, and that was at the terraces a little way out of the town. We drove up the side of a mountain and through many little windy and too narrow feeling roads and eventually came across a collection of other people and buses parked at the side of the road. the view was amazing and the pictures don't even do it a little justice. The terraces were all swirly little patterns and cool shapes making silly little face shapes in the yellow. Several hours later we were back in Kunming and still seeing yellow everywhere we looked.

Things got a little childish

It only took three years but i finally made it to LuoPing and I am so glad we got out butts into gear and organised the trip. A shattering but good trip was had by all.




I confess, it has been 7 months since my last post.

Seven months has passed without a single word from the team here at Claire vs. China and for that we apologise. Of course it being only me here has made things a little more difficult and the Internet blocking and VPN nightmare for the last few months has not helped an already over stretched and stressed team here in Kunming HQ.

Anyway, enough apologising....on with the story.

I left off (in October) travelling somewhere between Qingdao and Beijing. Its only a 4 hour train journey by bullet train so I figured all would be all hunkey dorey and relaxing good fun, however I did manage to overlook the fact that i would be travelling on October the First, National Day and day one of Golden week. One of the busiest day to travel in the Chinese calender. I stupidly figured that most people would have already travelled and I thought I would be OK. I was very wrong! Hundreds of people crammed into a train station waiting area all fighting for the non existent spare seats and one one toilet (not loads of imagination required to guess what that was like), most people were perched on bags slurping pot noodles and just getting in other peoples, also eating pot noodles, way. I had a seat on the train so I wasn't too concerned about the train part but getting there was something else. Take my advice, NEVER travel on the first of October!

4 slightly cramped and uncomfortable hours later I arrived back into Beijing and headed straight to SanLiTun Hostel. The hostel itself has barely changed in the three years I have been going there, and it has a homecoming feel every time I arrive. It helps though when the staff come running to meet you in a flying hug, thank you Candy!

Beijing was my last stop on my mini adventure before heading back to Kunming and back to work, so I was determined to do as little as humanly possible and just chill for a few days. I checked into a 4 person dorm room and was immediately adopted by a group of friends travelling about who decided I needed to be added to a group. To make the world seem even smaller I met a guy in the bar one morning who I had talking into moving to China three years before. We were both staying in the same hostel, me on  a break from Shenyang and he on a little fact finding tour holiday, we got chatting one evening and apparently I can be persuasive when I want to be. Slightly scary and coincidental but really nice to see a familiar face.

My few days in Beijing were spent sat on the decking with a beer or sitting in various bars across the area with a beer. Chilled out was what I needed and chilled out

was what I got. The guys were new to the area so I put on my tour guide hat and took them to all the old haunts, we also did more shopping than I have ever done with anyone else. Huge backpacks were filled after every trip to a market, it was incredible to watch.

But sadly my trip was coming to a close much faster than I would have liked and I had to get on a plane and return to the teaching lifestyle. Beijing in possibly my favourite city in China so I know I will be back.