Bambulehdon Tarinoita: Yunnan in December 2023

Yunnan tour

I had my first winter vacation while working in Macau in the late December of 2023 and I decided to go to Yunnan. During my first trip to China in the spring of 1986 I had a plan to visit Kunming but in those days, it was so difficult and slow to purchase train tickets that I had to abandon the plan. Now almost 38 years later I finally made my way there and even deeper to Yunnan. I didn’t see much of Kunming but I saw something else that I really liked. Here’s the story. With some other background in the beginning as well.

Guangzhou

I studied in Guangzhou in late 1987 for about 5 months so it was very interesting to go back there. This time I only stayed there for one night on my way to Yunnan and I had previously stayed there for one night as well as I went to meet my old friend from Finland who was on business trip there.

The first night I splashed out some money to stay in a 5 star China hotel. When I studied there, this was one of the top hotels in the city and in those days, I had decided that one time in the future I will spend a night there. It cost around 100€ for which money I wouldn’t be able to get a 4 star hotel in Finland.

China hotel - my room

I didn’t have much time do do anything before seeing my friend as Saturday happened to be a working day and I could only leave Macau in the late afternoon. I reached the hotel at around 6 and met my friend and his business associate at around 7.30 and then we took a taxi to the Pearl river to have dinner there. After the dinner we had a walk along the river and then returned to the hotel.

The Pearl -river in the evening

The next day I went to have a walk around the Shamian island where I had spent many good evenings during my study time, mostly on Saturdays as the university was so far away from this area and no metro in those days. This area hadn’t changed much, which is not the case with the rest of the city. I also took some photos as I had promised to do so to an ex-student of mine, who had been adopted from China when she was two. The adoption had taken place here and she had visited the place once after that and had some memories from the last visit. Actually it was very nice feeling for me as well to visit this place and see quite a lot of unchanged things there.