Yunan to Tibet

 

  We drove to the city of Jianshui with it's beautiful walled center.  The guest house was a nice traditional house just outside the walled city.  Very modern and comfortable, Hanlinyuan hôtel.     Jardin de la famille Zhu. Le plus beau jardin et bâtiment de la ville de Jianshui qui construit au début du 20ème siècle par un commerçant très riche, ce jardin de 20,000 m² dispose de 214 pièces, 42 grandes et petites cours.    A beautiful rock terrarium with bonsai.  This woman is posing in historical costumes and this is something that tourist all over China are doing.  There are stores upon stores of costumes that are rented out and photographs that will document your day in the colorful dress.       The biggest gighlight in the bamboo house  is the carved gate with Chrysanthemum pattern.  It is divided nto five secctions with their own individual meanng, the heaven, the feet, the upper abdomen, the lower skirt and the ...

     Nichée au cœur des montagnes du Yunnan, Yuanyang abrite les plus grandes et les plus belles terrasses de rizières de Chine, un chef-d'œuvre façonné patiemment par la tradition agricole Hani sur plusieurs siècles. Le panorama de ces miroirs d'émeraude et d'argent change de couleur avec la lumière du jour, offrant au lever et au coucher du soleil une danse envoûtante de nuances dorées, rosées et azurées. Les petits villages parsemés sur les collines, peuplés des minorités ethniques Hani et Yi, ajoutent à la splendeur naturelle une dimension culturelle rich. I bought a Hani shirt that I wear today.  Jean Luc fell into a rice pattie and there are more toilets available here in the village than in Paris. The chinese appreciate mushrooms and in their folklore they can bring immortality.  Here are some of the strange mushrooms that we saw en route in small shops.  The red river flows through this area and into the golf of Tonking though Vietnam.  

  This is an unusual geological formation in the countryside outside of Kunming.   Now the reason why this is popular is that Ashima is the heroine of a famous Chinese story , where she was kidnapped, forced to marry a guy, but then freed by her true love. However she died in a flood and turned into this rock. Looking at the rock, you’d think that she’s facing towards the right, and has a really big chin, but actually she’s looking towards the left, and has a large bamboo basket on her back.    Here are more photos of the rock formations:  

 We arrived in Kunming to find that my luggage was missing.  We reported it but spent quite a bit of time with agents looking too.  We used our Google translate because not many people speak english here. This luggage problem will follow us for 5 days and I spent some time that first day shopping at a little mall in Kunming not far from our hotel.  The place was emptybut it had some fine shops like Calvin Klein and Uniqlo.  I was able to get a few things to hold me over but just so you know Air China didn't reimburse anything we did get reimbursed by American Express which insures most of our trips when we buy the ticket with them. Enough of that business. The first day we went to a beautiful temple in the city, these little guardian dogs surrounded the place.  We both slept well that night after meeting Jean Luc at the hotel.