Kunming is a nice tropical area so for the first day in two
weeks we had beautiful sun and warm weather. The only activity for the day was
going to the Stone Forest. On the way our guide gave us the introduction of Kunming
and the area. It’s about 7 million people and is home to a ton of minority
groups. He said of the 55 minority groups in China 22 of them live in the
Kunming area. It’s also one of the worst cities for traffic but all cities in
china are bad for traffic. They’re a well off area though, about half the
families own a car, whereas most other cities the ratio is closer to 1 in 10.
Still a couple million cars in one city will lead to some horrific rush hours.
He said he was stuck in traffic with a friend one time. They watched as the
lady got out of the car in front of them, walked over to the noddle shop, ate
some noodles and came back 20 minutes later where no one had moved at all.
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| Stone Forest in Kunming |
The Stone Forest was beautiful and very appropriately named.
It’s this collection of giant stones that literally just pop out of the ground
like trees. It’s very very cool. I wish we had had more time to explore there.
It was very cool though, one of the local minority groups was in the middle of
its spring festival so there were people everywhere dressed in traditional
costumes and children in colorful hats and it was super cute.
That night there was an optional performance on at the
theater. We had the option to see several shows throughout the trip but they
all cost like 200yuan and I hadn’t budgeted for that sort of expense in every
city (and of course they claim that every single show is the best show in
China!) This one caught my attention though because it was longer than the rest
of them (two hours long instead of just one), it had won actual awards and had
toured internationally so I figured this might be the one actually worth
seeing. (I heard the show we missed in Guilin with the lights was also spectacular
for future reference) The show was called “Shangrila Dynamic Yunnan” it was a
show that featured different songs and dances from the various minority groups
in the area.
The star of the show was this lady, when I saw her picture on the
brochure she was so skinny I thought it was photo shopped. But no, after the
show we found out she had actually had surgery to remove two of her ribs to
attain that skinny super curvy look. She was pretty spectacular though, she
could twist and dance like no one I’ve ever seen. The other sort of star was
this little girl they used in several of the acts, she was the cutest darn
thing that ever happened. The last act of the show was this peacock dance which
was one of the most elegant things I’ve ever seen. It was a fantastic show.
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