A Short Letter Home: It's a small world...

Friday, October 06, 2006

It's a small world...

Flashback: Saturday, September 30th, 2006
Today we made some lemonade. Kunming is, or at least has been, our city of retreat. We have gone there to meet with our colleagues, get some Western food and generally have a good time. So we've started to take notice of potentially interesting things to see and do in town. One of the things we had slated to do this year is visit theYunnan Nationalities Villages park. Well, we really weren't in town to relax or have a good time, but we were in town after all. So Yau Neih suggested that we should take advantage of the opportunity, postpone school (which had been already postponed from Thursday) and make the time to check out the park.

We figured out the bus connections and headed out after breakfast. The park is located on the south end of the city, on the shores of Lake Dianchi. We were at a slight disadvantage being illiterate. We had to keep one eye on the map and the other on whatever landmarks we could make out. We managed to make our connection all right, but ended up overshooting the park entrance. Fortunately the end of the bus line was not too far from the entrance and we got off there and walked back.

I probably should comment here on the minority phenomenon. Unlike the U.S., where we often make note of where our ancestors have hailed from, the majority of Chinese are a single ethnicity, the Han. There are minority ethnic groups, usually living on the edges of the country. A large number of them live in Yunnan, mostly having been pushed there over the centuries as the Han have prospered and expanded. The nearest U.S. analogy of which I can think is that of our relationship with the various Native American nations. Anyway, in Yunnan, the ethnic minorities seem to be the province's claim to fame. There are coffee table books in the bookstores and little minority dolls in all the gift shops. Having a minority theme park in the provincial capital makes perfect sense. To me, anyway.

So, we arrived at the park. From what the brochures said, this land has been set aside and members of each participating group have built homes, temples and the like to showcase their culture. Many of the groups offered regular demonstrations of their music and dance. It seemed like every group also offered a gift shop. Though I've never been to any of the Disneylands in the world, I get the impression that each village is like that Main Street U.S.A. exhibit.

I won't give an itinerary of our tour, but I will say that we enjoyed ourselves. (When I get around to it, I'll post some pix over at Flickr.) The varieties of architecture were quite interesting, though I think that some of the buildings we peeked into were actually dorms for the workers. For lunch we headed over to the "The Flavor City" dining area. I was hoping for a big variety of ethnic fare, but, of course, I can't read Chinese. If the restaurant did label ethnic specialties, I had no clue as to which was which. That wasn't too disappointing, though, since we've got ethnic restaurants in town. I contented myself with a bowl of noodles, which burned my lips off. (I ended up eating only half of it and then helping myself to the rest of the family's blander leftover lunches.)

Anyway, we spent almost the whole day at the park, leaving just before suppertime when they seemed to be closing up. Our trip back to the hotel was a bit more eventful than the one down. This being rush hour, I was unable to push my way off the first bus before it left our stop and my family watched me drive away to the next one. Our second bus reached the end of its route before I thought it would, so we spent a good fifteen minutes wandering around trying to figure out exactly where we were. But in the end, we went out, had a nice day and got "home" safely. For what more could we ask?