Dispatch #2 from Kunming, China

Tue 3/19/02 8:46 AM

In this Chinese city of 3.3 million, there are few outward signs of communism.

On the contrary, Kunming is a grimy, bustling semi-metropolis teeming with commerce. It has more in common with what I expected to find, and did find, in Hong Kong than with what I expected from Red China.

There is a bank on every corner, and there are people buying and selling things literally everywhere. Even the walls of the pedestrian walkways that cross below busy intersections are lined with clothing dealers. There and in the many bazaars, if you show even the slightest interest in something, the proprietor often will punch the price into a pocket calculator and hold it up it to you. If you frown, he (or more typically, she) will hand over the calculator to let you lodge a counter offer. It’s a simple enough mechanism through which I’ve managed to make a number of transactions, all without need of exchanging a single word.

This is good, too, because hardly anyone here speaks English, and we’ve met only one or two folks whose skills approach partial fluency. We can’t read any of the signs, either. But somehow we’re getting on, and getting around, just fine. We have a map of the city that’s labeled in Chinese and English. When we get in a taxi we point with a pencil to the spot on the map (with the Chinese label) where we want to go. When we want to go home, we show the driver the card from our hotel which is printed in Chinese on one side.

There’s even a Wal-Mart in Kunming — three low-ceilinged storeys of merchandise priced so inexpensively as to make an American Wal-Mart feel like a Rodeo Drive boutique. Pop CDs for $1.25, bicyles for $14, and live eels — yes, live eels, and also some variety of aquatic turtle — for $1 per kilogram. I didn’t catch the prices on the dried fish (that aisle didn’t smell too good, so I didn’t tarry), though I noticed in the aisle-of-hanging-dried-sides-of-livestock (located next to the tupperware and thermos aisle) that for $4 you could buy what appeared to be the better half of a medium-size pig.

Which reminds me, unfortunately, I haven’t eaten yet and must now sign off and go do so. Actually, even if the ingredients don’t look so hot, Yunnanese food itself is quite good. The specialty of the province is a dish called across-the-bridge noodles. There’s an interesting story behind the name that makes the name make sense, but personally I think they should be called across-you-shirt noodles because that’s where the greasy things end up when I try to pick them up with chopsticks.

Thanks for reading!

Cheers,

Jeremy