China - Kunming 1

June 13: Kunming city

June 13:

Flight to Kunming. We're part of a tourist group, which seems to be how most tourism works in China. Between SC's family and mine, we're a pretty large group, so there was some negotiating with the travel agency to optimize our travel. After SC arrived, our parents went to meet with the travel agent and we walked around the neighborhood of our hotel.

We walked along a very narrow park (it was really just two footpaths that ran along the sides of a canal with no railings) and eventually found a market. Farther down the road we found a whole neighborhood of shops selling machinery and industrial equipment.

In the evening, we went to a more downtown area. Chinese people are very big on named gates. I guess they're like the Romans with their arches?

The area was full of bars and tourist shops:

For dinner, we ate at a noodle soup place. They give you a big bowl of broth (in their kitchen we saw someone shoveling chicken into a giant broth pot using a pitchfork, which looked awesome, but it tastes suspiciously like chicken-flavor instant ramen...) and an assortment of things to put into it:

Walked along a pedestrian shopping area after dinner...

...and saw this:

Someone has stocked this little pool with little goldfish, and you can buy a little rod and bucket to go fishing. It's tempting to write this off as a brazen entrepreneur looking to make a quick buck off of a public fountain, but I'm told that this kind of activity (things that create crowds in public places, like street performers) is regulated.