Editor's recommendation: Shilin Park

April 6: Today we flew into Kunming. The flight took about 3.5 hrs and I thought it was a bit bumpy. Kunming is one of the most beautiful cities I have ever seen - it looks like a miniature Shanghai, with upscale shopping and unique street food, but crammed in to a much smaller area. Apparently you can drive through the whole city in 15 minutes, although it has a population of 4 million people! It's late now, so more tomorrow.

April 7: What a gorgeous day. The weather was some of the nicest I've seen in a long, long time - it was winter when I left the States, and I've been dealing with Beijing weather ever since. Today we had class in an interesting little glass caf¨¦ place in a park - it was set in a garden, so the view was quite pleasant, and we had couches to sit on; the place was decorated with giant stuffed teddy bears. We also learned about proper tea etiquette: you are supposed to lift your tea glass up a little bit as the person is pouring it, and the pourer is supposed to make sure everyone's cup stays full. We formed an age-based rotation to decide who pours.

After class, I took a stroll out in the park. It was beautiful - stone courtyards separated small bodies of water, which the town fills and empties artificially - I noticed a pumphouse museum where some of the equipment was housed for the pumping. The walkways featured many different gardens, pavilions, and flowers, and smelled wonderful. I sat in the sun for a half hour just enjoying the view.

I wonder how many tourists visit that park - I got many more looks from people than I normally do in Beijing or Shanghai. People walking through would stare at me as they passed by. I don't blend in in China at all - my blond hair gives me away as a foreigner immediately. Most of the people in the park looked like residents of Kunming; some were clearly Han tourists, probably from towns like Beijing and Shanghai. One old man, whom I took for a local, stared at me for a minute or two. He wore a little fisherman's style cap, and a bright blue suit, with green shoes and red socks. He had a cane and smoked a long pipe. Another old man walked by wearing a white, broad brimmed hat decorated with flowers, similar to the Easter bonnets little girls wear to church on Easter Sunday in the United States. One little girl walked up to me and said loudly, "Hello!" She must have known I was an English speaker and wanted to practice. Her mother laughed at her when I responded with an equally enthusiastic "Hello!"

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