An Unexplored Corner of Yunnan Province
We explored a part of Yunnan Province that’s not often visited by international tourists. In all eight years of living in mainland China, we’ve never heard stunned exclamations of “老外! [lǎowài - foreigner]” as often as in the last six days. 😮😯
Things to watch out for in the vid:
👨🍳 Sexy butcher
🪷 Lotus season in Yunnan
🇫🇷 French Indochina railway architecture
🧺 Massive fishing basket
🛕 China’s answer to Gaudi
🐴 Working horses, in a village without cars
⛩ The 2nd-largest Confucian temple in China
🍚 Red rice, which is only grown in this region
🇲🇳 Mongolian village 2000km south of Mongolia
👨✈️ Communist cosplay
🐘 ‘Elephant Tusk’ local vegetable
👩🌾 The Hani, one of 25 Yunnan ethnic minorities
💦 Slow-motion splashing
👨🍳 Did I mention the sexy butcher?
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The Humanising Effect of the Well-timed Selfie
I’m posting this photo from an excursion I took in South-West China just yesterday. Before raising my camera, the people on this tourist bus were keeping to themselves. Afterwards, the whole bus erupted into joyful waves and shouts of “hello” in English.
Yes, the timing of this photo coincides with the Chinese government’s belligerent response to Pelosi’s provocative touchdown in Taiwan. Yes, there is a strand of disgusting ugly nationalism that is on the ascendancy in China, just as it is in many other parts of the world. But I’m posting this for the simple purpose to remind everyone that we should never equate a regime to its people. And we should never let the shrill voices of populists and isolationists deafen us to the humanity of others.
For the LinkedIn version, see here.
Geopolitical Quagmire
We’ve traveled to the North East of China, to the ski resort of Beidahu. Planned weeks ago, it now comes as a welcome distraction from doom-scrolling through news apps.
I have Russian friends and I have Ukrainian friends, and none of them support this war. I have Swiss friends, and I have Turkish friends, and none of them predicted this fleeting moment of unity. I have American friends and Chinese friends, and we can all agree on the need to create the conditions that will force a diplomatic off-ramp.
I’m the son of refugees from the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. It took over 20 years to even begin untangling that mess. And right now I’m on a ski trip not far from North Korea, another decades-long geopolitical quagmire.
I’m just hoping that we’re not witnessing the birth of yet another one. 🇷🇺🌏🇺🇦
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Milestone Anniversary
5 years married. 💍💙
We celebrated the day by picking pu’er tea in the hills of Xishuangbanna, the area where China borders Myanmar and Laos. More photos/videos to come..!
For the Facebook version, see here.
Beijing Rocks!
I’ve always felt intimidated by Beijing. To me it’s always been a big, cold city where the power of government looms large. But just one evening with these warm and generous people has already helped to disabuse me of that hang-up. 😊
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Inner Mongolia & Ningxia
I would just like to say something categorical. I’m D.O.N.E. with this whole ‘living through history’ nonsense. "May you live in interesting times"? May you kiss my sweaty ass.
I’m sorry, I know there are many people who have had a truly awful time. Which is why I have allowed myself just this one privileged tantrum in 18 months.
I still can’t re-enter China on my visa if I leave, and there’s no end in sight. So we escaped Shanghai again to give me another sanity reset. Normal service will resume shortly.
Inner Mongolia 内蒙古 and Ningxia 宁夏 are both areas of China where minority cultures struggle for authentic representation. But we did our best to find it!
Hope you like the compilation video.
☀️🛖 🏞🐴🍷
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Minority Report
6 Days in Guizhou Province. 🚐🌦🌾
Note 1: We did a village-hopping tour in the ethnically diverse region of South-East Guizhou 贵州.
Note 2: This area is one of the wettest and hilliest parts of China. The geology is mostly porous limestone karst, so landslides are common. It was hot and humid, but we were incredibly lucky not to encounter much rain.
Note 3: There are very few young adults in this video, because many of them have left to become migrant workers in bigger cities around China.
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7 Days in Xinjiang
7 Days in Xinjiang. 🏞🌅☪️
Note 1: This was a highly curated tour. We needed to submit our itinerary to the authorities and we could not make any spontaneous changes.
Note 2: I didn’t have any Uighur music in my collection, so the soundtrack is comprised of a mishmash of Urdu, Arabic, Turkish and... Brokeback Mountain. 🤷♂️
Note 3: There’s a little Easter Egg in the clip with the ‘no smoking’ sign. Take a close look at the smoke coming out of the cigarette...
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Inconveniently Different
My trip this week is in the contentious region of Xinjiang, which you may have heard about in the news.
I live in China, where it’s not possible to have an open public discussion about these things. But here’s what I will say.
I believe to my core that a society should not be judged on how it treats its majority. That’s actually the easy part. A society should be judged on how it treats those who are most ‘inconveniently different’ to the majority.
Maybe that’s the Aboriginals in Australia; the Roma (gypsies) in Eastern Europe; the Rohingya in Myanmar; the Kurds in Turkey; the list goes on and on, and there’s one in your society too. You could even argue that the Trans Rights and the Black Lives Matter movements belong in this same awkwardly named category.
Please take a moment to think about the most ‘inconveniently different’ person near you. And in the meantime, here’s a photo I took today of a cute Uighur boy playing with a bucket. 👦🏻🪣
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15 Years and an International Border
In 2006 I was in Tajikistan, travelling on the Pamir Highway as part of a 2-month trip through Central Asia.
This week a group of us have flown to the far West of China to travel down the Karakoram Highway, which hugs the border with Tajikistan on its way to Pakistan.
There are 15 years and an international border separating these two photos. But otherwise... not much difference!
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The Yin and Yang of Shangri-La
“Shangri-La” is two things.
One is a mythical Himalayan utopia invented by a British author in the 1930s, designed to evoke the exoticism of the Orient.
The other is here, a real place in the Tibetan part of Yunnan province. It was formerly called Zhōngdiàn (中甸) and its name was changed to Shangri-La in 2014 to promote tourism.
I’m not sure why this was needed, seeing as it is home to Sungtseling: a Buddhist monastery built in 1679, and a cousin to the Potala Palace in Lhasa.
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Ambivalence in Yunnan
Good news: There are relatively few cases of COVID-19 in China. 😃
Bad news: the borders are still closed for returning foreigners, so we‘re basically trapped here. ☹️
Good news: China is a big place, so we were able to take a 4-hour flight from Shanghai and still remain within the country. 😃
Bad news: the weather forecast for the next week here in Yunnan Province is solid rain. ☹️
Good news: at least it was dry enough to take this photo in Dali old town. 😃☹️😃☹️🤯
