We rode in the jeep across fields green with rice, corn, sunflowers, Chinese cabbage, and other crops, and then into the long tunnels that cut through the mountains.
After traveling through this long series of valleys and mountain ridges, we turned off the interstate and onto a bumpy, red clay road worn into the side of one of the mountains. All along the mountainside, we passed peasants driving small horse-drawn carts loaded with the crops that grew on their respective plots, as well as the old stone graves of the ancestors of the village below. We arrived on the plateau our friends were looking at and walked around a little. The view was breathtaking. A huge, natural lake (one of the cleanest in all of China, we were told) almost filled the entire valley. A section of it was cordoned off into commercial fishing ponds and small villages clustered on the banks as well as a small island in the middle of the lake. Everywhere, natural white, purple, red, orange and blue flowers grew next to the cultivated sunflowers, very popular with the farmers in this area for the sunflower seed oil.
After videoing and photographing this area for records, we drove down the mountain and through an extremely poor village where our friends are looking at other facilities that might help the children. Trash was lying around and the street’s pavement was somewhat broken up with weeds growing all around. Mangy dogs wandered and mingled with the children that ran around or played on the street. Some chickens walked around the small gatherings of old men playing traditional board games or women chatting and husking corn. As we approached an older part of town, the streets were narrow and more windy, twisting in and around the old, slightly eroded mud houses with thatched roofs. Really the only signs of the 21st century evident here were the electrical lines pinned from house to house and the business adds plastered to the wall.
We left to eat dinner at a high-end golf resort, purported to be the ‘No. 1 Golf Resort in Asia’ (Kunming plans to grow to be a recognized, international city and is currently in the midst of building many new golf resorts on the scenic mountains that surround the old part of the city; it is amazing to see the commercial growth that this place is undertaking). The contrast could not be starker. What we had seen ten minutes before, simply vanished- left behind in the rice paddies and we were now driving through a luxurious resort with million-dollar villas, a ritzy hotel and a beautiful golf course built right on the lake. We ate on the patio of the restaurant on a hill overlooking the golf course, the large, long lake and the mountains in the distance as the sun set. It was strange to see two totally different worlds, so close together, and yet so out of sight from one another. The trash, wandering children and animals and buildings that were falling apart, were literally next-door the beautifully land-scaped grounds of a fabulous hotel and dozens of beautiful villas, ready to rent. This vast disparity is China’s great paradigm.
It was wonderful to see Yunnan’s beautiful scenery and we enjoyed the day very much!
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