Michael Savage, at his best

This is so incredible, the rantings of a brilliant man....

The Kunming City museum

On display were these gorgeous photos of old Kunming. It is a very small museum but it had some spectacular artifacts on display. One of them was this 'Sutra' pillar. It was originally left outside and unprotected from the elements. Rather than move it indoors, they just built the museum over it.

An old photo of it. It is a beautiful piece of work.

As they work on building the structure to house it, they have to shore it up from being shaken.

They found dinosaurs in the hills in Yunnan. They had a few of them on display at this museum.

I haven't never seen dinosaurs up close, this was my first time and it was exciting. It was an incredible trip, I learned so much in a very short time. I learned how hard the Chinese work and this has inspired me. I am working harder since I came back. China and India are working very hard to catch up with the West. I want to go to India and see what the conditions are like there. They are both erasing their past so fast and that makes going there the more prescient.

Lake Dian

Lake Dian or in Chines, 'Dianchi'. With such a huge land mass, there are lots of beautiful lakes and mountains in China. Near Kunming is this huge and beautiful lake called 'Dian'. I read in the guidebook that there were fishing villages near it and they still use the 'Fanchuan' or sail boats for fishing. So I got hold of a taxi and asked him to drive me there. I asked about the sail boats and he told me 'meiyu, liao!' This means 'no more'. I didn't believe him and asked him to take there anyway. So off we went. As we were almost to the lake I saw something that looked more like North America than China, condos, western style and hotels, the place was so built up and in a Western style. What the heck......! It was beautiful but it wasn't China. That was sad. I got out, snapped a few pictures and got the driver to take back to Kunming.

They say that as soon a guide book on China is sent to the press, it needed to be rewritten because things change so fast on the ground, it is already outdated. I went away, very sad and disappointed...

A little bird

I was going to leave when this Chinese guy starting making some funny noises. I looked at him and he was actually alerting us to this bird on the lawn. It was an unusual looking bird, one I've never seen in my life. It wasn't your usual sparrow and to see it in the city makes it even more unusual It was obvious this Chinese local hasn't seen it before either. This bird was busy feeding on stuff it found in the lawn. It wasn't worried about us except when I crept closer to it to take its picture. I was limited by the equipment on me. So I tried to get as close as I could without bothering it. It would display a full comb as a sign of displeasure and would fly off away from me. I spent a full half hour chasing it around the grass. I didn't know what bird it was. I came home and checked the Internet for birds of Yunnan and found out its identity. It's a 'hoopoe'..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoopoe

Here it's realising that I'm threatening to him and it is displaying its full plumage which otherwise is folded tightly.

Wow, now I know the fascination some people have about birds and bird watching.

The power of contagion

This is a room in a cave (Sasso) in a hotel in Matera. We stayed at this hotel though this is not my picture. The advice was, 'read a book, read 2 books'. It is from books that we get ideas, for life and living. Don't undereastimate the power of these ideas. I never underestimate the power of ideas or of contagion. I remember watching the movie' The passion of the Christ'. The movie moved me and most of all the set moved me even more. I thought the location of where they filmed the movie was as moving. I wanted to know where they shot the film. A check on the Internet revealed that it was Matera, a little village in Southern Italy. I had to go there and check it out myself. From the guidebooks, it looked like the easiest way was to go to Bari and from there take the train to Matera. It was the wildest idea, no Americans go to Southern Italy, we only go to Northern italy. I was ready to check out the South so I arranged this weird itinerary that would take us to Naples, Bari and Matera, then we would head back to Rome and go to the Cinque Terre. It was the same year that we visited the Cinque Terre. Wow, it was a great trip. Matera is so gorgeous, it was wellworth the effort to head down there. Now a lot more Americans have gone to Matera. We met a lot of Japanese tourists there, they have been going there for years.

A shot take from our room, this was years ago, the camera I used was the worst. I need to go back to retake my photos. I'm just waiting for another opportunity to go South again.

While in Bari, we had a few days to play with and we went to Alberobello (it's hard to even pronounce the name, let alone spell it). We saw these pretty 'trulli' structures. They looked unreal.

We had a free day and I was debating on whether to go to Lecce, it was 2 hours by train from Bari and I've not heard anything about it. I was wondering if it was worth the effort but we went anyway. Lecce is the prettiest and sweetest little town in Southern Italy. The small town was home to innumerable number of Baroque churches. It was here that I fell in love with Baroque architecture. I couldn't get enough and for some reason I found out that the best place to get Baroque overload is in Sicily. So the next year we went to Sicily. All of our families were asking 'why Sicily?' Nothing good was ever associated with Sicily. Were we wrong. Sicily was enchanting and fascinating. A trip in March that year led to a second trip in October the same year. I couldn't get enough of Sicilian Baroque and it was in Sicily that my appetite for the Baroque was truly satisfied. Frances Mayes said of Noto, 'it out Baroque all Baroque.' Indeed Noto was just one of many Baroque towns in Sicily. Books are dangerous, the written word coupled with photographic images are even more deadly. Beware it can lead to do things you would otherwise not do.

The very unusual back staircase of Villa Palagonia in Bagheria, 20 minutes by train from Palermo, Sicily. I love Villa Palagonia.

Right now I'm reading William Dalrmple's 'From the Holy Mountain.' It is about the Christian cities (or former Christian cities) of the Middle East, mostly Turkey. Guess where I'll be going?

The Western and the Eastern Pagodas

It was my last day in Kunming and I'm frantically trying to locate the two pagodas. I'm walking all over the various streets thinking I'll spot them peeking out of the horizon. I was wrong because the taller and newer concrete buildings blocked all views of it. According to the map, it looked like they'll be here but they were not. I asked around but they couldn't understand what I was getting at. I drew pictures but they still didn't understand. Finally I remembered the guidebook I had in my backpack had Chinese names also. So I took it out and pointed to the Chinese characters but then I was already very closed to finding the two pagodas. The first one is the more impressive Western pagoda and it had a beautiful garden around it. There were people milling around, some were doing Tai chi, others were just hanging out. There was a little pavilion and there were people singing some Chinese folk songs. It was very gratifying to have located these two beautiful pagodas. This was my first live encounter with any Chinese pagodas. I have seen them in pictures all my life.

They say this is a sacred flower, they are found mainly in Yunnan.

The pagodas are now locked and no one is allowed to climb them.

The Eastern pagoda and the older one of the two was just situated a little distance away. Finding the first one was tough but the second one was just next to it.

The eastern pagoda.

This was next to a pavilion which has seen its better days. It was in disrepair but was still beautiful. By now I was hot and sweaty. The temperature was around 80 F but it seems hotter because of the humidity. My next stop was the Provincial museum but before that I was waylaid by a little bird.......

Lecce, Italy

Matera, Basilicata, Italy

Meanwhile back in Kunming...

It was time to leave Lijiang and head back to Kunming. The taxi took me from my hotel in Lijiang to the airport passing through one of the loveliest stretch of scenery I've ever seen. This is so different from the drives in Cairo where everywhere is desert sand. Here was a stretch of undulating hills, valleys and lakes which is intensively cultivated. Seeing it, I regretted not having taken a taxi when I was in Lijiang to fully visit this part. At the airport I met a girl from Valencia, Spain. She's been China for 3 months already and had another month to go. She spoke no Mandarin but she managed. We were both on our way to Kunming, I was to stay in Kunming for another day, she had a connecting flight to Beijing. We parted ways at Kunming airport, I said, 'qe le viaja bien', to which she replied,' e'ualmente'. That's all the Spanish I know.

The next morning in Kunming I went looking for 2 old pagodas and happened upon a neighborhood in Kunming. There was a city market in full swing, kind of sedate, quite unlike the village markets that I saw outside of Kunming and in Lijiang. Those were exciting. The pagodas were hard to find, I asked many people but none knew what I was looking for. I did eventually find it.

Fresh bamboo shoots.

River fish, Yunnan is landlocked, there is no fish from the sea. I told my taxi driver in Lijiang that my house in California is near the sea. She looked wistfully at me like she's never been to the sea and don't know if she ever will. I have always lived near the sea or now near the ocean. I did move to Salt Lake city once for 11 months but I missed the sea and can't envision myself to live anywhere except near the sea. I moved back to Southern California. The mountains are not that important to me, the sea is.

My trip to Yunnan is drawing to an end and it's time to pack the bag and go somewhere soon.