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I touched down in Chendu for which the literal English translation is perfect metropolis. ‘Perfect’ though is obviously from a Chinese point of view. It is basically the same as any Chinese city….. characterless sprawling grid of freeways, buildings put up in haste. China is embracing the western life while remaining a communist state which basically means it’s ‘out with the old in with the new’ on a scale you just cannot imagine. It’s hard to put a date on but I would say nothing in these cities is over 20 years old whatever was there before has been demolished and replaced by this formulated urban sprawl.

Little Trouble in Big China

Stucros
2006-01-13 18:46:19

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little more entertaining.

So Tuesday enter Kalmity Keys (KK) fully bearded and very skinny. He'd been stuck tibet for the last 5 days (due to mud slides) and had to 30 hour bus ride over three days to get to chendu (silver stu on this website). Full of stories which were actually entertaining for once we sat down had a few beers and headed to 'age red' had another night going nuts with the locals!!!

After taking a few of the city sights and local teas in we took the 20 hour train to Kumming. For the train i would have probably opted for the soft sleeper after speaking to one couple but KK insisted we take the hard sleeper.... which is baically a dorm of 40 or so beds with no compartments.... and i'm glad we did the hard sleeper!!! The beds aren't really long enough so your feet stick out into the passage way and it's a bit noisey but the experience is really cool!
Kumming is another city which has been completely rebuilt although they

A true herbalist
have made it slightly more pedestrian friendly. It also has many more westerners and although you don't really see them out and about you can tell as the locals no longer smile, stare or gawk at you - which is actually missed! Of the two attraction outside of kumming we saw neither... problems with busses meant by lunch we were no closer so decided just to talk about the town some more.

From Kumming we headed to Lijiang a ten hour bus ride away. In kumming we'd met lots of people who had come from the area and their reports were all very different. The best was Maggie KK Chinese girlfriend(but don't worry people she was of typical kk standard). She'd told us that when Chinese are asked where they are they reply Lijiang or on the road to Lijiang. I thought this was more a reflection of the Chinese new obsession of tourism than it's beauty but it really ...