Dienstag, 12. Oktober 2010

Shop 'til you drop



Every shoe shop, clothing store, jewelry boutique we came across was inspected thoroughly. Towards the end of the trip, the exhaustion of the male part of the group was clearly visible, but that did not keep the girls from having the shopping time of their lives. Sometimes, even Prof. Schmied and Christian found something worth buying.



Now and then, it was hard to find the right sizes and it could be rather frustrating to try on clothes in size XL. Nevertheless, the limits of our suitcases were reached at the latest in Hongkong and we had to give up our shopping adventures.








Montag, 4. Oktober 2010

Hongkong

Before we started our trip to China, we thought that Hongkong would be the best and most exciting part of the entire trip. Although Hongkong was exciting for all of us, it is a completely different world compared to Yunnan. Again and again, we had to see that Hongkong is not China, but an autonomous part of the country. Suddenly, all websites on the internet worked again, we met McDonalds & Co. again and left-hand traffic became quite challenging for us.



Not only the traffic was challenging, but also the weather. During our stay, the temperature was never below 33 °C and the humidity leveled out between 80-90%.


On the second night in Hongkong, we saw probably the no. 1 tourist attraction Symphony of Lights. Every night at 8pm, the Hongkong Skyline shines in all imaginable colors accompanied by music. Every skyscraper changes its lights and colors in time with the music.


Samstag, 2. Oktober 2010

Farewell Dinner and Trip to Kunming

On our last day at Honghe University, the staff of the English department invited us to a farewell dinner at a Hani restaurant in Mengzi. For the first time, we saw a whole chicken (including head and feet), of course dead, cut in pieces on our table.



Apart from the poor cut chicken, the food was, as always, delicious and far too much to eat up everything, which you are not supposed to do in China anyways. After we had said goodbye to the staff, we took our last opportunity to go shopping in Mengzi.


The next day, the Chinese National Holiday (October 1), we left our hotel on campus very early in the morning to go to Kunming. On the way to the capital of Yunnan, we stopped at the Confucius temple in Jianshui.


Due to the National Holiday festivities, a Chinese orchestra played in front of the temple and showed us what traditional Chinese music sounds like.


Our next stop was in Yuxi, where we met Juliane, a German teacher who studied at Chemnitz University of Technology. She and her husband invited us for lunch to a hot pot restaurant.



As the name already suggests, hot pot is a hot soup in big pot standing on a gas flame. While the soup is cooking, everyone throws in different ingredients, such as salad, meat, fish, bamboo and mushrooms.
In the evening, we finally arrived in Kunming and met Mrs. Guo and her daughter, who arranged the entire China trip for our group. Both showed us around in Kunming that night and also the following morning, before we left Yunnan to fly to Hongkong.