18th September, 2010-09
Thursday morning in Kunming, Joy, Dave & I went to the railway station and bought train tickets for that night or the trip to Dali. The staff at The Hump can do it for you but charged an extra 20CNY for each ticket to do so. We spent the rest of the day looking around Kunming and then went back to the Hump to have dinner, collect our luggage and take the bus to the train station for our overnight train to Dali.
Kunming is the capital of Yunnan Province with a population of 4million and is a very modern city with lots of shopping malls and apartment buildings. At 1890 m above sea level it was definitely cooler and it is now nice to be out of the very hot weather. The local people here certainly have a very different look and have lost the Chinese look and look more like Mongolians. The girls are not as pretty but they are still very friendly people. They also dress a wee bit differently and it is very common to see mothers and grandmothers carrying up to 6 yr olds on their backs, wrapped in heavy cloth tied to them.
Kunming has been inhabited for over 2000 years and until the 8th century was a remote Chinese outpost. The intrusion from the west began in 19th century and its expansion began in WW11 when factories were established and refugees fleeing the Japanese poured in from Eastern China. In a bid to keep China from falling to Japan, Anglo-American forces sent supplies to Nationalist troops entrenched in Sichuan and Yunnan. Supplies came overland on a dirt road carved out of the mountains from 1937-38 by 160,000 chinese with virtually no equipment. This was the famous Burma Road, a 1000km haul from Lashio to Kunming. In early 1942 the Japanese captured Lashio, cutting the supply line. Kunming continued to handle most of the incoming aid from 1942-45 when US troops flew the dangerous mission of crossing the "Hump", the 5000m ranges between India and Yunnan. Hence the accommodation we stayed in being called the Hump. With the coming of trains, industry has expanded in Yunnan and Kunming produces steel, foodstuffs, trucks, machine tools, chemicals, building materials and plastic. Just out of Kunming is the largest tobacco factory in the world and produces 4 billion cigarettes a day almost totally by robots. It is a gated town with all facilities provided by the company, called Mile, 2 hrs north of Kunming. About 1 million people a year die of lung cancer in China.
Had a good trip on the train to Dali which had 18 carriages which each hold 60 people and it was full. We could only get the top bunks, but it was okay, better to get the bottom if you can but we slept okay. Arrived in New Dali at 6am. As it was raining we got a taxi from New Dali to Old Dali town which is a distance of 15km. We are staying at Friends Guest house and it is lovely - 80CNY $NZ17) a night for both of us and are here for 4 nights. We now feel we are in the real China and the town is a miniature city that has some preserved cobbled streets and traditional stone architecture within its old walls. A lot of the tourist guides etc. are dressed in the traditional Bai costume. While walking around the town yesterday a man bailed up jim as he noticed that the soles of his shoes were coming apart so he led us down to an alleyway where we had a man mending them, discovered they needed glueing and stitching all round. Then he decided to give Dave's boots a clean and built up a bit of the worn heel. Crafty business man because Dave's cost 65CNY and Jim ended up getting his done for 100CNY. We felt a bit ripped off but they did a good job.

Today we are hiring bikes and going cycling.