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Photo Essay: CET Kunming

Photos by Peri Law, (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) Student Correspondent CET Kunming, Summer 2018

The cafeteria has a big selection of noodle soup to choose from. You could have noodles for breakfast, lunch, and dinner if you wanted! Whenever I’m craving noodle soup, my roommate will help me order and try a different type.

 

Instead of having a test one Friday, we went to the market to haggle for vegetables. My class just had a lesson on bargaining in Chinese and our teachers wanted us to practice in the “real world”. It was a somewhat stressful experience, because I never haggle in English, let alone in Chinese!

 

We ended up cooking the vegetables we bought at the market at a 烧烤 (barbecue) place. This trip acted as our Chinese version of a Fourth of July celebration. The 烧烤 place seemed to be a popular spot for friends and family to gather on a Friday night.

 

CET surprised us by bringing an American flag cake to end our July 4th celebration. Some of my classmates got our teacher’s approval to sing the Star Spangled Banner in English (making an exception from our Chinese language pledge), causing quite a few stares from all the Chinese people there.

 

One of my favorite places to eat is right next to my dorm. You choose whatever vegetables and meat you want from a refrigerator and the restaurant cooks everything in a spicy broth. It’s similar to hot pot, but without you having to do any work. If you can’t handle spice, this might be difficult to eat, but I’ve found that after living in Kunming for a month my spice tolerance has increased!

 

My roommate knows how much I love art, so one weekend we went to see the opening of a French art exhibition at the Yunnan Provincial Museum. The museums in Kunming are free, so on the weekend there can be massive queues like this one to get in.

 

By the time I leave Kunming, I think I’ll be a master tea maker. After we spent the morning learning how to talk about tea, we went to a tea house to get a lesson on making tea and were able to try different Yunnan tea specialties.

 

This is the view I had from a pedestrian bridge while crossing a massive road right next to Yunnan University. I knew Kunming was a large city, but I didn’t realize just how massive it was until I got here!

 

The day after I finished my midterm exam, I went with my roommate and two other people to Jianshui, a city a few hours’ train ride away from Kunming. Riding a train in Yunnan is a great opportunity to see Chinese farms and the villages on the outskirts of the big cities.

 

One of the places I visited in Jianshui was Zhu’s Garden, a beautiful restored Qing Dynasty house. “House” might not be the right word: it’s a primarily outdoor mansion full of numerous courtyards, beautiful greenery, and outdoor calligraphy.

 

I also visited Jianshui Confucian Temple, the largest Confucian temple in Yunnan. It is a sprawling but tranquil complex built in 1285. I was particularly drawn to the 祝愿, cards with people’s wishes written on them, that surrounded the temple.

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