Fourweeks China, so many things to say..
Of those weeks, I spent the first 2 in Kunming and now after some travelling I'm here again.
It's a great city, one I could imagine myself living in.
I mostly spent my time here getting to know China through3 peopleI met.

The first one isthe dancer Haas and I met the night beforehe left.
She has a lot of friends here andwe went out to some great parties.

Secondly, online I came in contact with Yangyang,a young artist in Kunming.
She is a beginning painter and quite talented in fact.
We did some goingout and meeting cool people.
She's familiar with a 'scene' of western people living here in Kunming.
They are very active musically and organise a lot of intresting events.
However, the best time we had whengoing toa friend of her.
He's an established chinese artist, a very active painter. I brought a lot of belgian beers to his studio, where the 3 of us spent the day painting.
Sadly the next day he left to Beijing for an exhibition he hosted, so we didn't have an opportunity yet to repeat this.

Last but not least, I was very lucky to meet a girl named Tan Min.
She's a chinese girl speaking fluent english, being an English Language graduate.
When we met, she was in Kunming to apply for a chinese teaching study.
However, the very next day she planned on going home.
I reacted disappointed and I jokingly asked why she didn't stay longer in Kunming,to giveme a good start in my chinese learning.
Surprisingly she was very open to this idea. 15min later she was at the train station, returning her tickets.
So the next 10 days, every day I was learning 2,3 hours of chinese with her.

Now, why notsome wordsabout that language your grandchildren will be struggling with.
As expectedd, I'm finding it quite hard to learn. The vocabulary is exotic to say the least, and structurally chinese doesn't play by the same rules as most european languages do.
There's an upside though,surprisingly I'm finding chinese a very modern language.
A lot of rather archaic structures don't apply;such as cases (nominative, accusative, ...),gender (think french), regular/irregular verbs in the craziest tenses.
You simply place theset words one behind the other,and the exact meaningchanges according to context.
There's onebigcatch (you saw that one coming,right?): the measure words.
In western languagesthese make sense, e.g.two cups of water,1 piece of furniture,3 sheets of paper, ...
In Chinese however, every noun has its (often untranslatable) measure word.
It's not justthree books,four apples or onebus.
The measure word for that last one may vary though, wether you're talking about a bus you see somewhere on the street or the bus you have to take tomorrow to go somewhere.
Despite this, it's a pleasure to learn and a rewarding challenge while I'm here.

Back to my laoshi Tan Min.
Other than learning, we spentquite some timewalking through the city and I truly hadthe best time with her.
Sadly, all goodthings come to end. She had togo back to her hometown and isn't planning oncoming backfor a long time.

When school ended, I felt like travelling a bit more and wanted to see how it would be like on my own.
I decided to go toYangshuo, which is a world-famous, small city in a very unique landscape.
To get there, I took the night train to Guilin, the closest big city, from where a 2h-bus would take me to Yangshuo.
Being described in all guides as a very unattractive city, I planned to stay there 1 night.
Eventually I arrived in Yangshuo 5 days later.
What kept mein Guilin all this time,and a truly unique experience, was discovering the nightlife.

The bars are cool in their own right. Instead of just drinks and music, most bars also provide entertainment.
Everyfew songs, some girlscome dressed up, dancing around the bar.
Sometimes these are justfun dances, sometimes they amount to true shows, like a man singing about his lost love, while it's acted out how she got bitten by vampires.
However, this al happens in a really entertaining way, keeping up the pace.

The music can vary between crazy fun and unbelievable garbage.
The standard chinese music is a mix of Pop, Kitch and an electronic sound from some 10 years ago in Europe.
Let me illustrate:
http://www.u1city.com/upload/Sj21997/2009042047076917.mp3?stdfrom=3

What made the experience are the people though.
In Guilin are almost no tourists. The onesyou seeare passing-through to Yangshuo.
I didn't know anyone, but decided to take a look in some chinese bar anyway.
The music sounded decent, the bar looked good andhad anice atmosphere.
I decided to walk arounda bitto take a look, when suddenlyagroup ofgirls called me over.
As I discovered, for some reason in China it's very common for girls to go out in group.
No guys around them, barely any guys coming up to them to flirt.
Theybarely spoke English, but immediately offered me a drink.
Ihappily stayedanother while and figuredI got lucky not having to stand alone.
I didn't.
For the rest of the evening whenIwent to the toilet or justlooked awayfrom where I was standing, people called me over.
Some spoke a little english, however all were equallyelated to have a foreigner joining them.
When they really didn't speak any english,we playedthese fun drinking games they love.
Incessantly they handed out drinks. It'sfunny how they order them.
Instead ofordering another beerafter finishing the previous one, they absolutely love buying as many beers as possible and having a massive amount stashedunder the table.
To have a cold beer is clearly of less importance.
One of these nights, I ended up in a KTV bar. This japanese karaoke concept is wildly popular in China.
Most often groups of young people order their own rooms.
I was walking alone back to the hotel, when some people standingoutside smokinga cigarette invited me in their room.
Inside was mayhem. Insanely loud andhard music, dancing crying girls, passed out people on the couches, wild dancing next to it, aguy trying to kiss me, ..
I stayedthere 2 hours and although none of them spoke english, I had incredible fun.

During the days, I did some great trips around town.Guilin was agreat preparation to Yangshou.
Although the nature is incomparable, the way Guilin floats around those epic mountains is beautiful.
My best trip by far was to a park right in the center of the city. There wasincredible nature, wild monkeysand a lot of opportunities to go off track and start climbing around.
But then you'd get to the top and see the city you forgot about, sprawling all around you.

Finally Yangshuo then.
As you'll see on the pictures, there's no overstating the unique scenery it's surrounded by.
Being some hours in the city, I unexpectedlymeta guy I had a quick conversation with some days before.
He himself had met some austrian girls.
Along with them, we spenta nice 2 days, biking around the countryside, eatingdeliciousfoodat home withalocal lady and dancing on stage at the bars. Travel stories and experiences were exchanged. Their trip thusfar had been great, yet the girls (all single) weren't lyrical about the boys. As one of the girls funnily remarked:
All western boys in China are moreinterested in chinese girls, yet so are the chinese boys.
Besides, other than girls, often these chinese guys are preoccupied doing something else! They go out togetherandarevery much into dancing, moving in a wayin Belgium you'd probably only see in gay-bars.
When there's a pole in the bar (which there very often is), they'll be hanging around it.
Quite often they arestrangely touchy with other boys,it's not uncommonthey suddenly put their hands on you, or come dance uncomfortably close.

After those 2 daysall of themleft, while Istayed another 2, partly because of the truly wonderful hostel I stayed at.
One of the travelling highlights yet happenedin these days.
One night, around 4, 5o clock,everything closed in a quiet city, me and someone I met that dayended upskinny dippingin the river through Yangshuo. (http://travel-china-tours.com/images/guilin3.jpg)
Between the black water and sky, with those dark mountains looming over us, it wasa moment that shouldn't have stopped.

Since the frequency of my writing isn't all that, a little breakdown of what's coming up.
Now I'm back in Kunming, heading to the towns of Dali and Shangri-La, close to the Tibetan border
Tibet probably won't be an option, since the 21st I'm due back in Kunming.
The next day I'm taking the airplane to Shanghai.
There my father will make the guest appearance of thecentury for one week.
After this, Hong Kong is next on schedule.