From Jianshui it was another three-and-a-half or four-hour bus ride further south to Xinjie; by now we were starting to get close to the Vietnam border. The reason to come all the way down here is that the rice terraces are supposed to be beautiful and – after an initial fear that because of the fog we wouldn’t see a thing – we discovered that yes, they’re beautiful.

There’s only one bus daily from Jianshui direct to Xinjie – quite a small little town, much more “real china” than nearly anything we’ve seen before – and that bus didn’t get us into town until mid-afternoon. When we got in, the town was just socked in by fog, as thick as anything we’ve seen in many years. Not an auspicious start to a little side trip where you’re supposed to be awed by nature and how humans have made their environment work for them.

Still, before sunset, we had a chance to walk around a little to discover a nice little farmers market in town where they sell some of that local produce that makes the food here so great. Beautiful and atmospheric on a 50-degree foggy afternoon.

Dinner choices in Xinjie are really, really limited, at least for fussy Western tourists. OK, we’re not very fussy, but still just not many restaurants at all. Our hotel had a huge, bright restaurant that seemed primarily for the groups of Chinese being bussed in on package tours. Mark went in to ask about a menu and it seemed they didn’t even have one; they just feed the big groups whatever they have. (We later spoke with a British couple who did eat there, but even with a menu it’s not the sort of place we would have wanted to go.)

Instead, we found something approaching heaven. A tiny local place right off Xinjie’s main square, specializing in Sichuan food. Now, I say “approaching” heaven, because, well, it’s not the sort of place we would ever go into normally. Tiny – five tables, I think – and filled with smoke from the other patrons. And when Chinese eat, they just toss any refuse – napkins, plastic dish covers, perhaps even bits of food – onto the floor.

The food, though, made up for it, and the couple running it were just so sweet. It even had an English menu so we could see all the variety of bowels, guts, and similarly unappealing items on offer. There were other great choices, though, so we had dinner, lunch, and dinner again their on our brief stay in Xinjie.

We’d arranged with a driver for the next day and, at the suggestion of the local expert, were scheduled to leave for our tour of the rice terraces at noon when the weather might be getting better. So after breakfast Mark & I just headed off on our own on some country road and, since it only took maybe five minutes to walk out of town, had our own private tour of rural China. The fog was lifting, the temperature was in the upper 50s, we had views of rice terraces in the distance, it felt like spring, and it was just about perfect. If we saw nothing else in Xinjie, if the fog obscured our views of the rice terraces we were supposed to see as tourists, this was pretty good.

But indeed, it got better. A lot better. The fog had indeed lifted, our driver picked us up, we drove maybe 15 minutes, and quickly we were in places where you could pull over and look down the valleys and hills to these amazing rice terraces. Interestingly, there was no rice; it’s harvested here in the fall and not planted again for a month or two. But the water fills them up and the sunlight reflecting can be stunning. Just amazing what humans can do to grow food on steep hills.

At one point we stopped so the driver could drop off some produce at a small inn and when he came back he brought with him a French couple and a Belgian woman whose primary language was also French. They were asking for information about how to get out to tour the rice terraces and, well, eventually they just joined us. They spoke very little English, so Mark spent the afternoon conversing with them in nearly fluent French, when not picking through his much more-limited Chinese with the driver. (At one point, before they’d joined us, we heard one of the French women say to the others about Mark, in French, “His French is really quite good.” Cool!)

And so we drove and stopped for pictures and drove and took more pictures and drove some more. We’d told the woman with whom we’d set up this tour that we wanted to hike, and the driver – in his very limited English – kept indicating that we would, but it didn’t seem as though it was happening. We drove and stopped and drove and stopped. By 4:00 PM I’d pretty much given up hope and was just enjoying the day for what it was. Finally, though, he parked and then we just headed down through some of the rice fields. At first it was a paved little path, but eventually that gave way to a path. It ended up being a beautiful one-hour hike up and down, all on our own, through the great Chinese countryside. That was heaven. At the end of the trail we bade adieu to the French, who were going to stay at the little town we ended at to watch sunset. The driver took us up to the road, waved down a passing minivan, and had him drop us at our car. Kind of a perfect afternoon.

It’s a good thing it was a perfect afternoon, because the price was an eight-hour bus ride back up to Kunming, where we were spending the night before heading west to our next destination, Dali. The only upside was that, knowing the bus ride was going to be pretty crappy, we’d reserved a room at the Sofitel in Kunming. A little luxury – cheap by typical Western standards, but still a splurge – after a day like that would be something to look forward to.

And thus you get a sense of how weird our lives can be. We start the day at a comfortable but strange Chinese hotel in Xanjie where they lay white sheets on the carpet to keep in from getting soiled:

Then we ride a bus where the bathroom stops are like this:

And end up in a suite at the Sofitel (this will be our last year with Platinum status in the Accor chain) where the bathroom looks like this:

And breakfast as we were getting ready to leave may have been the best spread we’ve had in nearly four years of travel. Obviously, life is good.

From here it’s a seven-hour train ride west to Dali as we work our way toward the Leaping Tiger Gorge and Shangri La.

A couple years ago when traveling in China we went to a small town to see what life was like off the beaten track. It was … OK … but there really wasn’t much to do or see; we realized that three days was just too much. So for this stop off the beaten path we kept it to two nights and that felt just about right.

Jianshui is a “little” town of about half a million people about 120 miles south of Kunming, still in Yunnan Province. It takes fully three-and-a-half hours to travel that distance on a rickety old bus that, fortunately, was only about half full. It was mostly a reasonably pleasant ride: the weather was pleasant, a couple windows were partly open, no one was smoking, and there was neither loud music nor loud smash-up movies playing. Just a good opportunity to read and watch rural China go by.

Once here, Jianshui has a beautiful old town with all sorts of classic Chinese city gates and old buildings and all that picturesque stuff. There are three primary tourist attractions, all of which you can see in one day.

• The Jianshui Confucius Temple dates from the 13th century and is one of the oldest and largest Confucian temples in China; it was historically the most important school in Yunnan. It covers almost 20 acres and has a wide variety of halls, houses, palaces, garrets, gates, pavilions, temples, archways, and all that kind of stuff. The artificial pond around which it sits is so big it uses the word “sea” in the name, the Sea of Study; locals claim it is the largest “of its kind” in all of China, but that qualifier can mean a lot of things. Either way, the temple grounds were wonderfully photogenic and great to walk around.

• The Zhu Family Garden was another highlight in Jianshui. Built by a wealthy merchant family in the late 19th century, the gardens themselves were closed for renovation, but the family lodgings themselves were more than impressive enough to justify the visit. The dwelling area takes up about 54,000 square feet, including 42 courtyards and 214 separate buildings. Not bad living quarters if you can afford it.

• Finally, the Twin Dragon Bridge was a real highlight. Dating from the Ming Dynasty (which everyone, of course, knows ruled from the 14th to the 17th centuries), it is one of the oldest bridges still standing in China. We were there during a light rain that would start and stop and start and stop, making the 17-arch structure particularly beautiful.

Beyond those tourist stops, Jianshui had all the pieces that we love about China and that make it challenging. English is very limited here, even at our hotel. Thank God Mark has been studying Chinese; it would be really hard to travel without his rudimentary skills, though Google Translate helps, too. The food is mostly good, but it’s little short of stunning how few restaurants there are. You go out at night and all the clothing shops and cell phone stores and all that are open until 9:00 or later, but try to find a restaurant anywhere. As Mark pointed out, the ratio of restaurant-to-commercial here must be about the smallest in the world!

One restaurant we found after a fair amount of searching – Google Maps had it in the wrong place – was pretty good, and most importantly had an English-translated menu. The first night was pretty good, and with a bottle of local wine came to all of $18 total. So we went back the next night and were shocked to find it absolutely packed. It seemed as though they were not going to have room for us at all, which would have been something of a disaster; we hadn’t seen any other restaurants with English menus, and by then – about 8:00 PM – anything else would have been closing down by the time we found it.

Fortunately, not only did they find us a table, it was a beautiful spot out on the second-floor balcony. As we walked through the dining room I was stunned both by how much smoke there was and by how much trash there was. The Chinese just toss napkins and plastic and trash on the floor while they’re eating and when they leave … what a mess! For us, though, out on the balcony with the old town street below us and fresh air around us, it was heavenly. And, with this meal coming in at about $23 since we’d ordered an extra dish to sample, reasonably affordable.

From here we catch a late-morning bus another three hours south to the Yuanyang Rice Terraces before we head back to Kunming and then off to see more of Yunnan.

From Bangkok it was a couple hours north on Air Asia to Kunming, capital of China’s Yunnan Province. (As a quick aside, we love Air Asia, a relatively new discount airline that, for the price, has been great.) This is the start of a three-week exploration of Yunnan Province in the southwest of china. And so far it’s great even beyond the fact that – except for a brief week in New Caledonia – this is the first time since September we’re finally in a place where they drive on the right side of the road. It’s actually a little disconcerting; I’d genuinely gotten used to the left-side stuff.

At any rate Kunming, a city of some 6.5 million people, is known as the City of Eternal Spring. And while we only spent a couple days there, it certainly lived up to that reputation during. After months across the South Pacific, Australia, Bali, and Bangkok, we’ve had plenty of hot weather. Kunming? Daytime highs in the mid-sixties, just about perfect for touring. And nighttime temperatures in the mid-forties, just about perfect for sleeping. Oh, and the cherry blossoms are just starting, adding a nice little touch of beauty. Amusingly we’re going to be in Japan in April, supposedly for their cherry blossom season, so we should be getting lots and lots of pretty pink flowers over the next several weeks.

With three days of our three weeks under our belts we’re already experiencing much of what we love about China and much of what makes travel in China challenging. In that sense this relatively brief pass through Yunnan might be perfect; just enough to experience what we love and out before the rest of it drives us too crazy.

What’s the love part? Part of it is just the feel of true adventure; this is what I dreamed being a permanent nomad would allow, a part of the world not many Westerners get to. Beyond that, it’s just so nice to fly into a city and have a gleaming new airport where the immigration process is easy and the bag collection is quick. And transportation can be a delight in China; in this case the drive into town on a big, fast, comfortable freeway is nothing like the pot-holed congestion of Boston or New York. The food in China is often just out of this world (more on that below) and stunningly inexpensive, and the architecture – where they haven’t torn down the old stuff – can be great.

The stuff we don’t love so much? There are real challenges traveling in China. Even in a big city like this, the provincial capital and regional hub, there’s really not much English spoken. When we checked into our cute boutique hotel the sweet young woman barely spoke any English at all. She was trying, but it was hard to communicate. And that’s at a hotel that presumably caters to tourists. In restaurants and bars it can be much worse. One day for lunch, when we were on a day trip out of Kunming, our driver took us to a restaurant that basically had fresh ingredients out and presumably we were supposed to tell them what we wanted and how we wanted it cooked. Not easy to do. Fortunately they found a menu with pictures and that worked, but it’s always a challenge. With that said, Mark has been studying Chinese again and it’s been a godsend on occasion.

Other drawbacks? Because the Chinese government blocks Google (and lots of other sites) we need a VPN connection that essentially bypasses local servers and heads straight to Singapore or San Francisco to get access to Google Maps. As we live and die on Google Maps, it’s a real inconvenience when the Internet in general and then the VPN connection can be more than a little flakey.

Smoking, everywhere, is an annoyance. Not just out and about, but regularly in restaurants. And oddly it’s hard to get tea in a restaurant. Really. In China. Usually they bring you a pot of hot water, and that’s it. Don’t they know there’s supposed to be unlimited tea in China?

The noise; Chinese don’t have the concept of “inside voice,” and outside it can be even worse. It’s not just voices; there’s obviously no prohibition on the amount of noise a business can make because often – a mobile phone store, McDonald’s, anything – will just be blasting music or announcements or whatever outside their shop.

And the hacking and spitting. It is obviously not considered rude to hack up phlegm, apparently from the soles of your feet, and spit out whatever comes up. Disgusting to us, but not something that’s an issue here.

With all that said, we still love traveling in China. Kunming, for instance, is beautiful. It’s a huge, sprawling city and we’ve only seen a tiny fraction of it, but where we’re staying in the old city it’s beautiful. Our hotel is one of those historic old Chinese buildings and there’s a bunch more like it. While you don’t find parks dotted around everywhere as in Paris, for instance, the parks they have can be beautiful, attracting fun crowds on weekends in particular.

One of the thing that surprises me here in Kunming, even though we’ve seen it before across China, is how comparatively wealthy people are. Economists have been predicting a Chinese crash for years – decades, probably – but so far the boom is still on. When I think that in my lifetime, during both the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, literally millions of Chinese starved to death, today’s wealth seems inconceivable. And yet much of this place looks like just a slightly exotic middle class community. Our tiny little piece of Kunming, in the middle of the Old Town, is just a beautiful little slice of old China blended with modern luxury.

A real highlight of traveling in China is the food. It can be difficult to communicate what we want, and to find restaurants where the menu is more than just Chinese symbols and a price, but when it works it can be absolutely great. On our first day here, for instance, we got into the city after noon, so we had to hurry to check in and find a place to eat before the restaurants closed for the afternoon. We ended up at an utterly uninteresting-looking place on the second floor of a small mall nearby. It had pictures, they were still open after others had already closed, so we sat down. The food was just amazing – tasty, fresh, fiery (why does the noun “fire” become the adjective “fiery”? Why does that “r” let the “e” just jump in front of it?), garlicky, gingery. Everything has a bunch of peppers, including often the Sichuan peppers that leave your tongue and lips almost paralyzed for a few seconds. Great stuff. And pretty much every meal so far has been amazing, with flavors and textures that are just utterly new.

There is this weird thing with tea, though. You’d think it would be easy to get in China; you know, the whole “all the tea in China” thing, right? And yet when we go into a restaurant overwhelmingly they bring us what looks to be a teapot, but it’s just hot water. And when Mark asks for tea, in his functional though obviously basic Mandarin, they point at the hot water. That’s not tea! It’s just strange how hard it is to get tea in China. And, just for the record, and despite all the American stereotypes of the Chinese laundry industry, we rarely find anyplace to do laundry except the hotel sink.

In addition to hanging out in Kunming, we took a day trip down to the UNESCO-cited Stone Forest about 70-miles due south of here. It’s a big area where limestone karsts have formed and you just walk around marveling at the many shapes and the weird things nature can do. And, if you’re a Westerner, you notice while Chinese surreptitiously point their cameras at you or, more directly, ask if they can have their picture taken with you. We were the only people like us with the whole funny eye thing going on that we saw, so we had a bunch of pictures taken with the locals. Oh, and Mark used the opportunity with our driver, who spoke very little English, to get the best Chinese lessons he’s ever had. Definitely a fun day.

OK, that’s enough; I’ll run out of things to say for the next few weeks in China. But here are a few pictures. OK, a lot of pictures. We thought the place was beautiful.