rupert and hannah

Hi everyone,

we are just about to leave for our travels, the spring festival is about to begin, we have somehow ended up with over seven weeks off! We have a flight to Kunming in South West China this evening and then plan on being away for about a month.

We're going to start off in Kunming which is the capital of Yunnan province, a province that borders Myanmar and Laos. It is most famous for its minority culture, the province is home to many of China's different minority groups and is a part of china that is visited by most backpackers and tourists that come to China. Many of the minorities have their own towns and villages set amongst the mountains and valleys of the province, wear traditional clothing and speak their own languages. We will spend a few days in Kunming before moving on to a town called Dali, an old walled town of the Bai minority with much of its traditional architecture and supposedly a great place to hang out for a few days. Its a place that draws lots of backpackers and hence also has some great little western restaurants and guest houses. Then we're of to Lijiang, a town of the Naxi minority that has lots of little cobbled streets and waterways and traditional housing, another backpacker hangout so more proper western food!! We hope to visit nearby Tiger Leaping Gorge for a spot of trekking too.

We'll probably head back to Kunming and get a train to Chengdu in time for Spring Festival. Chengdu is the capital of Sichuan province (known as Szechuan on those Chinese restaurant menus in the UK) famous for its very spicy food and also for being the province with pandas. We'll stay there for a few days, hopefully visit the panda breeding base and this is where we'll be on January 29th, the Spring Festival day so hopefully there will be fireworks and stuff going on.

After Chengdu we may well head to nearby Chongqing, a huge city on the Yangze river, to get a train connection to Guiyang, the capital of Guizhou province and a city where I lived for six months a few years ago. This is more off the beaten track and hence not at all touristy. I would love to see the city again, I really enjoyed living there, it is quite a poor city, also with some minority people and minority villages nearby. We'll spend a bit of time there and then get a train to Guilin, back on the tourist trail. This is the part of China with the gorgeous karst limestone peak scenery and rice terraces you see on postcards. I have been here before too, I lived in Guilin once and its also a great place to relax and soak up the atmosphere. We won't be staying in Guilin but heading out to nearby Yangshuo, a small town that has become a base for viewing the gorgeous scenery, and due to the backpacker presence there are some amazing little restaurants, bars and shops to explore. From there its a short bus ride to Nanning, a city in the south of the province which is probably the closest city to Hainan Island on the mainland and hence a good place to get a cheap flight back to Haikou and home.

The students here are getting very excited, they have forty days off and are heading back to their far flung cities and towns across the country. Some will be traveling for days and days by train, I can't believe that I used to complain about the five hour train journey I had to do to get home when I was a student! The city is looking nice with big red lanterns lining the streets and shops full of very fanciful red and gold decorations and signs to put up for spring festival and Chinese New Year, they contrast so well with the palm trees. Now we're in winter for the next few weeks its often still warm but the last few days have been the coldest yet, about 13/14 degrees I think, but hopefully that means we will be a little more prepared for the proper winter we will face on the mainland for our travels. It shouldn't be unbearably cold but we have bought some very unattractive Chinese thermal underwear as we are going to feel the cold!

Well, we hope you are all ok and we will be emailing and hopefully blogging along the way.

Happy Spring Festival New Year (as we have been told to say)

love Hannah and Rupert