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I first went to Kunming, the capital city of Yunnan province in the central part of southern China. While I was there I saved a woman from being robbed. She and her family were so pleased about this that they insisted on treating me to dinner at a nice Tibetan restaurant with authentic food and authentic performers from that distant region (though 'authentic' should be in quotes here because what I saw was probably more like the government's propagandized Disney version of Tibetan culture than the reality. It uses this to support the myth that the minority peoples in the far-flung regions of China are happy to be part of China and are not resisting but just want to dance and sing. The Chinese government seems to be winning its struggle to keep these regions subdued but the price they're paying to do this is pretty steep and so life for these minorities is definitely improving in some important respects -- new modern roads provided by the government, better communications, better education [or indoctrination into the majority Chinese culture] -- but the rich culture of these minorities is disappearing).

The food and the company was good but the lighting was bad. I didn't think to pop open the flash so it's hard to make out much from these pictures. There was plenty of blessing going on, done by tossing a long white scarf around the person you were blessing. I still have the scarf that one of the singers used to bless me. He's in the picture with me and the woman I saved from being robbed.



Half the people there joined some of the performers in a big circle dance around the restaurant. It took me a while to catch on but I eventually got it. That white blob in the middle is me dancing. Some people were trying to get a picture of me, the only foreigner there, dancing the native dances, which made me understand even better why the locals at tourist sites don't like having their picture taken.

I also ate dog in Kunming. First time. Only time. Last time. I had just gotten a massage and my masseuse wanted to show me her city (there are many nice things about Kunming and one of the nicest is that you can get a very good massage there for $13 and if your masseuse likes you and you can speak some Chinese, she'll ask you to stick around for an extra hour so she can take you around Kunming when she gets off work -- but you'll have to sneak out quickly because the employees aren't allowed to fraternize with the clients). It was very late in this city which like most Chinese cities had very little street lighting, so the stalls where we went to eat (big tables of raw food under a bare bulb next to a grill) stood out like beacons in a dark sea, if you'll pardon the poesy. So I blindly followed her regarding direction and diet and I had the first bite from whatever she'd ordered for us almost in my mouth when she said "by the way, that's dog." I'm sorry to report that it tasted pretty good. The photo further down of a little 'quiky-mart' in LiJiang should give you a good idea of what it's like to come upon one of these late night food stalls in the middle of a long dark stretch of nothing.

Below is another massage joint (a street-side massage joint so it's probably even cheaper than the relatively up-scale place I went to), and a restaurant that let me pretend I was shooting a Wong Kar Wai movie.