Journey to YunNan
Posted by Gerry Liu on June 12th, 2010
We organised a journey to YunNan, China for 6 days, we enjoyed it and we had a great time. Now let me tell you the journey in those six days.
YunNan has many minorities, totally it has 56 minorities in China, but it has 26 minorities in YunNan. They owns the different culture,language and knowledge, but they also know the common Chinese. For example, usually, we called ladies to Mrs, and gentlements to Mr.
but if you go to YunNan, you must change it, one minorities called ladies to Ashima, and gentlements to Aheige, and if you still called them Mrs or Mr, then they will not happy and they will not answer you or give you a reply. So you must follow their own language to call them, it means give them a respect.
There has one minority is so different, their culture is very special, this minority is called:”Moso”, their culture does not has any marriage. They has a bonfire in every night, men and women will hold the hands together for dancing, when one man and one woman feel love between them, the man will scratch the woman’s palm, then the woman will know what happened and she will go back to her house to wait for the man to come and have their night together, but the man must pass all of the difficulties before goes into the woman’s house. They called this to: “Running marriage”, but this man and woman will not get married, they just stay one night together, then after one night, if they think alright with each other, they will keep on going until they feel tired of each other, then the man or the woman can meet another person and keep on doing the same thing, but no marrige at all. If after one night, the woman get pregnant, then after the baby get borned, the baby will not have father, only has the mother, and that family will has a family tree to put in front of the bed, that family tree wrote the people’s name in it and said which people cannot have “Running marriage” with them, because that means those people are related with them.
We also went to YuLong(Jade Dragon)snow mountain, because of the enviromental protection, we cannot go to the mountainside, we only can go to the higher platform to view the YuLong(Jade Dragon)snow mountain. The elevation of YuLong snow mountain is 5596 metres, and approximately the toppest 1000 metres is the limestone, it is very slippery and no one can conquest it to climb up to the top, so YuLong(Jade Dragon)snow mountain is still a virgin mountain, no one can break the record, even though the professional mountain climber. Some professional climber used to try to climb up to the top, but they just can climbed up to the 4880 metres for the recent best record. Why? Because the toppest 1000 metres of YuLong(Jade Dragon) mountain are full of the limestone, so it is very slippery and the climbing equipment are not useful at all, and the shape is 90 degree vertical. YunNan minorities also called YuLong snow mountain as the patron saint of mountain.
About food in YunNan, it has many kinds of traditional food that you can choose to have it in YunNan, here I will recommend you one traditional food is Yak, is a kind of cow, but it is not a common animal to see in China, it can say it is a kind of protection animal in China, the local people made the Yak meat to snack, the meat is quite tender, but it is chewable as well, also the price is not cheap as well. One Yak’s value is around USD$40000. So if you really want to see and taste the Yak, you should go to YunNan.
About weather in YunNan, the tour guide told us that it might has 4 seasons in a day, so the local people do not need to pack up or seperate the winter clothing or summer clothing, because they need it in the whole year. In the early morning, the weather it might has a little bit cold, and from noon to afternoon, it will be shinning and hot, and with some showering sometimes, the hightest temperature it will be up to 38 degree celsius, then from evening, it will be cool to cold again.
There has one problem that you might be met in YunNan, is the altitude sickness, because YunNan is in the higher altitude area. If you are staying and living in a plains area for long, then once you go to the higher altitude place, you might feel headache, chest tightness, if serious, then it might be leading to hypoxia. So if you are travelling from city to city in YunNan, the better transportation is by bus, because by bus can lead you from plains to higher, then highest. It will not like airplane, once to take you to the highest altitude place, so that you will caught sickness so easily as well.
After these six days of travelling, we met some traditional people, we knew the culture that we never known before. We learnt a lot from this time’s travelling. If we have a chance again, we will choose to go there again for more information and views in YunNan.








