I have developed a small crush on Kunming that has less to do with the city’s charms than with my present emotional needs. The city itself, after all, is fairly characterless. Its wide streets and nondescript highrises offer so little bearing that I frequently have no idea what corner I’m on. Kunming has no nightlife to speak of, and the colorful old quarter has been reduced to a three-block stretch of road in the city center. So what’s to like about Kunming?
For starters, one of Kunming’s manifold nicknames is the City of Eternal Spring. I have no idea if this name is apt. After all, it is spring here, so it would be fairly disappointing if the weather weren’t springlike. I will instead refer to Kunming as the City Where the White Man Doesn’t Sweat Through His Pants and leave it at that.
Then there’s the paucity of roosters. After three months in Southeast Asia, I have identified rooster density as a key quality of life indicator. The only rooster I’ve encountered in Kunming was rightfully in the pot.
More significantly, Kunming displays an abundant and familiar prosperity. This is the first city in Asia I’ve visited where people stroll. They don’t throng, shove, or bustle. They just stroll. Women push baby carriages. Men walk ugly little bat-eared, bug-eyed Chinese dogs. Men and women hold hands, link arms, and — shockingly — exchange chaste kisses in public.
The reason people are strolling, of course, is that they are shopping. It comes as a bit of a surprise how, well, American this city seems. The university area is crammed with boutiques with names like Nova and Samba. The stores manage to achieve a measure of funkiness with their arrangements of cosmetics and trendy running shoes on uncrowded shelves. A tiny bookstore sets out the works of Borges and Proust under posters of Kurt Cobain, Allen Ginsberg, and John Lennon.
Closer to the main commercial district, attractive young clerks try to lure pedestrians into outlets where pop music bathes Spring Fashion displays. Megabookstores display the Mandarin version of the Dilbert book Clues for Clueless alongside other business titles. Ronald McDonald leers pedophilically at passers-by. Traffic is fairly well behaved, perhaps because people don’t want to scratch their Audis, Volkswagens, and BMWs.
The authorities have even allowed Kunming an allotment of smut. Not the degrading smut of the Bangkok brothel, but the affirming San Francisco-style smut of the clean, well-kept sex shop. The one I saw was around the corner from my hotel in the middle of a perfectly respectable block of shops. Clearly someone is having fun in Kunming.
Even the people themselves seem to slot into recognizable archetypes. Fashionistas stride past in transparent blouses and black bras. A man slouching down the sidewalk sports the worst combover I have ever seen. The perky travel agent who sells me a bus ticket wears an enormous silver cross around her neck. Beggars are rare, but they do exist. Perhaps they haven’t been told about the revolution.
The thing I like best about Kunming, though, is the streets themselves. All of Kunming’s major roads have bicycle lanes as wide as the car lanes. Often these bike lanes are physically separated from the motorized traffic. And bikes are not merely a conveyance for the poor. All manner of Chinese roll past. Bussinessmen with coat tails flapping. Well-to-do women in elaborate hats. School kids with cell phones clapped to ears. Rumpled elderly. Most people set their bike seats comically low; when they pedal hard in their single gear, they look like little bowlegged hamsters on meth.
Many women have mastered the rolling start: they stand to the side of the bike with one foot on the pedal; give a few hopping pushes to build momentum; and then swing their legs up and over. This may be the only way to get on a bicycle if you’re wearing a tight skirt, but it still looks impressive.
Even better than the bike lanes are the huge digital timers at every intersection that count down the seconds until the light turns red, and then count down the seconds until the light turns green again. When I’ve got 10 seconds of green and 100 yards to go, I make a mad weaving dash. And when I’m waiting at a red, I eye the jokers in the crowd who want to race. Sometimes they beat me out of the gate, but that’s only because I’m in no hurry. I want them to savor the dish of pain I’m going to serve them monkey-style.
I know that 90% of my advantage in these contests is my Mr. Fancy brand mountain bike, made in America and sporting a drive train built with all the craft and guile of the Japanese. The races are not only unfair, they’re almost cruel. I don’t care. Breaking out of a pack is breaking out of a pack, and I’ll take my serotonin where I can get it.
In spite of all of Kunming’s mellow prosperity, China isn’t America, and some of the differences are obvious and telling. I know I will grow weary of the officiousness by the time I leave. Many of the internet cafes require me to leave my name and passport number. Traffic cops here dress like Panamanian dictators. They carry whistles, and they know how to use them. I’ve come in for a number of savage whistlings myself, but I’m doing better than the cyclist who dared to stray a few feet onto the pedestrian crosswalk while waiting at a stoplight. The cop marched across the intersection and screamed at him until he sheepishly rolled back into the crowd.
My backpacker’s guesthouse is the charming Kunhu Hotel, an 8-story, 206-room institutional monstrosity. It looks like a college dorm hung with Chinese lanterns for a round-the-world party. The showers are open pipes, and water comes out of all the taps at one temperature. The temperature is actually pretty good for showering, less so for brushing teeth.
The Chinese do not believe that I can be entrusted with a key. Instead, my floor has a 24-hour key lady who opens my door for me. If in the morning I, say, get up to go to the bathroom; then return to my room for my towel; then return for my toothbrush; then return for my razor; I’m going to be spending a lot of quality time with the key lady. Planning ahead is important in China.
I’ve well and truly run out of things to do in Kunming, so tonight I move on to Dali. Important Life Decisions be damned.
