This was my first journey abroad without my family. So I was thrilled and also a little tensed at the same time.
But after landing in Kunming (a city of Yunnan), gave me a homely vibe for the cordial reception from the instructor and volunteers of Yunnan University. We, the group from my university, headed for the Chenggong district, also called Kunming's southern university district as it is mostly covered by a huge number of national and international students of Yunnan University. In 2012, Chenggong was marked as China's largest ghost city, but now, it has risen in its own way with skyscrapers, buildings, and malls.
Yunnan is called the city of spring and on our first day of the visit, we knew why. The place is blessed with amazing weather and nature! We were there in the middle of September so the weather was perfect for sightseeing.
Each of our days started with warm sunshine and low humidity and as it has low humidity, we could travel outside all day long in the sunny weather with no sweat! Meanwhile in the evening, when the sun started to set off, the weather gradually got colder. So we had to carry sweaters at night. I wish I could have this weather in Bangladesh too!
As Chenggong is not a city center district, it doesn't have a busy city life like Beijing and Shanghai. It's mostly covered by young folks from universities and the economy of Chenggong is mostly based on student activity. So as it's not a crowded city, we get the chance to enjoy its fresh air, dust-free streets, and scenic beauty.
Their authorities prioritize the tidiness of their streets and also beautify the street corners with their local flower plants. Every day, a cleaning bus came to clean the roads. It went through all the main roads, wiped the dust, and sprayed water which helped the city to shine.
Sometimes, when we got tired doing Calligraphy or Kung Fu Dance classes, we just sat down on the streets and enjoyed the beauty of the city. It was also possible because the roads were mostly free and there was very little public transport. For this reason, we always had to maintain the university bus schedule. Some of the students have their own vehicles and each of the university buildings has a well-secured parking lot.
While we were staying in Yunnan for 14 days, we had a tight schedule with the cultural classes, sightseeing, and visiting ethnic villages. Every morning, we had to leave the hotel around 8 am and come back to the hotel around 7 pm with our requisite bus. Only by then, we get some free time and the nights were only ours.
The nightlife of Chenggong is more lively and mesmerizing. After getting fresh from the hotel, some of us went for a night walk. The university area and streets are fully decorated with yellow lights which gave me the vibe of Dhaka's "sodium bati". Most of the nights we roamed around the local fruit markets, food streets, and shopping malls. On the food corner, both sides of the street are full of barbecue vendors, and fast food items. The street was always filled with the smell of heavy spices, grilled bacon, and barbecues. In the local markets, they had a huge supply of fresh fruits and veggies. As we didn't have any facilities for cooking, sometimes, we only buy some fruits and juice. Here, all those products were low in cost compared with the city markets, as most of the customers were students.
These places are walking distance from our hotel and we can't go any further for the lack of public transportation also, we didn't know Chinese.
The hotel we stayed at is called "The Maple Palace Hotel", (10 minutes bus ride from Yunnan University). This hotel has very cozy and comfortable accommodation.
It has a great entrance, a sophisticated lounge, and luxury hallrooms. I still miss the buffet breakfast. There are tons of items in the breakfast like bakery and pastry items, heavy food like fried rice, chicken, ramen, light foods like egg, soy milk, juice, bread and butter, and so on. But most of the time, I only had the bakery items because they use totally different types of spices in their cuisines and the flavors didn't suit me.
So if you plan to travel to Chenggong, Maple Palace Hotel will be an excellent choice for you!
Finally, these are some of my experiences of the weather, food, and hotel of Chenggong. I have to say that, staying in Chenggong for 14 days gave me some incredible experiences to learn about the cultures of Yunnan. This journey really had a lot of stories and experiences which cannot be covered only in one post. So I will try to share more detailed experiences of visiting the stone forest, ethnic villages, and the majestic Dali city in my upcoming post!