7 Weeks in Yunnan, China (Part II)

Prior to this year, I had already spent quite a significant amount of time in China, for work and leisure. With work, of course I had my share of time in the big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai. But I also spent substantial time across other provinces such as Jiangsu, Hainan, Jiangxi, Yunnan and smaller cities, even villages, within those provinces. As for leisure, my footprints extended even further. Having said all that, China is a huge piece of land and there are still a lot of places I haven’t visited and are on my “to go” list.

Ever since my children were young, going as far back as small toddlers, I had started to take them to China for vacation. There were some short getaways and some longer trips. But this year’s 7 weeks of summer fun would be the longest stretch I had ever spent in China, and with my younger son as well! The reason I decided to spend the entire summer with him in China was because I wanted him to be more immersed in the culture and environment of the language he was learning at school.

Even though my son attends a bilingual school that uses English and Mandarin Chinese to communicate across subjects, the truth was that he and most of his friends at school converse in English. Thus he hardly has any chance to practice using Mandarin Chinese. I am a firm believer in actually using the language that we are learning as otherwise, all that has been learnt will easily just stay in our short-term memory for a bit, and vanish. So we decided to spend our summer in China. It is a HUGE place so WHERE SHOULD WE START?

When my friends found out I was taking my son to China for the summer, most of them asked whether I was putting him at summer school to learn more Chinese. That was hilarious. Having my kids attend summer school to learn in an academic way was the last sort of thing I would do, or even contemplate. I told them I wanted to spend some quality mother-child time while enabling us both to immerse in the local culture, and have an opportunity to use the language on a day-to-day basis. It should be an enjoyable trip that is not hectic, an adventure that allows us to explore different cities.

Given my love of nature and outdoor activities, the first criteria would be weather. Hot and humid weather was off the table for us because I know we wouldn’t enjoy hiking or any outdoor fun in the heat, except for water activities. But we already live in Hong Kong, with multiple beaches and numerous water sport activities year round, so I was happy to skip these. Which province would have moderate temperature in the summer with ample outdoor activity choices?

After researching some more, Yunnan came up as my first choice. There were other places we could explore for the future with moderate and welcoming summer weather, but Yunnan suited us this time for the following reasons. Firstly, the capital city Kunming was only a 2.5 hour flight from Hong Kong. Secondly, there were a few cities within Yunnan itself that I had always wanted to visit including Dali, Lijiang and Shangri-la, all within a short high-speed rail train ride from each other. Logistics would be easy enough to orchestrate, especially when traveling with a young boy, who would not have any patience to spend many hours sitting in any transportation.

Since we had 7 weeks, I didn’t need to limit us to visiting only a few cities. We could explore more beyond those that had high speed rail access. I have a Chinese drivers license so may as well make good use of it! Hence the planning of our summer trip also entailed renting a car locally and taking a road trip to explore smaller cities within Yunnan. Furthermore, I also planned for Brady to attend a couple weeks of outdoor camp activities so that he could meet more friends. After a lot more research and planning, our summer trip destinations and transportation means looked like this:

Stay tune for our first leg in Kunming….