Minority Villages

Mountain resort hosting the NSLI group for the first half of the Kunming trip.

Greenhouse where we ate breakfast.

Learning how to make paper

While in Kunming, the capital of the Yunnan province, we visited an attraction that featured recreations of various minorities' villages.  Yunnan is famous for hosting 26 ethnic minorities, the most of any other province, and this park-like tourist stop showcased mini demonstrations of culture from each, accompanied by many vendors.  It was rather strange to see people's cultures transformed into an amusement park, like a living zoo, but it was a high-energy, unique place.  I was able to enter my first Buddhist temple and Christian church since being in China this summer, and the vendors of clothes, cloth, bags, jewelry, etc. offered a lot of styles that deviated from the standard Chinese patterns and colors, more similar to Indian or even South American.