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July 31, 2005

I spent this couple of days with YQ. She was very sweet and helpful. We went to General Wu Shangui’s resort yesterday. It was an interesting historical story. At the end of the Ming Dynasty he was put in charge of an important fortress to protect the country from the Manchurians. His beloved concubine Chen YuanYuan was left behind in Peking. When the rebels took over the city, one of the rebel generals forcefully took CYY as his possession. General Wu was so furious that he let in the Manchurians. That was the beginning of the Qing Dynasty. Later, he was sent to Yunnan to be away from the power center. CYY came with him but gradually lost his favor. She decided to become a monk when she saw no hope to regain his interests. A few years later, General Wu established his own empire and was soon destroyed by the Qing army. Seeing enough of life’s ups and downs, CYY jumped into a lotus lake near the resort and killed herself.
Today we went to West Mountain. It was the mountain that we did not get to climb last time when I was here due to heavy rain. According to a local saying, one would become hundred times more valuable after he climbed to the top. So I made a point to come back to this place. It was not far from my hotel. We walked through a lakeside park and took a cable car to the starting point. That was the place where our conference buses stopped last time. Now being here, I saw my friends again in my head. Funny, uh? What was even more wired was that on our way down we bumped into another tour guide that was with the conference. She was with a group of tourists. Before coming to Kunming, I told her my itinerary. She said she had to work. I thought were not going to able to meet this time. And yet, there we were! Incident or fate?

posted by Unknown @ 10:43 AM