I really recommend you research Kunming as a base to learn Chinese. I spent about 6 weeks in Kunming a number of years ago. Really loved it. Called the "City of eternal spring" as the weather is nice year-round. I was there in mid-summer, when it was warm but not hot. Also ranks as one of the least polluted chinese cities, and it is surrounded by mountains/cool excursions. There's a big university there, and there's a street by the university filled with coffee shops -- I met some of the hottest Chinese girls I've ever seen in some of these coffee shops. It's easy to meet girls and score just as it is anywhere in China... Basketball is somehow hugely popular there, and lots of chinese guys and girls would hang out at the basketball court. Being from the midwest, I'd step in and dominate, and then get all kinds of attention from the girls...
Anyway, it's the perfect place to go learn Chinese and get laid. To learn Chinese, I started off in a language school, but just quickly learned that one-on-one lessons with Chinese girls (some of them which I would proceed to game) was a vastly better way of learning the language than sitting in a language class with other foreigners with terrible pronunciation, some of whom had never mastered a foreign language before. While there I saw some (hot) girls putting up a flier to see if people wanted to go hiking out in the Himalayan foothills, so I jumped at the chance. I ended up traveling with 5-6 outgoing, adventurous Chinese college students, going to one of their home villages near the Tiger Leaping Gorge, a place way up in the mountains with no real roads going to it and lots of ethnic minorities. Went hiking up Haba Snow Mountain to like 15,000 feet (don't recall exactly), with our packs on horses, with bags of docile live chickens our guides butchered and cooked. One of the best trips I ever had -- saw all kinds of crazy shit, memories I'll never forget. I deflowered one of the girls I went (who had an amazing voice) with in a corn field behind her house, fell in love with her and broke both of our hearts by leaving, and still hear from her today. The Tibetan villages in western Yunnan are also not to be missed. The villagers will invite you into their homes, which are often ornately crafted by hand out of wood by the man of the house. Only catch is they'll force you to drink Yak butter tea and make you sing a song... and they can sing like none other.
I also did Lugu-hu. Was beautiful and worth it. My Chinese girlfriend got pissed off when a Mosou-gunya we befriended asked me to her house for an infamous "walking marriage", especially since I, not fully understanding with my mediocre Chinese, accepted the proposal. (Didn't ended up going however...) Lugu-hu is the area where there's a society of people who have a matrilineal society with no marriage as we know it. Property and names passed down through the female line, children grow up in their mothers houses, etc., and the children are generally raised by their uncles instead of their fathers.
Anyway, it's the perfect place to go learn Chinese and get laid. To learn Chinese, I started off in a language school, but just quickly learned that one-on-one lessons with Chinese girls (some of them which I would proceed to game) was a vastly better way of learning the language than sitting in a language class with other foreigners with terrible pronunciation, some of whom had never mastered a foreign language before. While there I saw some (hot) girls putting up a flier to see if people wanted to go hiking out in the Himalayan foothills, so I jumped at the chance. I ended up traveling with 5-6 outgoing, adventurous Chinese college students, going to one of their home villages near the Tiger Leaping Gorge, a place way up in the mountains with no real roads going to it and lots of ethnic minorities. Went hiking up Haba Snow Mountain to like 15,000 feet (don't recall exactly), with our packs on horses, with bags of docile live chickens our guides butchered and cooked. One of the best trips I ever had -- saw all kinds of crazy shit, memories I'll never forget. I deflowered one of the girls I went (who had an amazing voice) with in a corn field behind her house, fell in love with her and broke both of our hearts by leaving, and still hear from her today. The Tibetan villages in western Yunnan are also not to be missed. The villagers will invite you into their homes, which are often ornately crafted by hand out of wood by the man of the house. Only catch is they'll force you to drink Yak butter tea and make you sing a song... and they can sing like none other.
I also did Lugu-hu. Was beautiful and worth it. My Chinese girlfriend got pissed off when a Mosou-gunya we befriended asked me to her house for an infamous "walking marriage", especially since I, not fully understanding with my mediocre Chinese, accepted the proposal. (Didn't ended up going however...) Lugu-hu is the area where there's a society of people who have a matrilineal society with no marriage as we know it. Property and names passed down through the female line, children grow up in their mothers houses, etc., and the children are generally raised by their uncles instead of their fathers.
Quote: (01-08-2015 02:45 PM)Vacancier Permanent Wrote:
Good list Cicero!
Tell me more about Kunming, I'm eyeing this place as a destination to learn Chinese. Curious also about the Kinki region in Japan. I like that name!
Cheers.