Start of our Wendy Wu Tour - Yunnan & Sichuan

Our flight left Tullamarine airport at 0.40 for Hong Kong and arrived at 6.55am. We had a few hours break in Hong Kong before we boarded another plane to Kunming, China arriving at 2.30pm. We had no delays at the airport going through Customs and Immigration. We were met by Daisy from Wendy Wu tours who was our local tour guide. We boarded a bus and drove to our hotel, the Jin Jiang Hotel in Kunming. Not long after we settled into our room I received news that my father had passed away. I had no phone sim card with me as I have always relied on facetime or local wifi to contact home. I couldnt use facetime or google in China, it is not allowed. The Wifi in the hotel was very slow also. I tried reception but no one spoke English. Lucky the receptionist called our tour leader, Clara who helped me. She lent me her own personal phone to call home and after dinner she helped me buy a Chinese sim card from the street market. She had to have her photo taken with her licence held under her face. The sim card had to belong to a Chinese person. It cost me $20 for 2 gig of data and text. Finally I could call home and talk to the family.

China is a multi-nationalities nation. Besides Han, which takes up over 90% of China's population, there are 55 ethinic groups living together harmoniously in this big landmass. Their costumes, festivals and customs are unique and colorful. Our Tour Leader belongs to the Han and Daisy our Local Guide belongs to the Bai ethnic group. There are approximately 185,800 people who's nationality is Bai and most of them are in Dali.

Today, Bai people wear bright clothing in coordinating colors. The fabric and embroidery used is delicate. Many pieces of Bai clothing will have a camellia flower represented on it. This flower symbolizes beauty. Often, a red scarf and a white outer layer will be worn to resemble a blooming camellia.

Tomorrow we will be visiting the Stone Forest where there is another minority group the Yi. The Yi have a population of 7,762,000. Most Yi people are scattered in mountainous areas at high altitudes, and a small number of them live on flat land or in valleys.

The Yi ethnic group has its own speaking and written language. Yi language belongs to the family of Tibetan-Cambodian of Sino-Tibetan system, and has six dialects. They used to have a syllabic script, and each syllable has its meaning. The script was formed in the 13th century, and has about 10,000 words, among which about 1,000 are in daily use. Most Yi people can also use Mandarin Chinese. The Sani people are a branch of the Yi and live in central and eastern Yunnan province in southern China. Around 80,000 of the Sani live in Shilin county near the famous Stone Forest.

The other minority group we saw were the Naxi. The Naxi population is 308,389 of whom live in concentrated communities in Lijiang.