After a long (about 8 days) trip to Yunnan, I am finally back, at least in one piece. The place is great, the people (not counting the sales people) are nice and the mountains are hard to climb. Okay, my English is going down, now that I haven’t been really using it for the past week. The computer too, I haven’t seen a computer at work for a week! There are TVs but the channels are very limited, due to the location.
I ended up shooting more than 300 photos (thanks to a 512 MB SD card I borrowed from my aunt), and also getting scammed by a group of sales people selling worthless stuff. Well, I would say everyone in the group got conned in a way or two. Yes, we were really stupid. The people there have the mindset that we are damn rich and can afford to be conned this way and so, they feel that it is not morally wrong since they are actually ‘robbing the rich, to help the poor’. I do not agree because more than 99% of the people in our group are students and they don’t really have much money. Most importantly, they really tarnish the image of the Republic.
I know it is hard, and that we have been living way to comfortably in Singapore. I really think that most of us still don’t know how is the world like. We went there, to help the people there, provide some kind of effort to move their economy, but we ended up getting scammed. We surely won’t think it is fair. Then again, someone says, ‘The world is never fair’. Okay, so let this be a lesson to punish our naivety. Some in our group said, “Let this be a practising spot for us to sharpen our life skills. We would have fell harder if this happened in London.” Agreed. But ultimately, I must say we have really been extremely stupid. Some people wouldn’t even believe they have been scammed, or at least in whichever way they are.
Oh yah, it is supposed to be a ‘public holiday’ for voting the president today. Too bad it doesn’t come, and there probably won’t be such a day any time soon in the future because there is still another 6 more years to wait. Of course, we can perhaps think about the General Elections, but it is probably too earlier now a time to think about. Moreover, the results doesn’t really means much to the people here.
One main thing I noticed in China is their advertising. I guess that industry is probably the most powerful, booming one currently. Posters and bill-boards cover the cities and buildings or walls. These banners or whatever design are professionally-done, and possess a high level of artistic value. Most importantly, they are well-thought and nicely-done. I later read a news article about the truth behind some of these advertisements (mainly about how some people got conned by the slogans and stuff), and realised how fake this whole world is. Of course, I don’t need all these bad experience and negative news to inform me about that. The problems is that I really observe the magnitude of it occurring – it is really scary.
Bad stuff aside, the food there is good and cheap. I think it is probably the only stuff people don’t con about and really value-for-money. A huge bowl of noodles in the stalls by the side of shophouses in the cities are sold at 3.5 Yuan and McChicken in the real McDonalds going at 5 Yuan. I mean that’s really good price for fast food. Well, that’s the prices I saw, I didn’t realy go and try them because we had something else provided.
Our camp isn’t really that exciting compared to Bok’s. His account can be found here.