This is the first of what may be many posts about Green(Emerald) Lake, 翠湖. Our new apartment overlooks this awesome park, which is in the middle of the city and is a hive of strolling couples, chi-expelling exercisers, ballroom dancers, bumper cars, paddle boats, and traditional music. My first morning in Kunming I was still getting over Shanghai time, and went out at 6 to have a look around. You have (mostly old) people dancing to discotheque, batting badminton birdies, slapping their chests and legs, practicing sword tai chi forms, and droves of joggers crossing the stone bridges and circling the lake. Nina and I went out one morning with the IGERT badminton set, and were slowly edged off our territory by the arrival of farmers with handcarts of peaches, carrots, and squash to sell.
In the evening, Green Lake is a great (free!) hangout. There's more dancing to boomboxes with fans or farmhats or scarves, I mean groups of fifty or more women following a very serious leader. Plus one very gay middle-aged Chinese man who loves fan dancing and rhinestones. And there's music. Tons of little groups that all seem to congregate in the same area of the park, so they compete with each other in loudness and create a crazy aural experience for people walking by. They often bring along battery-powered amplifiers so they can heighten the pain inflicted by the shrillest instrument ever invented, the erhu. The ladies singing might be shriller, come to think of it.
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