After the conspicuous success of our expeditions to Yuantong Temple and the Golden Temple, we decided today to tackle a couple more.

There's something very special about Chinese temples. They're quiet oases, where people gather to socialize over tai chi, cards, and all manner of other activities. Arriving at the Confucius Temple, the first thing we heard was someone singing Chinese opera, accompanied by an old guy on an erhu.

Again, it's a beautiful place:








From there we headed off on foot to the Tanhua temple, another complex that dates back to the 17th century. As Jim Goodman points out: "During the Ming Dynasty the suburbs beyond the city walls did not extend far. Forests lay beyond and in quiet, secluded spots in the hills religiously inclined patrons sponsored the building of temples. Most of these were too far for an ordinary excursion... One such temple [is] Tanhuasi... It was probably the ex-urban temple most frequented by Old Kunming residents."

It was a mistake to walk, as the most obvious route is along the huge and busy Renmin Lu. In any other country we probably wouldn't even have considered walking along such a thoroughfare. But here you're beguiled by the broad, tree-shaded pavements, and the fact that the large proportion of electric vehicles means it's not particularly noisy and not at all smelly. But it is tedious...



Anyway, finally we arrived at the Tanhua complex, and took refuge in this pleasant, shady area to cool off, and have a spot of lunch:




Duly restored, we progressed up a gentle hill (which felt quite taxing after our 4 kilometres on Renmin Lu) to reach the very beautiful pagoda:


Heading back down, you find yourself in a maze of pools and pavilions and covered ways. Again, it's just a beautiful space, very restful and accommodating. If I lived near here, this would definitely be a favoured place to come to read, and get away from it all...





Accessible via an underground passageway is the other bit of the complex. In what looks like a temple, there's a notice clarifying that it's actually not a religious establishment... The Buddha sits serenely on...



We went home via Didi, a Chinese ride-hailing app that you can either download independently, or access via the mini-app on Alipay. The first time you use something like this is always a bit nerve-wracking (it's quite a bit more onerous than the equivalents we're used to at home), but it worked OK. (If you're heading for China, there are detailed instructions on using Didi here.)

We had ourselves dropped off near our favourite fruit-shop, which is next door to the place that has the best peanuts. You see how we're getting settled in? To be honest, if we'd known how nice Kunming is, we'd just have opted to stay here for the whole two weeks. Every time we go walking, we find new, useful and/or interesting things, and we feel we've dug ourselves in very nicely here. The hotel, too, is so overwhelmingly pleasant that it's going to be hard to find its equal anywhere else.

But you don't know these things when you book, so you don't put all your eggs in one basket. According to the plan, then, the day after tomorrow, we're heading off to Dali. Which I'm sure will be rewarding too.