We arrived in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan yesterday. The first thing you notice is that the airport is literally in the city itself. Landing here made me think of the old Mehr Abad airport in Tehran and how one always felt landing on the surrounding rooftops. The second thing you notice is that it is considerably cooler here. We had 37 degrees in Wuhan but here the mercury stops at just 21. This is thanks to the elevation of Yunnan much of which is at about 2000 m over the sea level.

Ok, the sky is fake, but it was really beautiful

We were picked up by a friend of mine and his kind father who first whisked us off to our hotel, waited for us to check in and then invited us to the best rice noodle soup I’ve had so far in my life. Things couldn’t start better.

An angle from one of highest points

This morning we were picked up again by my friend, his dad, his cousin and her young daughter. We had only one aim, Shilin, i.e. Stone Forest, about an hours drive east of Kunming. The entrance fee at 140 Yuan might seem steep but it is worth every single Jiao of it.

Now, to make this entry worthwhile, here is an observation, a remark, a suggestion. Never go on a tour in China! Groups of tourists walk on the main cobbled throughways of this beautiful park. It is easy to recognize them as they often wear same colored hats and the guide is holding on to a flag. They are crowded and the pace is decided by the guide. You’ll get distracted by your fellow travellers and you are simply not your own man. Worst still, they always seem to stick to the main roads. I could not but feel sorrow for all of these people who go amiss of the wealth that this and other places like this one have to offer. Get away from the main arteries, find the narrow paths, and you are all alone by yourself (which is a major achievement in China).

Walking around in the narrow limestone paths of Shilin, you’ll feel like Alice in Wonderland.

This evening we were invited to dinner at my friend’s apartment. His parents can’t speak much English but nevertheless, their genuine hospitality and kindness touched me deeply. The exquisite nine dish dinner, amongst which the fried local cheese (yes, finally a place in China where there is cheese) and the wild mushrooms were outstanding, made the evening into one I will not soon forget. Alas it had to end. We had to take the night train to Dali.

Really delicious, chesse is right in center

The one with the saw has a sign saying ‘tree work’ whereas the one to the far left has a sign saying ‘water and electricity’

Some of them make it very quickly and before they know it, they get to dine at places where ordinary people can only dream of.

Exciting lunch

I sometimes think of how it would be like if some of the services provided by this army of migrant workers would be available in a country such as Sweden. It is of course only imaginary since the million work laws and the powerful unions would do everything possible to stop that, but imagine one might do. However, there is one occupation that I am sure is as far off from the Swedish map as the next star from the sun: beer delivery service.

Beer delivery

“Do to others as you would have them do to you.” Luke 6:31

This is called the “golden rule” and it is of obvious reasons a flawed philosophy and that has indeed been pointed out by men such as George Bernard Shaw and Karl Popper. People are different and have different wishes. A good host would never salt his guests’ food too much just because he himself likes it that way; a banal example but one that clearly illustrates the problem with the golden rule. Popper has a variation of Luke 6:31 that takes people’s differences into account, i.e.

“The golden rule is a good standard which is further improved by doing unto others, wherever possible, as they want to be done by.”

This rule, known as the platinum rule, takes other peoples’ wishes into account as the same time as it makes sure that adhering to these wishes does not collide with the doers’ own wishes. I personally prescribe this latter rule.

However, it has just dawned on me that golden rule actually puts the whole notion of today’s democratic systems in question. The reason for that is that democracy, as Abraham Lincoln put it in his Gettysburg address can be articulated as “government of the people, by the people, for the people”. But who are the people? And in what way is the government run by the people? The short answer is that “the people” are those who live in the geographical area where their government rules. And in a democratic system, these people will choose their government and this government will serve its people by fulfilling its wishes. But will this government be good for its entire people and in a universal approach, will it be good for other people? Does this government in fact adhere to the platinum rule? I am afraid not.

In today’s world the democracies are prone to be victims of the dictatorship of the masses. How else is it possible to explain the banning of gay marriages in California? The ban was after all introduced due to the results of a very democratic referendum. So if in the land of the free, you are democratically prohibited of marrying whomever you wish, how is it possible to say that this governing system is good for all its citizens? It is also given that in this light, the American democracy, built with fervour upon religious beliefs, sticks to the original Luke variation. And as this interpretation extends itself to the rest of the world, a clash of civilizations becomes almost inevitable.

From a different angle, the application of the golden rule to the governing systems results in the unexpected finding that all governing systems are democracies. It is a false belief that today’s dictatorships are despots. In a despotic system a despot has no follower.  But today’s dictators are far from isolated individuals who rule only by force. A good example is the Islamic republic of Iran. The theocratic republic system was in fact formed on basis of a referendum that won its favour by 98.2% of the votes. This country’s policies, both within and outside its borders have since been characterized by the golden rule. In this interpretation, there is all of a sudden not much that differs the American and the Iranian governing systems. We can put the golden and platinum rule on two ends of an axis. One is religious, the other humanist. One allows the dictatorship of the masses and one the freedom of individuals.

But how are we to bring about the kind of democracy that is platinum both for its people and their neighbours? I believe that no system today can produce such a result. I do sadly believe that people are inherently egocentrics and they will always cast vote for the benefit of their own pockets. However, I have the craziest idea that there might just be a way to make the world a better place (isn’t naivety just wonderful?) and it goes like this:

Never let any people to choose their own leaders. Let the rest of the world decide your leader and you decide the leaders for the rest. Let the UN do the work! Will any two countries ever engage in a war again? Will any country ever try to impose its way of life on others? Will we curtail personal freedoms more than we do today?

I write all this partly because the Iranians are about to elect a new president and the incumbent president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, might just turn out to be the first president in office since the Islamic revolution that is not re-elected. However, if he would stand for elections here in China, he would win a landslide victory. People in all walks of life seem to have a great deal of respect for this man. Surely, a lot of this respect is due to the fact that Ahmadinejad is far from a man who masters the fine nuances of world politics. He basically says whatever he wishes to say and this endears him to the man on the street here. My bet is however that if there was a world election, we would see Ahmadinejad defeated. Further on the likes of Bush and Netanyahu would never be elected, Italians would not end up with a clown of a man (again) as their leader, dictators would not stand a chance, armies of the world would be dismantled and in no time at all we would live happy ever after in the planet of the free and home of the brave.

Ahmadinejad and Hu Jinato, Sept 6, 2008 (Xinhua)

I have since matured. Europe is, I am sad to say, racist. This is of course by no means something specific for Europe. God knows that Iranians are a bunch of bigot racists themselves. We particularly love to ridicule all our neighbours. And to be fair, I am probably treated a lot better by most Swedes than the poor Afghanis are by the hands of Iranians.

Xenophobia manifests itself differently in the old and the new world. A white American may have racists views but he would hardly ask the Negroes to go back home. The old world is racist in a nationalistic way. Simply put, in Europe, it is not just that you cannot alter your race – not that a sane person ever would, you cannot overcome your nationality. No matter how blended you are in the society, you’ll always get the question “Where are you from?” and as long as you get this question, it is not likely that you feel Sweden is a completely honest answer.

So how Swedish am I? Well, I hate going to IKEA at home but rejoice visiting IKEA whenever I am abroad. I can live without Swedish caviar for a year at home but miss it terribly whenever I am outside of the country for more than three months. I long to travel when in Sweden but want to come back once I am frustrated to bits and pieces by the inefficiencies I encounter (because Swedes do everything best?) and finally, I celebrated the National day of Sweden for the first time ever in my life on June 6 2009.

The four of us together with our two Swedish guests constituted probably the largest Swedish contingent in the province of Hubei. My eldest son had painted the Swedish flag which now adorns our door. We had spaghetti bolognaise (yes that too is very Swedish) and we finished off the evening by watching a Swedish movie. “Ett öga rött” is, interestingly enough, about being a Swede with foreign roots. I wonder how my sons will look at themselves when they are forty one years old.

Swedish flag by my son

To be correct, it has to be said that Youtube has in fact been blocked for months now. Hotmail works flawlessly. Flickr and Twitter are indeed blocked but Facebook is oddly enough still working.

There is however a workaround. The GFW (Great Firewall of China) needs to know your IP address. So all you need to do in order to circumvent GFW is to use programs like Freegate. It is available in English, Chinese, Persian and Spanish. Perhaps one day the use of such programs becomes so omnipresent that China stops this behaviour.

The guilty hourglass

This is going to be a first for me. I shall badmouth. To be precise, I will have to badmouth Chikony supermarket.

I barely touched this hourglass and the glass fell out of its frame and broke on the floor. My immediate thought was that it was already broken. I never dropped the hourglass; the glass fell out all by itself. So I was rather astonished that the shop-assistant, who was standing right next to me, immediately took the hourglass – or what was left of it – away from me, turned it around and pointed at the price tag. Forty eight Yuan for an hourglass that was worth at most ten Yuan and that I did not break. For the first time ever I truly felt I would have needed to speak Chinese. I paid quietly, grudgingly and already with a ‘badmouth blog’ in my head. Chikony supermarket has definitely lost a valuable customer.

On a lighter note, we tried durian today. We’ve been looking at this fruit almost every time we’ve seen it. Knowing very well that it smells awful we were still curious as to how it actually tastes like. After all 250 million Malaysian and Indonesian cannot all be wrong, right?

Well, the actual fruit itself kind of reminds you of artichoke heart but its texture is more like a creamy camembert. I have always believed that one should give a new experience a fair shot. So I ate a whole fruit, all along not knowing really what to feel. Funny in a way but I just couldn’t make my mind whether I liked it or not. The texture, one moment creamy and soft, next moment overwhelmingly rich, the smell ever present, the taste not like anything I ever had before. My wife didn’t have any of my troubles. She just ran for the bathroom after the first tiny petite bite. Finally I chose not to finish her fruit and threw the damn thing out.

Crowd is enjoying...

I have also heard that it is called the temple of hundred Buddha due to the fact that there is at least one hundred Buddha there.

Oddly enough, these figures somehow make me think of a Christian church

Why people try hard to get a coin stuck in and around these dragons, I have no idea, but it sure makes a good picture.

People were doing their best to get their coins stucked somewhere in and around these dragons

You may have looked at the first picture and wondered why the crowed looks so delighted. As they say, here is the Big Picture.

My family is often the source of amusement

Zongzi, Sticky rice with filling wrapped in bamboo leaf

It is the Chinese dragon boat festival, celebrated all over China in various ways, often accompanied by dragon boat races. There are races in Wuhan too, or so we’ve heard. Despite my best efforts to find out where and when the races take place I have been utterly unsuccessful in obtaining any information relating to it. My Chinese friends agree that there are races somewhere but they seem to be as uninterested as unknowing.

They have however not failed to remind us that on this holiday people eat zongzi. Basically sticky glutinous rice with filling wrapped in bamboo leaves. I had tried it years ago in London of all places and I remembered it to be more than anything a meal in itself.

The Hubei version however is a sweet story. The filling, ranging from bean paste to jujube – also called red dates or Chinese dates – was sweet, the sticky rice itself was sweet and our host insisted that the zongzis themselves should be coated in sugar before they are served.

With such sugar halt in our blood system, we decided to forget about the dragon boat races all together and contend ourselves with a nice game on Wii.

Just point at the pot that looks most delicious and it is done in five minutes

PS! Tahdig is the Persian name for the hard and crisp rice at the bottom of the pan. Tahdig literally mean “bottom of the pan”