Kunming, Yunnan, China Visit

We flew from Dali to Kunming, the capital city of the Yunnan province.  We had a brief stay in Kunming before heading to Vietnam.  A couple of the most noteworthy things about Kunming are its mild year-round weather and its role in the southern silk road and the aforementioned Flying Tigers.  Not hot and humid in the summer and not cold in the winter.

The new airport that greeted us was pretty impressive: big and impressive architecture.  Those pedestrian bridges are for the departing passengers than are dropped off to get to the departure/ticketing areas.

One of the dishes at dinner was hard to get excited about.  It looked like slugs or tentacles  or something equally disgusting.  It turned out to be different types of fungus and wasn't too bad after all.

We visited two temples in Kunming.  Both were unique even though the look of the gods, goddesses and guardians look similar.  This photo and the one below are from the copper temple.  It is made with over 20 tons of copper.  Both the images and the structure of the small temple are all made of copper.

The next temple was right in the middle of the city and is set 30 or more feet below the level of the streets and buildings around it.  Walking down the stairs and going into the gardens quickly resulted in a much quieter setting...quite apart from the city hubbub.

I did finally succeeded in the getting the attention of this floppy earred bunny that was eating on one of the lawns.  However, once it saw me there it bolted off for the bushes.

Although we've seen these goddesses before it was a first where the 1000 hands all had tools  or containers in them to manifest on the things that can be done to aid mankind.....I'm uncertain how the battle axe helps, but maybe it is just an axe...

This temple is more efficient in space utilization...maybe a result of it being nestled into the middle of the city.  They have the buddhist idols grouped together along with the dragon poles in the foreground on either side of the stand.

The entrance to this sunken temple area was a simple gate with stairs that go down into the grounds.  The picture above is the stairstepped layers of roofs that start near sunken temple ground level and progress up the hill such that the spire at the top is about even with the level of  surrounding neighborhood.  I struggled to find a vantage point to take a photo that does it justice.  Also, the sect of Buddhists in this area are more aligned with Thai & Tibetan style buddhism.