The Amazing Race

Tonight's episode of The Amazing Race was in Yunnan, China - Hannah's province, and where we spent 8 days of our trip to China. We love the show, and I have been so excited that they would be traveling to Yunnan.

The leg started with the teams flying to Kunming - the city where Hannah is from. While they were only there for a few minutes before leaving for Lijiang, the glimpses of the Kunming Airport were enough to bring back a flood of memories. It was the one airport that the language barrier was really an issue. We had to check our stroller (ever been through an airport with a 9 month old without a stroller? I don't recommend it...) and we had a lot of problems getting through security with our carseat. Seeing the last team get on a China Eastern plane directly from the ground...well, we've been there and done that. I will spare you the picture of me and DeeDee in the Kunming airport and leave you with one that looks a lot like what you saw on the race.
The leg itself was beautiful. Yunnan is a beautiful place - very very different from the big cities of Beijing and Guangzhou. I liked the tasks with the Chinese zodiac - for us, the zodiac signs were always what you figured out at a Chinese restaurant while you were waiting for your food. But so much in China revolves around the signs. Hannah is an Ox, and we bought lots of Ox items for her while we were there. I also liked the prayer wheel. The prayer wheels we saw in China were spectacular, and we really liked the glimpse into how other religions pray.

One of the things that is always an issue on the show is the language barrier, which will be interesting for the rest of their time in Yunnan. While we found plenty of people in Beijing and Guangzhou who spoke English, very few people in Kunming did. And Kunming is the "big city" - up in Lijiang I would imagine there are even fewer. It's also a different dialect of Mandarin that is spoken there - Chris's Mandarin lessons didn't help us out nearly as much as we had hoped they would. The other thing we really related to was the altitude. Lijiang is much higher up in the mountains than Kunming, but we definitely felt the effects of the altitude in Kunming as well. The good news was that the air was so much cleaner than it was in Beijing, but we definitely could feel it as we climbed the stairs in order to cross the streets.

Next week the teams are in Kunming. Watching the previews for next week, all we could focus on were the cabs. The traffic in Kunming and riding in the back of those cabs is going to break a few teams down. We can't wait to see their view of "our" city.