Eating out is the main pleasure after dark in Kunming. Food aside, one fea- ture of less formalYunnanese restaurants is that they often have a comnmnal bamboo water pipe and tobacco for their customers. Nightlife has improved vastly of late, thanks to rising incomes and a big expat population, and there are plenty of student bars, local dives and raucous discos to explore. The city has several operatic troupes and indigenous entertainments which include huadeng, a lantern dance. Indoor performances are sadly infrequent, but there are often informal shows at the weekend outside the Workers’ Cultural Hall andin Cuihu Park. Keep an eye on local newspapers (or ask at your hotel) for similar activities at theYunnan Arts Theatre on Dongfeng Xi Lu.

Yunnanese food Yunnanese food broadly splits into three cooking styles. In the north, a cold. oas- total lifestyle produces dried meats, vegetables and - very unusually for China- dairy products, infused with a Muslim cuisine, a vestige of the thirteenth-century Mongolian invasion. Typical dishes include wind-cured ham (yuntui or huotur), sweetened, steamed and served with slices of bread: toasted cheese and dried yoghurt wafers (rubing and rushan); the local version of crisp-skinned duck (shaoya), fiavoured by painting it with honey and roasting over a pine-needle fire: and shaguoyu, a tasty fish casserole. Southeastern Yunnan produces the most recognizably “Chinese” food. From here comes qiguoji, chicken fiavoured with medicinal herbs and stewed inside a specially shaped earthenware steamer, and crossing-the-bridge noodles (guoqiao mixian), probably the most famous dish in the province. A sort of individualized hot- pot, the curious name comes from a tale about a Qing scholar who retirea every aay to a lakeside pavilion to compose poetry. His wife, an understanding scut. used To cook him lunch, but the food always cooled as she carried it from their nome over the bridge to where he studied - until she hit on the idea of keeping the heat in with a layer of oil on top of his soup. It’s best sampled in Kunming, where numerous places serve a huge bowl of oily, scalding chicken stock with a platter of noodles, shredded meats and vegetables, which you add along with chilli Powder and sofces to taste. Not surprisingly, Yunnan’s southwestern borders are strongly influenced by Burmese cooking methods, particularly’ in the use of such un-Chinese ingredients as coconut, palm sugar, cloves and turmeric. Here you’ll find a vast range of soups and stews displayed in aluminium pots outside fast-turnover restaurants, roughly rec0g- nizable as curries, and oddities such as purple rice-flour pancakes sold at street markets. The southwest also produces good coffee and red pu’er cha, Yunnan’s best tea, both widely appreciated .across the province.

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