[Weekly Update] A whole lot of stuff I didn't include in our last video

Trying to lose weight and trying to gain muscle has put my diet into such a peculiar position... Like, I need to get low calorie high protein stuff and that's just not a thing in Asian cuisine.

CHANNEL UPDATE

Hope you enjoy our last video! Been working on it for a very long time. I'm glad people seem to like it as much as I do.

From the feedbacks, it appears people enjoy this fast pace dabble of different locations, rather than an in-depth travel video focusing on everything a single city has to offer. That certainly makes my editing a lot easier, since I don't have to find extra stock footage. But it does mean I have a lot of small tidbits about each regions I have to cut out to keep the pace going.

So, in this update, instead of the usual media talk, let's include some of the interesting informations I didn't include for our video!

Yunnan

We mentioned that Yunnan is geographically difficult to navigate. This is one of the main reasons as to why Yunnan was one of China's most underdeveloped provinces. It's also a landlocked province, so that doesn't help things.

Here, cultural travels faster than people. The remoteness is why so many ethnic minorities lives here. Many of them actually have cultural ties to neighbouring countries. For example, the language of the Dai people came from the same root as the language of Thailand. And the Miao people of China and the Hmong people of Vietnam are from the same ethnic groups. The more you read into the ethnic composition of the province, the more fascinating it gets.

Yunnan is also one of the birth places of tea. On its mountains, you can find tea plantations that are literally a thousand years old. In recent years, however, many plantations also expanded into coffee beans. Apparently China has really good coffee. It's one of the things that I hear consistently in all travel videos I watched on YouTube. And the Chinese coffee beans came from here.

Thanks to better road connectivity, easier travel with the high speed rail, and effort to turn ancient towns like Lijiang into tourist hot spots, Yunnan is escaping poverty. It'll take some more years for the economy to transform into better living conditions for the locals, but it seems Yunnan is on the up and up.

Beijing

I tried my best to convey what the Beijing spirit is like in the video, and I hope I offered a good glimpse into it. There is, of course, a lot more to the Beijing identity. But a lot of it is just hard to explain.

For example, while Mandarin is based on the Beijing dialect, it is not the same thing. Standard Mandarin, or Putonghua in Chinese, is standardized and simplified for ease of learning and communication. To Chinese ears, the difference between Mandarin and Beijing-Hua is like American English vs. British English. It even carries a similar fanciness, too. When Chinese people wanna sound like a noble asshole, they'd mimic the Beijing accent. It's what Chinese people perceived as historic.

One thing I find particularly funny about Beijing people is that, in a lot of ways, they feel like New Yorkers. They aren't as curious or as passionate as, say, people of Chongqing. There is this roughness to their personality. But when you need help, they'll all rush to help you, all while complaining about having to get out of bed to do so. This, combined with their accent, makes for great irl comedy.

Though Beijing was the capital for both the Ming and Qing dynasty, Chinese people generally associates the city with its Qing dynasty legacy. Movies about Ming dynasty emperors usually has no accent requirements. But TV shows about Qing dynasty imperial life will not be complete without at least one character who speaks Beijing accent. This will be more interesting when we visit Xi'an, the other ancient capital, which is more associated with the Tang dynasty.

Chongqing

Chongqing has only gotten famous in the past 5 years or so, thanks to it finding an audience on social media.

I'll be honest, Chongqing looks kinda ass to me in the daylight. That freaking golden twin towers are such a major eyesore. But when night comes, Chongqing lights up in ways most other Chinese cities simply can't compete. The most iconic part is definitely the Hongya Cave, which has been described as real life Spirited Away. I even used it as the video thumbnail. Unfortunately no movies are made about it, as far as I know. So It only appears in passing.

In the video, I briefly explained just how crazy the Chongqing topology is, but very few movies actually shows it off properly. If you have TikTok or Rednote, tries searching Chongqing, and you'll most likely see videos about Kuixing Building. This building has a plaza on its rooftop, and connects to the ground floor on one side, and it's the 22nd floor on the other side. There are also other videos that shows how you can walk down a flight of stairs and somehow ending up on a higher floors. It got posted on Reddit, and some dude said "I remember having dreams like this" and I think it's a very apt description. Seriously, it's a lot of fun, I highly recommend looking it up.

Finally, one thing I didn't mention is that Chongqing is one of the fastest growing cities in China. Google "Chongqing Timelapse" and the top result will be a Google satellite view of the city growing over the past 30 years, expanding from a small town into a metropolis. The previously mentioned Hongya cave is only turned into a tourist attraction in 2006, and became a sensation in 2016.

In fact, things are changing so fast, I can't even use footage from Crazy Stone (2006), widely considered to be the best comedy set in Chongqing. The sceneries in that film looks so old and nothing like the flashier Chongqing of today.

Anyway, that's the update for this week. I didn't even talk about how Chongqing's metro system is actually a monorail, and why it's like one of the only cities in the world where monorail actually makes sense. I can be a nerd all day, but let's cut it before it turns into a lecture.

I should have a bonus video ready in a few days. I'll see you then!