On a recent Sunday afternoon, we rode to the north side of town to visit the new Kunming Waterfall Park. Sidewalk vendors had already staked out space on the entrance road:
Sugar Cane Juicer with a tired child
Fresh pineapples
Some kind of roots and Stinky Tofu
Beans and Veggies
Inside of the park, kids were piloting robotic dinosaurs and other machines:
Down the stairs, a wedding photo session was underway:
We finally reached the falls (with a few thousand other folks):
It’s actually quite impressive to see this completed project (a quarter mile long, 40 feet high, $167 million), which is reported to be either the longest or second longest man-made waterfall in Asia. The project uses about 300,000 gallons per minute of water from the Niulan River, recently diverted to Kunming to try and flush pollution out of Dianchi Lake (a journey of about 60 miles through 10 tunnels).
There is a reservoir at the top of the falls,
but I expect they’ll put up a big fence when someone accidentally goes over the top.
We joined the rest of the crowd in two traditional Chinese ways – taking selfies:
and eating “shaokao” (barbequed meet on a stick) – yum!
The waterfall actually looks nice…if there weren’t so many people! mmm, I wonder what sugarcane juice tastes like?
I wonder how long it will take to clean up the lake? Does it look less green now?
According to the official plan, we should begin to see improvements by 2018. Unofficial reports suggest that, unless action is taken to reduce the sources of lake pollution, no improvement will result. But the waterfalls are pretty…
If anyone liked the sugar cane juice, I think that it would be Laurie.