Scents of Kunming

What do jasmine flowers, green tea, cigarettes, and barbecued meat have in common?

We are told by experts that our sense of smell is very powerful. It can recall memories, set a mood, turn us on or off, prompt us to buy that doughnut or perfume. I have been pondering what China smells like. If you were to ask me if I enjoyed the smell of cigarette smell I would say no, however recently I realized that the smell of some sort of smoke is a permeating smell here in China. I walked behind a young man today getting off the bus and the smoke from his cigarette flowed from his nose over his head and into my face. I was annoyed. But shortly realized that it wasn't as terrible smelling as I anticipated.

This got me thinking about how often I inhale second hand smoke here. "Lighting Up" an article I read in the magazine: Yunnan published early 2010 states that China has 350 million smokers. It also says, "Every year, smoking leads to the deaths of 5 million people worldwide; this year, one fifth will be Chinese." Basically, I just wish you could read the article. It says that in 2007 the WHO reported that more Chinese women died from second hand smoke (over 48,000) than from active smoking (47,000). It is had to believe that only after a year of living in a smoke filled environment I no longer find it repulsive and every once in a while smell smoke and think how nice it smells. Disturbing.

But I must remind myself that the reason I sometimes find it nice is because of the other possible smells it may be covering up. Generally Chinese people do not use deodorant. During the raining season the sewers back up into the streets. Large quantities of car and bus exhaust. Various other odd and itchy smells are available, but at this moment I cannot recall them, to my relief.

The smell of the flower jasmine is often wafting on the air near my school. There are several young and elderly women who sell the blooms made into necklaces or bracelets. It is a very beautiful smell. It carries with it a floral scent with a hint of a musk.

The numourus tea shops that dot every major street in Kunming give off the faint or sometimes not so faint smell of tea. Green, Black, Herbal, or Medicinal all are available in these shops and the collective scents suggest a very healthy atmosphere.

Yunnan is famous for a dish called shaokao. It is pronounced like sh plus aou and the second syllable is pronounced like cow. If you were to look in your Chinese English dictionary it would translate it as barbecue. However, it is not like American barbecue. There are some restaurants that specialize in shaokao but it is really a street vendor food that mostly comes out after 8pm. the small pedestrian side streets fill either side with their charcoal stoves and they advertise anything from eggs to "stinky" tofu to dog meat to relatively normal beef, chicken, pork, and vegetables. The stoves send dark smoke up from the cooking meat and the smell is hard to resist. Even if you know you will have diarrhea later in the night.