We went to Kunming city in Yunnan province for a family trip last year. It took us about 4.5 hours by plane from Shenyang to Kunming.

Here is a list of places we went to.

・Dounan flower market（斗南花市場）, the largest flower market in Asia.

・Lunch at Mushroom Hotpot Restrant, Hǎo jūn dào（好菌道）

・Kunming Stone Forest – UNESCO Heritage

This stone forest was registered as UNESCO Heritage site in 2007. Karst topography is a unique type of stone formations that were formed over a long period of time by the erosion of rocks from rainwater and groundwater, and the ocean floor rising about 270 million years ago.

・The Dragon Gate On Xishan　（西山龍門)
The Dragon Gate is also said to be the origin of the Chinese word “登竜門” (the Dragon Gate), and it is believed that if you touch the Dragon Gate, you will pass an exam or get promoted. 😀

・Red Land: The soil in this area contains a lot of iron that gives it a red-ish color. We had freshly baked potatoes and corn that a local farmer cooked for us. It was so delicious. 🙂

Today, I would like to write about our visit to Dounan flower market（斗南花市場）and the Mushroom Hotpot restaurant, Hǎo jūn dào (好菌道).

Look at this huge bouquet！It asw about ＄11.

This flower market sells 11 billion fresh flowers annually. Many of them are exported to Japan via refrigerated shipping. Many businesses from overseas come here to buy fresh flowers!

This place was so huge!

There were a lot of souvenirs as well.

This is a citrus fruit called Buddha’s hand!↑

There were also lots of seeds and bulbs!

I wanted to buy flowers, but I enjoyed walking around the flower market.

Next, we headed to a restaurant called Hǎo jūn dào (好菌道). The mushroom hotpot restaurant.

We were excited to see what kind of mushrooms we will get in the hotpot. hehe

Like a lot of Chinese restaurants, their dishes were wrapped with plastic wrapper like in the picture above.

Look at these mushrooms! Wow…!

I heard that the soup stock is made from chicken.

We had to cook the mushrooms for about 20 minutes with high heat!

After 20 minutes cooking the mushrooms, the staff came to our table and took a sample of the soup we cooked and put it in a small container. I asked the staff why she needed the soup. She said this is for proof that their soup was safe to eat, even if the customer have food poisoning later at another place.

Well… I was a little bit nervous since it was my first time eating a lot of kinds of mushrooms. I slowly tasted the soup and …. It was actually SO delicious! It had deep, full-boddied flavor and it tasted like cream soup!

On my next blog post, I will write about our visit to “Red Land” and our conversation with a local farmer who baked some potatos for us. It was delicious too…!

Thank you for reading my blog!