Yearnin' for Yunnan

Should've made this post sooner, but I made a 6-day trip out to the southwest to see Yunnan province (just south of Sichuan, home of the 2008 earthquake) about a month ago. Turns out it's one of the most fascinating places in China, and one that I hope to return to soon.

Our tour took us through the three biggest cities in the area, from Kunming to Lijiang to Dali. Kunming is the province's capital and economiccentre; it once served as a key trading post along the Silk Road (mainly as a conduit for the Pu'er tea coming from further down south). Lijiang, with its bevy of English-speaking tour guides and an 800 year-old Old City (which survived a 7.0 magnitude earthquake in 1996 almost fully intact), is the province's biggest tourist destination, and Dali is the former capital of the Bhuddist Kingdom of Dali.

Six days, however, is not nearly enough to adequately explore Yunnan. An amazingly diverse place, Yunnan rises from just 70m above sea level to over 6600m at its highest Himalayan peak, and houses 52 of China's 56 ethnic minorities (from Tibetan to Thai). Dali, for example, has 3 million residents: 1/3 are Han Chinese, 1/3 are Bai Chinese, and the other 1/3 are a motley crew of other minorities. One of the most interesting ethnic groups can be found in Lijiang, where the Mo Suo still hold fast to a tradition of non-marriage.

Economically, Yunnan is still developing. It's developed its tourism industry greatly in the past few years (especially domestically), but it still relies heavily on mining, tea and tobacco exports to bring money in. The province has been facing heavy inflation in the last while as farmers have been pulled into the cities for higher wages. The price of pork, for example, has more than doubled from Y16 to Y35-40/kg in the last year.

Traveling out so far away from Beijing also makes it abundantly clear just how big China is. Yunnan is a little less developed than the coastal provinces; fashionable clothing is pretty much anything that's not your pajamas, and you're still bound to see a few donkeys pulling carts on the side major roads. The polish that you see in the "showcase" Chinese cities is almost entirely missing, and you get the sense that the only connection they residents there have to Beijing are the city squares and Mao statues that were federally comissioned.

If you're interested in seeing some more pictures, I've put together a mini photo essay on Facebook.