Economist magazine on Kunming
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Kunming,
Yunnan,
China
Saturday, July 5, 2008
the Economist magazine recently ran one of those 'It is Tuesday so I must be in Shanghai' travel pieces, where the author tours around quickly with a large bag of misconceptions, some poor info cobbled from out of date guidebooks, and a series of cross-cultural misunderstandings.
For example, anyone who has spent more than a day in Kunming knows, 1) tourists do go there; 2) it is not smoggy or polluted (compared to other Chinese cities). And why this fascination with animal markets? Just because Chinese slaughter for fresh meat, does that make it worse than a meat works in the industrial part of town where you don't see what goes on? As for no one hearing of Shaxi old town, perhaps because it is a long way from Dali and not on the usual tourist (entry-fee paying) route.
And the author does the usual crap about Zhongdian not being Tibet. It is Tibetan, and what many refer to Tibet now is actually the Tibetan Autonomous Region - TAR - a Chinese prescribed area which is only a portion of Tibet. Large chunks were grafted into Yunnan, Sichuan, Gansu and Qinghai provinces.
The result? You read it . . . and the comments it has elicited . . .
http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displaystory.cfm?subjectid=7933598&story_id=11605624
Tradition's rock
Jun 27th 2008
From Economist.com
A booming country's quiet corner
Wednesday
KUNMING, the capital of Yunnan province, is an affluent city. Large foreign cars fill the roads; billboards with advertisements for large foreign cars line them. These vehicles, along with the coal-fired power stations and nearby heavy industry, create a thick, hazy pollution soup that sits permanently above the town.
Kunming's success is built on a manufacturing and industrial base. During the second world war, it was the terminus of the Burma Road. Today you can now fly direct from Kunming to Yangon, Hanoi, Hong Kong and Singapore.
Although many tourists pass through Kunming's large airport, which filters visitors to destinations around the southwest, few stop here. This is a shame: despite (or perhaps, at least partly, because of) its bad air, it shows what a self-confident, middle class China might look like.
Anyone who does wander into town from the airport should do so carefully. Silent electric scooters have largely replaced bicycles, and they zip along pavements, approaching quickly and without warning from all directions. Locals have developed an extra-sensory perception which I struggle to emulate.
The city centre is a well-ordered place, with streets continually swept by an army of workers in fluorescent orange vests. Many of the stores attest to Kunming's wealth: Gucci, Givenchy, Ferragamo and other luxury brands line up alongside each other on Qingnian Street.
In the backstreets are hints of what Kunming might once have been and for many still is. Away from the flashy stores are poorly-lit streets where locals eat in plain shopfront restaurants.
A few Buddhist monasteries attest to other cultural influences in Yunnan province, which is home to more ethnic minorities than any other region of the country. There is also a small but prominent Hui Muslim population, though many of their shops, which had been concentrated in a small part of the city centre, have been dispersed in recent years at the behest of the government.
Elsewhere there are signs of the China I expected to see. A tunnel of white-coated masseurs stand behind their chairs along the middle of the pedestrianised Zhengyi Street in the centre of town, working their painful magic on customers or waiting for the next ones. Around the corner, a group of middle-aged women exercise in public by line-dancing.
Five minutes further outside the centre, the road is decked with open-air stalls on either side, selling a huge variety of meats. Locals eat and chat on rickety chairs and tables. Small chickens and ducks are available, heads, feet and all, alongside dog meat butchered into sections of thighs, feet, ribs and head. The stallholders insistently extol the virtues of the latter when they notice me and my friend looking on curiously. We decide to pass.
The more modern face of China reasserts itself a few hours later in the district of Kundu. Like many other towns and cities in the region, Kunming keeps its loudest bars and nightclubs restricted to a tight area of the city centre. The clubs have clearly had time, money and effort spent on them, as have their twenty-something clientele who confidently walk in and out of the clubs well into the early hours, popping outside to make and take calls on their mobile phones.
Unlike its clubs and bars, Kunming's hotels do not cluster in a small area downtown: there are too many of them. Construction in the centre of town augurs even more vast shopping malls, and a high-tech industrial park is being developed on the edge of town.
Southwest China was once rather a backwater: people who fell afoul of the rulers in the capital were exiled here. Today, though, Kunming doesn't feel all that far at all from Shanghai or Beijing.
Thursday
THE town of Lijiang lies northwest of Kunming. Snow-capped mountains loom in the distance while smaller hills tumble down towards the town, criss-crossed by paths and nibbled away by quarries at their bases. Wide, flat valleys provide more wheat than rice in this part of Yunnan province.
As I drive into town I notice that the buildings look older than in other areas I've visited. People are not as well-dressed, and huge lorries barrel down the roads, belching clouds of noxious black fumes over the children walking along the highways' shoulders.
Frankly, Lijiang makes a poor first impression: it seems sprawling, modern and charmless. But a 15-minute walk from the hotel takes us into the town's medieval centre (pictured), which is a UNESCO world-heritage site full of narrow lanes, red lanterns and roofs curling up at the corners with wooden tendrils reaching into the sky. Canals-some clean enough to sustain fish-wend their way through this charming cityscape.
Shops and bars throng much of the northern part of the old town, but the invasion has so far spared the south. Instead, a huge sprawling market sells every type of food imaginable: fruit, vegetables, spices, and meat both butchered and alive. Chickens, ducks and dogs are squashed unhappily into cages in one area, while around the corner live fish flop around in shallow pools between their more unfortunate cousins who have already gone belly-up.
Lijiang is home to the Naxi people, an ethnic group related to Tibetans who have lived in the Yunnan foothills for centuries. While Han Chinese comprise more than 90% of the country's population, there are another 55 "official" ethnic groups in the country, and many more that lack state recognition. Members of those 55 groups account for more than 30% of Yunnan's population. In some prefectures they are in the clear majority-Daquin, for instance, is 80% Tibetan.
Three hours south of Lijiang is another world-heritage site-an ancient walled city called Dali, where the Bai people live. Dali is duller than Lijiang, but as I stroll around its streets, the sound of strange music draws me down a narrow lane. An odd spectacle confronts me: hundreds of school children standing in ranks swinging their arms and legs, clapping and turning, all in time to a teacher's commands. School exercise, Chinese style.
I try to follow the old tea-trading route back to Lijiang. It will lead me off the modern-day main road and through another ancient Bai village called Shaxi.
On the map the road looks straight enough; in reality it proves trickier to follow. My taxi driver claims, implausibly, never to have heard of Shaxi. I stop and ask directions several times, receiving blank stares in response. On one occasion a man and a woman both cross their index fingers into an X to tell me not to go. The man reinforces the message by making one hand into the shape of a pistol, as if to say it was dangerous-exactly why is left unsaid. My driver, whose response to any minor mishap during the day has been infectious laughter, appears perfectly happy to give up and head home, but I want to press on.
After a long, tortuous drive we arrive in Shaxi, which has neither obvious signs of danger nor appeal, despite its colourful market. We turn down an old cobbled street that looks like it might once have been the city's main road. Ancient houses, temples and statues crowd peacefully around a shaded square. Local women walk home from the market wearing long skirts with ringed by bright hoops. I'm glad I ignored the X.
Friday
JAMES HILTON'S novel "Lost Horizon", which was published in 1933, features a peaceful valley called Shangri-La tucked somewhere in the mountainous Chinese countryside. Since then, several places in China have renamed themselves Shangri-La, and despite the crass appeal to tourist dollars, it really is hard to resist the allure of that name on a map.
One attempt to tap into Shangri-La's mystique lies in the far north of Yunnan province, high in the mountains. Until just a few years ago it was known by the more prosaic name of Zhongdian.
The town itself is another bland collection of modern buildings strung along a wide central street. But a few miles outside the city limits is a 350-year-old Buddhist monastery with a gold roof that glints in the sun, its brightness a stark contrast to the crumbling old buildings that surround it.
The Chinese army bombed this monastery in the 1950s; it only reopened in 1981, and building work continues. As I enter the grounds and ascend the main stone steps, the echo of stones being chipped and cut by a small army of workmen slowly gives way to wind and chiming bells. A series of temples with Buddhas three storeys tall awaits at the top, along with heavily decorated walls and ceilings that feature brightly coloured paintings over every available surface.
What this monastery lacks, however, is monks (or at least significant numbers of them): most of the 600 who are affiliated with the monastery do not live here. I see as many of them wandering the pavements and sitting in cafes down in the town centre as I do in the temples.
This isn't quite Tibet-the border lies some 150km to the north and has only just reopened to outsiders. China's government is nervous about the prospect of more unrest ahead of the Olympic games. Earlier this year Chinese tour groups started returning to Tibet, and in late June Beijing started letting international visitors in again too.
Tibet's closure, which followed riots in the capital Lhasa in early 2008, had an impact here. Outsiders were briefly discouraged from visiting, though today the area appears problem-free. But just in case, a small army post in the middle of town serves as a warning of how little tolerance Beijing would have for any further outbreaks of dissent.
But even if it isn't Tibet, the countryside all around the town still feels quite different from the rest of Yunnan. Once I cross the mountains onto the plateau where Shangri-La lies, the mood changes. Yaks graze in the pastures, and the large, two-storey houses all have the same distinctive style: they gradually taper up to richly coloured and detailed eaves. Impressive round trunks hold up the front façades of the houses, which are sometimes hidden behind high walls.
Road signs are printed in Chinese, Tibetan and occasionally English. Multi-coloured prayer flags flutter on strings, bleached by the sun into pastel shades.
Further north of the monastery is a vast lake that drains away at this time of year to leave pasture behind-more food for the yaks. A stray dog on the meadow attracts the attention of two men on horseback who chase it away. Unwisely, it heads toward a group of children who gather up stones and rocks in anticipation. At least one stone hits home, eliciting a yelp of alarm from the dog before it makes its escape up the rough rocky mountainside. It's all a little more commonplace than the name Shangri-La implies.
And here's the comments that are coming thick and fast . . .
So do come to China, but do a few things first: Get a rudimentary understanding of the culture, history and geography of where you'll be traveling, learn just a tad of the language, and be polite. Otherwise you make things much more difficult for us expats who live here and love this place.
Xiong9 wrote:
June 28, 2008 02:49
It's interesting to read a travel article at The Economist. I have been to all these places, but there are too many tourists nowadays, which made them less attractive than before.
For backpackers, I would recommend one step further from Shangri-La. Take Yunnan-Tibet road: Kunming - /> Dali -> Lijiang -> Zhongdian until Deqin (德钦), where you would see the Meili Snow Mountain (梅里雪山). Once you reach Tibet, the view would be more spectacular, all the way to Lhasa.
The Kham region (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kham) located in Western Sichuan and Eastern Tibet is my favorite place. It's a must-see for backpackers yet it has much less tourists. No enough space to explain here. Check Lonely Planet, etc.
Jared in Kunming wrote:
June 28, 2008 03:44
I never really liked this kind of journalism. Leaning far too heavily on snap impressions gleaned from a day or two of travel, this unnamed correspondent makes mistakes that could easily have been avoided with some basic background research.
I'm not sure what day the reporter visited the city, but Kunming's air quality is downright pristine when compared to other inland Chinese cities like Xi'an or Wuhan. In fact, Kunming ranked 4th out of the 31 major cities with at least 351 days of "fairly good" air quality by China's National Bureau of Statistics.* A major factor behind this ranking is the relative absence of heavy industry. Yunnan doesn't have a ton of mega-manufacturers. Those that are present, like Kunming Iron & Steel Company (abbreviated in Chinese as Kungang), tend to operate a safe distance from Kunming. In Kungang's case, 20 miles (32 km) away. The larger factories closer to Kunming - like cigarette manufacturing - are generally less heavily polluting. Meanwhile car ownership, while increasing rapidly, still lags far behind the more industrialized centers to the east. The city government has taken at least a symbolic interest in addressing auto emissions by holding monthly car-free days. They're also planting a heck of a lot of trees.
Similarly, the reporter's "affluence" argument is a bit problematic. To begin with, the evidence is shaky. Smog is clearly not what it's made out to be. And a smattering of high-end retail hardly counts as anything besides a convenient anecdote. I'm no economist but if you look at GDP per capita Kunming (at ¥7,833, US$1,141) doesn't hold up so well when compared to other cities like Shanghai (¥57,310, US$8,346), Chengdu (¥20,625, US$3,004), or even Nanning (¥16,121, US$2,348). Even discussing affluence in broad general terms can obscure the fact that while a small but growing number do sport Gucci bags and drive BMWs, the vast majority survive on less than US$200 per month.
I'm not out to poo-poo travel writing. Last September The New York Times travel section ran a terrific piece on Kunming (http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/09/23/travel/tmagazine/10talk-kunming-t.html). Unfortunately, this reporter just didn't do his or her homework.
*The figures are from 2004, the last year I could locate specific numbers. In 2006, Kunming was listed as Class II, meaning it had "fairly good" air quality. Only two cities in 2006 - Lhasa and Haikou (the provincial capital of Hainan) - were listed as Class I, meaning they had "excellent" air quality. Most of the other cities in the Class II category were either located directly on the shore or had far smaller populations than Kunming.
2004 data: http://www.allcountries.org/china_statistics/12_7_ambient_air_quality_in_main.html
2006 data: http://www.china.org.cn/english/MATERIAL/189327.htm
nianqingri wrote:
July 03, 2008 10:17
I am a bit skeptical of the analysis, in this article, of Kunming's environmental and economic situations. For more info, please take a look at Jared's post, the second from the top.
All I will say is that I know a great deal of Chinese people and resident expats who consistently rave about Kunming's air quality.
And if that picture of Kunming is illustrative of its "thick, hazy pollution soup", I will take that any day over a so called "blue sky day" here in Shanghai.
fullmetaljacket wrote:
June 23, 2008 14:48
I just watched a documentary on CBC on the Nature of things with David Suzuki: "Wild China". The landscape is fantastic. Forget about tea and medicinal herbs. The geography is something unique that is worth seeing.
