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Kunming
昆明
Tuodong City, Yachi Fu, Yunnanfu
Prefecture-level city
Satellite image of Kunming, situated on the northern shore of Lake Dian
Satellite image of Kunming, situated on the northern shore of Lake Dian
Nickname: 
City of Eternal Spring
CountryChina
ProvinceYunnan
County-level divisions14
Township divisions0
Settledca. 279 BCE [1]
Government
 • CPC Kunming? Committee Secretary
 • MayorWang Wentao
Area
 • Prefecture-level city21,501 km2 (8,302 sq mi)
 • Urban
6,200 km2 (2,400 sq mi)
Elevation
1,892 m (6,207 ft)
Population
 (2004)
 • Prefecture-level city5,740,000 (16th)
 • Urban
3,055,000
Time zoneUTC+8 (China Standard Time)
Postal code
650000
Area code871
License plate prefixes云A
GDP (2004)CNY 94.2 billion
 - per capitaCNY 18,773
HDI (2005)0.657 (medium) (29th)
Websitewww.km.gov.cn (Chinese)

Kunming (Chinese: 昆明; pinyin: Kūnmíng; Wade–Giles: K'un-ming; IPA: [kʊn'mɪŋ]; UN/LOCODE: CNKMG) is a prefecture-level city and capital of Yunnan province, in southwestern China. Because of its year-round temperate climate, Kunming is often called the "Spring City" or "City of Eternal Spring" (春城).

Kunming is the political, economic, communications and cultural center of the province, and is the seat of the Yunnan provincial government. It was important during World War II as a Chinese military center, American air base, and transport terminus for the Burma Road. Located in the middle of the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, Kunming is located at an altitude of 1,900 m above sea level and at a latitude north of the tropic of cancer. It covers an area of 21,501 km² and its urban area covers 6,200 km². Kunming has an estimated population of 5,740,000 including 3,055,000 in the urban area and is located at the northern edge of the large Lake Dian, surrounded by temples and lake-and-limestone hill landscapes.

Kunming consists of an old, previously walled city, a modern commercial district, residential and university areas. The city has an astronomical observatory, and its institutions of higher learning include Yunnan University, Yunnan Normal University, Yunnan Minorities University and a medical college. On the outskirts is a famed bronze temple, dating from the Ming dynasty. Kunming was formerly called Yunnanfu (literally meaning "Yunnan Capital") until the 1920s.

It is the leading transportation hub (air, road, rail) in SW China, with a rail connection to Vietnam and road links to Burma and Laos. Kunming currently has a new international airport under development, which is slated to be the fourth largest international airport in China. Situated in a fertile plain 640 km southwest of Chongqing, Kunming is an important trading center between the far west and central and south China. It is one of China's largest producers of copper. Copper is smelted with nearby hydroelectric power. Coal is mined, and the city has a few iron and steel complexes. Other manufactures include phosphorus, chemicals, machinery, textiles, paper, and cement. Although it was often the seat of kings in ancient times, Kunming's modern prosperity dates only from 1910, when the railroad from Hanoi was built. The city has continued to develop rapidly under China's modernization efforts. Kunming's streets have widened while office buildings and housing projects develop at a fast pace. Kunming has been designated a special tourism center and as such sports a proliferation of high-rises and luxury hotels.

History

See also: History of Yunnan

Historically the domain of Yunnan's earliest inhabitants and first civilization, Kunming long profited from its position on the caravan roads through to South-East Asia, India and Tibet. Early townships in the southern edge of Lake Dianchi (outside the contemporary city perimeter) can be dated back to 279 BCE, although they have been long lost to history.

Founded in 765 CE, it was known to the Chinese as Tuodong (拓东) city in the independent state of Nanzhao during the 8th and 9th centuries. It first came under the control of the Chinese central government with the Yuan (Mongol) invasion of the southwest in 1253. In 1276 it was founded by the Mongol rulers as Kunming County and became the provincial capital of Yunnan. The city grew as a trading center between the southwest and the rest of China.

It is considered by scholars to have been the city of Yachi Fu (Duck Pond Town) where people had used cowries as cash and ate their meat raw, as described by the 13th-century Venetian traveler Marco Polo who traveled to the area and wrote about his fascination of the place.

Old Kunming quarter

In the 1300s, Kunming was retaken by the Chinese Ming Dynasty, which built a wall surrounding present-day Kunming. During the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1911) dynasties, it was the seat of the superior prefecture of Yunnan. It reverted to county status in 1912, under the name Kunming, and became a municipality in 1935.

In the 1800s, Kunming suffered at the hands of rebel leader Du Wenxiu, the Sultan of Dali, who attacked and besieged the city several times between 1858 and 1868. Little of the city's wealth survived the 1856 Panthay Rebellion, when most of Buddhist sites in the capital were razed. Decades later Kunming began to be influenced by the West, especially from the French Empire. In the 1890s, an uprising against working conditions on the Kunming-Haiphong rail line saw 300,000 laborers executed after France shipped in weapons to suppress the revolt. The meter-gauge rail line, only completed by around 1911, was designed by the French so that they could tap Yunnan's mineral resources for their colonies in Indochina.

Kunming was a communications center in early times and a junction of two major trading routes, one westward via Dali and Tengyue into Myanmar, the other southward through Mengzi to the Red River in Indochina. Eastward, a difficult mountain route led to Guiyang in Guizhou province and thence to Hunan province. To the northeast was a well-established trade trail to Yibin in Sichuan province on the Yangtze River. But these trails were all extremely difficult, passable only by mule trains or pack-carrying porters.

The opening of the Kunming area began in earnest with the completion in 1906-1910 of the railway to Haiphong in north Vietnam (part of French Indochina). Kunming became a treaty port opening to foreign trade in 1908 and soon became a commercial center. In the 1930s its importance grew still further when the first highways were built, linking Kunming with Chongqing in Sichuan and Guiyang in Guizhou to the east. Kunming's rail link to Hanoi was cut during World War II, restored in 1957, cut again in 1979, and reopened in 1996.

Kunming was transformed into a modern city as a result of the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 when the invading Japanese forces caused a great number of east-coast Chinese refugees, some of whom were wealthy, to flood into the southwest of China. They brought with them dismantled industrial plants, which were then re-erected beyond the range of Japanese bombers. In addition, a number of universities and institutes of higher education were evacuated there (see National Southwestern Associated University). The increased money and expertise quickly established Kunming as an industrial and manufacturing base for the wartime government in Chongqing (then part of Sichuan province).

During the Second World War, the city of Kunming was prepared as a National Redoubt in case the temporary capital in Chongqing fell, an elaborate system of underground caves to serve as offices, barracks and factories was prepared but never utilised. Kunming was to have served again in this role during the ensuing Chinese civil war, but the Nationalist garrison turned coat and joined the Communists. Instead Taiwan would become the last redoubt and home of the Chinese Nationalist government, a role it fulfills to this day.[2]

When the Japanese occupied French Indochina in 1940, the links of Kunming with the west, both via the newly constructed Burma Road and by air, grew increasingly vital as Allied forces provided essential support by importing materials from the British-colony Burma. Later on in the war, Kunming was targeted by the Imperial Japanese Air Force during their bombing campaigns, and when the Burma Road was lost to the Japanese, the American Volunteer Group, known as the "Flying Tigers", used Kunming as a base in 1941 and 1942 to fly in supplies over the Himalayas from British bases in India in defiance of Japanese assaults. They also were tasked with defending China's lifeline to the outside world, the Burma Road and the Ledo Road, which had Kunming as a northern terminus. See Battle of Yunnan-Burma Road.

Industry became important in Kunming during World War II. The large state-owned Central Machine Works was transferred there from Hunan, while the manufacture of electrical products, copper, cement, steel, paper, and textiles expanded. A university was set up in 1922.

After 1949 Kunming developed rapidly into an industrial metropolis, second only to Chongqing in the southwest. A Minorities' Institute was set up in the 1950s to promote mutual understanding and access to university education among Yunnan's multiethnic population. The city consolidated its position as a supply depot during the Vietnam War and subsequent border clashes. Until Mao Zedong's death, Kunming was still generally thought in much of the rest of the country as a remote frontier settlement and so it acted as a place up to then for the government to exile people who had fallen politically out of favor, especially during the Cultural Revolution. In the 1980s and 1990s, the city center was rebuilt, with Swiss help, in its current 'modern' style to impress visitors attending the 1999 World Horticultural Expo.[3]

An old wooden house and a modern skyscraper in the background.

Since the economic reforms of mid-1980s, Kunming has also enjoyed increased tourism and foreign investment. Neighboring nations such as Thailand trace their ancestries back to Yunnan and have proved particularly willing to channel funds into Kunming. The city has become ever more developed and accessible as a result. Several Thai Chinese banks have offices in Kunming, for example, Kasikorn Bank and Krung Thai Bank.

On July 2005, the second Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) Summit was held in Kunming, with government leaders from China, Laos, Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam participating. There, China agreed to lend its neighbors more than $1 billion for a series of projects. China was then promoting GMS cooperation as a first step toward building an eventual China-ASEAN Free Trade Area.

In July 2006 talks at the ASEAN Regional Forum, China, Bangladesh and Myanmar (Burma) agreed to construct a highway from Kunming to Chittagong through Mandalay for trade and development.[4]

Geography and climate

Lake Dian

Kunming is located in east-central Yunnan province. Situated in a fertile lake basin on the northern shore of the Lake Dian and surrounded by mountains to the north, west, and east, Kunming has always played a pivotal role in the communications of southwestern China. Lake Dian, titled as "the Pearl of the Plateau", is the sixth largest fresh water lake in China and has an area of approximately 340 square kilometers.

Located at an elevation of 1,890 m on the Yungui Plateau with low latitude and high elevation, Kunming has one of the mildest climates in China, characterised by short, cool dry winters with mild days and crisp nights, and long, warm and humid summers, but much less hot than the lowlands. Average highs are 15 C in winter and 24 C in summer. With its perpetual spring-like weather which provides the ideal climate for plants and flowers, Kunming is known as the "City of Eternal Spring". The city is covered with blossoms and lush vegetation all the year round.

About 96 km (60 miles) southeast of the city is the Stone Forest, a karst formation developed as a tourist attraction consisting of rock caves, arches, and pavilions. It is part of the larger karst-based landscape of the area.

Climate data for Kunming
Month Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Year
Source: China Meteorological Administration

Horticulture

Kunming is a significant horticultural center in China, providing products such as grain, wheat, horsebeans, corn, potato and fruit such as peaches, apples, oranges, grapes and chestnuts. Kunming is world-famous for its flowers and flower-growing exports. More than 400 types of flowers are commonly grown in Kunming. The camellia, yulan magnolica, azalea, fairy primrose, lily and orchid are known as the six famous flowers of the city.

Paleontology

Among Chinese fossils that were discovered in 2002 was an important new invertebrate animal species from Early Cambrian deposits at Chengjiang near Kunming. Didazoon haoae represented an entirely new phylum of metazoans (multicellular animals), the phylum Vetulicolia. The specimen had a series of gill slits, which suggested that this new group illustrates an early stage in the diversification of the deuterostomes, one of the major animal divisions. Other deuterostome groups are the chordates (which includes the vertebrates), hemichordates, and echinoderms. Also reported was a Devonian Chinese fossil fish, Styloichthys changae, that has features linking the lungfish to tetrapods (four-legged vertebrates).

In 2004, newly discovered well-preserved soft-bodied fossils of deuterostomes from the Lower Cambrian Chengjiang deposits near Kunming represented a new group of echinoderms (a group of marine animals). Named vetulocystids, these deuterostomes were a diverse superphylum that included the chordates, hemichordates, and echinoderms. The find shed some light on the origin of the echinoderms.

See also:

Boundaries

Kunming is bounded by Qujing City to the east, Honghe Hani and Yi Autonomous Prefecture to the southeast and Yuxi City to the southwest, Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture to the west and Zhaotong City to the northeast.

Administrative divisions

Location of Kunming prefecture (yellow) within Yunnan province (light grey) of China (dark grey).
See also: List of administrative divisions of Yunnan

The prefecture-level city of Kunming has jurisdiction over 14 subdivisions - five districts, one county-level city, five counties and three autonomous counties.

Prefecture-level County-level
Name Chinese (S) Hanyu Pinyin
Kunming City
昆明市
Kūnmíng Shì 		Panlong District 盘龙区 Pánlóng Qū
Wuhua District 五华区 Wǔhuá Qū
Guandu District 官渡区 Guāndù Qū
Xishan District 西山区 Xīshān Qū
Dongchuan District 东川区 Dōngchuān Qū
Anning City 安宁市 Ānníng Shì
Chenggong County 呈贡县 Chénggòng Xiàn
Jinning County 晋宁县 Jìnníng Xiàn
Fumin County 富民县 Fùmín Xiàn
Yiliang County 宜良县 Yíliáng Xiàn
Songming County 嵩明县 Sōngmíng Xiàn
Shilin Yi Autonomous County 石林彝族自治县 Shílín Yízú Zìzhìxiàn
Luquan Yi and Miao
Autonomous County		 禄劝彝族
苗族自治县		 Lùquàn Yízú
Miáozú Zìzhìxiàn
Xundian Hui and Yi
Autonomous County		 寻甸回族
彝族自治县		 Xúndiàn Huízú
Yízú Zìzhìxiàn

Demographics

Kunming is the focal point of Yunnan minority culture. Twenty five ethnic minorities live in the area. This is nearly half of the total number of ethnic minorities in China.

Dialect

See Kunming dialect.

Society and culture

Central Kunming

Kunming Square

Kunming's public focus is the huge square outside the Workers' Cultural Hall at the Beijing Lu-Dongfeng Lu intersection, where in the mornings there are crowds doing tai qi and playing badminton. Weekend amateur theatre are also performed in the square. Rapidly being modernized, the city's true center is west of the square across the adjacent Panlong River (now more of a canal), outside the Kunming Department Store at the Nanping Lu/Zhengyi Lu crossroads, a densely crowded shopping precinct packed with clothing and electronics stores. The river is polluted, black and oily. Surrounding the area are plenty of new high-rises.

The center is an area of importance to Kunming's Hui population, with Shuncheng Jie - one of the last old streets in the center of the city - previously forming a Muslim quarter. Until shortly before 2005, this street was full of wind-dried beef and mutton carcasses, pitta bread and raisin sellers, and huge woks of roasting coffee beans being earnestly stirred with shovels. Under Kunming's rapid modernisation, however, the street has been demolished to make way for apartments and shopping centers. Rising behind a supermarket one block north off Zhengyi Lu, Nancheng Qingzhen Si is the city's new mosque, its green dome and chevron-patterned minaret visible from afar and built on the site of an earlier Qing edifice.

Running west off Zhengyi Jie just past the mosque, Jingxing Jie leads into one of the more bizarre corners of the city, with Kunming's huge Bird and Flower Market convening daily in the streets connecting it with the northerly, parallel Guanghua Jie. The market offers many plants such as orchids that have been collected and farmed across the province. In the small grounds of Wen Miao, a now vanished Confucian temple off the western end of Changchun Lu, there is an avenue of pines, an ancient pond and pavilion, and beds of bamboo, azaleas and potted palms - a quiet place where old men play chess and drink tea.

Central Kunming

The two main bookstores are Xinhua Bookstore (on Renmin Dong Lu) and Mandarin Books (on Wenhua Xiang, near Yunnan University). Both have the largest selections of foreign-language literature and niche academic, obscure, and imported texts. The main hospital in Kunming is the Yunnan Province Red Cross hospital and emergency center on Qingnian Lu.

Museums

There are two major museums in Kunming, Yunnan Provincial Museum and Kunming City Museum.

Yunnan Provincial Museum

About 500 m west of the center along Dongfeng Xi Lu and the #5 bus route, the Yunnan Provincial Museum has a collection of clothes and photographs of Yunnan's cultural groups. There are also Dian bronzes, dating back more than two thousand years to the Warring States Period and excavated from tombs on the shores of Dian, south of Kunming. The largest pieces include an ornamental plate of a tiger attacking an ox and a coffin in the shape of a bamboo house, but lids from storage drums used to hold cowries are the most impressive, decorated with dioramas of figurines fighting, sacrificing oxen and men and, rather more peacefully, posing with their families and farmyard animals outside their homes. A replica of the Chinese imperial gold seal given to the Dian king early on in the second century implies that his aristocratic slave society had the tacit approval of the Han emperor. There is a prehistoric section with plaster models and casts of locally found trilobites, armored fishes, and dinosaur and early human remains.

Kunming City Museum

The highlight of the Kunming City Museum, west off Beijing Lu along Tuodong Lu, is the Dali Sutra Pillar, a 6.5 m-high, pagoda-like Song dynasty sculpture in pink sandstone in its own room. An octagonal base supports seven tiers covered in Buddha images, statues of guardian gods standing on subjugated demons, and a mix of Tibetan and Chinese script, part of which is the Dharani Mantra. The rest is a dedication, identifying the pillar as being raised by the Dali regent, Yuan Douguang, in memory of his general Gao Ming. Above them is a ring of Buddhas carrying a ball symbolizing the universe. Formerly part of the defunct Dizang temple, the pillar is a powerful work, full of the energy that later seeped out of the mainstream of Chinese sculpture.

Green Lake Park (Cui Hu Gong Yuan)

The other exhibits are a well-presented repeat of the Provincial Museum's collection. There is a range of bronze drums with the oldest known example to relatively recent castings, allowing one to see how the typical decorations - sun and frog designs on top, long-plumed warriors in boats around the sides, tiger handles - became so stylized. There are also cowry-drum lids, and a host of other bronze pieces of birds, animals and people. Other rooms contain two excellent dioramas of Ming dynasty and modern Kunming, accounts (in Chinese) of the voyages of Zheng He, the famous Ming eunuch admiral, and five locally found fossilized dinosaur skeletons - including a tyranosaurus-like allosaur, and the bulky Yunnanosaurus robustus.

Cuihu Park

Cuihu Park (Green Lake Park) is predominately a lake surrounded by greenery. It has a large and elaborate network of waterways and winding paths, with broad, lotus-covered pools and overhanging willows. It is a place where thousands exercise, do tai qi, sing and feed flocks of gulls.

Yuantong Temple

Yuantong Temple, the largest Buddhist complex in Kunming.

Yuantong Si (temple) is a northern Yunnan's major Buddhist site and an active place of pilgrimage. Newly renovated the Qing-vintage temple is busy, with gardens of bright pot plants just inside the entrance. A bridge over the central pond crosses through an octagonal pavilion dedicated to a multi-armed Guanyin and white marble Sakyamuni, to the threshold of the main hall, where two huge central pillars wrapped in colorful dragons support the ornate wooden ceiling. Faded frescoes on the back wall were painted in the 13th-century, while a new annexe out the back houses a graceful gilded bronze Buddha flanked by peacocks, donated by the Thai government. There is vegetarian restaurant nearby on Yuantong Jie.

Yuantong Park and Zoo

The Yuantong Si sits on the southern slope of the large Yuantong Park. Kunming's zoo, founded in 1950, is adjoined to the park. The zoo houses 5,000 animals from 140 species and receives 3 million visitors a year.[5]

Bamboo Temple

Northwest about 12 km from the city center is the Qiongzhu Si (or Bamboo Temple) built in 639 and rebuilt in 1422 to 1428, this temple houses an incredibly vivid tableau of 500 arhats carved between 1883 and 1890 by Sichuanese sculptor Li Guangxiu and his six apprentices, who gave to each arhat a different and incredibly naturalistic facial expression and pose. It is thought that some of these arhats, who range from the emaciated to the pot-bellied, the angry to the contemplative, were carved in the images of the sculptor's contemporaries, friends, and foes. A wildly fantastical element dominates the main hall, where an arhat surfs a wave on the back of a unicorn, while another stretches a 3 m (10 ft) arm upward to pierce the ceiling.

Southern Kunming

Huating Temple in the Western Hills near Kunming.

Jinbi Lu runs roughly parallel to and south of Dongfeng Lu, reached from Beijing Lu. Two large Chinese pagodas rise in the vicinity, each a solid thirteen storeys of whitewashed brick crowned with four iron cockerels. The West Pagoda was built between 824 and 859, during the Tang Dynasty; its original counterpart, the East Pagoda, was built at the same time, but was destroyed by an earthquake in 1833 and rebuilt in the same Tang style in 1882. South down Dongsi Jie, past another mosque, the entrance to the West Pagoda is along a narrow lane on the right. In the tiny surrounding courtyard, sociable idlers while away sunny afternoons playing cards and sipping tea in the peaceful, ramshackle surroundings. The East Pagoda is a more cosmetic, slightly tilted duplicate standing in an ornamental garden a few minutes' walk east on Shulin Jie. The temples associated with both pagodas are closed to the public.

Daguan Park on Kunming's southwestern limits. Originally laid out by the energetic seventeenth-century Qing emperor Kangxi, it has been modified over the years to include a noisy funfair, food stalls and emporiums, and is a favourite haunt of Kunming's youth. Among shady walks and pools, Daguan's focal point is Daguan Ge, a square, three-storeyed pavilion built to better Kangxi's enjoyment of the distant Western Hills and now a storehouse of calligraphy extolling the area's charms. The most famous poem here is a 118-character verse, carved into the gateposts by the Qing scholar Sun Ran, reputed to be the longest set of rhyming couplets in China. The park is set on Daguan Stream, which flows south into Lake Dian, and there are frequent hour-long cruises down the waterway, lined with willows, to points along Lake Dian's northern shore. Lake Dian, also known as the Kunming Lake, is the largest lake on the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau. At Longmen of the Western Hills, there is a panoramic view of the lake.

Other landmarks

Lake Dian

The "Garden of the Word Horticultural Exposition", located in the northern suburbs of Kunming, is six kilometers from central Kunming. From May 1 to October 31 1999, Kunming held the 1999 World Horticulture Exposition, with the theme of "Man and Nature - Marching Toward the 21st Century". In the garden, visitors can see gardening and horticultural works from all over China and East Asia. All the horticultural works in the garden concentrate on the theme of "Man and Nature", with pavilions, towers, terraces, banks, islets and bridges.

The "Golden Hall Scenic Zone", located on the Mingfeng Hill in the northern suburbs of Kunming, is eight kilometers from central Kunming. Constructed in 1602 (the 30th year of the Wanli reign period of the Ming Dynasty), all of its beans, pillars, arches, doors, windows, tiles, Buddhist statues, and horizontal inscribed boards are made of copper, weighing more than 200 tons. It is the largest copper building in China.

A 12.2 m (40 ft) statue of Optimus Prime from Transformers is located near several automobile dealerships in Kunming.[6] The Transformers cartoon was broadcast in China from 1990 onwards and has a large following among youths of that generation.[7]

Leisure and entertainment

Within Kunming, the entertainment district has its focus around Kunming Square, with many cinemas, bars, clubs and restaurants. Eating out is the main pleasure after dark in Kunming. Food aside, one feature of less formal Yunnanese restaurants is that they often have a communal bamboo water pipe and tobacco for their customers. Nightlife has improved recently, thanks to rising incomes and tourist population. There are plenty of student bars and clubs. The city has several operatic troupes and indigenous entertainments which include huadeng, a lantern dance. Although indoor performances are lacking, there are often informal shows at the weekend outside the Workers' Cultural Hall and in Cuihu Park. There are similar shows at the Yunnan Arts Theater on Dongfeng Xi Lu. Kunming's main cinema house is on the south side of the Dongfeng Lu/Zhengyi Lu intersection. The other main multiplex, the XJS, at the junction of Wenlin Jie and Dongfeng Xi Lu.

Film festivals

  • BigScreen Festival (or "BigScreen Italia"), focuses on Chinese and Italian cinema
  • Yunnan Mulicultural Visual Festival ("Yunfest"), focuses on Chinese documentaries in Yunnan [5]

Food

Kunming mainly Yunnanese specialties and other regional Chinese cuisines, with a few upmarket restaurants serving international dishes. Back lanes running north off Dongfeng Xi Lu or Jinbi Lu have the famous stalls and restaurants where the locals offer specialties such as grilled cheese, hotpots, fired snacks rolled in chilli powder, loaves of excellent meat-stuffed soda bread, and rich duck and chicken casseroles. The special dish of Kunming is guò qiáo mĭxiàn, a boiling, spicy soup with noodles under a layer of oil. Meat is added to the broth kept hot by the layer of oil. The legend behind "crossing bridge noodles" involves a student studying for the imperial exam (which was given once per year). He went to study on an island a short ways away from his wife and village. Everyday his wife would bring him food, but because of the distance (she had to cross a bridge) the food would get cold. The student's wife figured out that by layering the broth with oil, she could keep the food hot.

Sports

Major sports facilities include:

Tourism

A canal in the city center

Kunming is among the most famous historical and cultural cities and one of the top tourist cities in China. Due to its pleasant climate, plateau scenery, age-old history, diverse ethnic customs, and unique plants and animals, Kunming attracts domestic and foreign tourists all year round. As the tourism center of Yunnan province, Kunming has also been a transport hub, from where tourists can go easily to places such as Dali, Lijiang and Shangrila.

Over 24 million domestic tourists visited Kunming in 2007, with 800,000 foreign tourists visiting annually.[8]

Amusement parks

  • Da Guan Lou Park
  • Kunming Amusement Park

Economy

Kunming industrial zone on the west coast of the Lake Dian

Kunming's chief industries are the production of copper, lead, and zinc; its iron and steel industry has been greatly expanded. Salt and phosphate mines around Kunming are some of the largest in China. Kunming's economy was ranked 12th of all Chinese cities in 1992.

Kunming is also a center of the engineering industry, manufacturing machine tools, electrical machinery and equipment, and automobiles (including heavy goods vehicles). It has a major chemical industry, as well as plastics, cement works and textile factories. Its many processing plants, which include tanneries and woodworking and papermaking factories, use local agricultural products. In 1997, Yunnan Tire Co. opened a tire plant in Kunming, with a capacity to produce two million tires per year.

Because of its location in the southwest of China, Kunming was generally passed over in China's rapid economic growth in the 1990s. However, recently the city has received renewed attention, launching Kunming into an international commercial hub of South and Southeast Asia.

Kunming economic authorities are active participants in the Greater Mekong Sub-region, promoting trade throughout China, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Singapore and Vietnam.

Several railroads and highways have been planned to connect Kunming to areas of Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos, providing Kunming transportation access to sea ports.

In 2006, the Chinese government approved a 2912 km oil pipeline to be built from the Indian Ocean coastal town of Sittwe, Myanmar to Kunming. This pipeline will carry African and Middle Eastern petroleum to China, bypassing some oil shipments through the Strait of Malacca and the South China Sea. The pipeline will cut oil transport time by two weeks. In addition, Kunming is also said to be the site for an oil refinery for the incoming oil.

For the fiscal year of 2007, Kunming's gross domestic product (GDP) was 139.3 billion yuan; fixed asset investment was 81.8 billion yuan; real estate investment was 22.2 billion yuan; retail sales was 56.9 billion yuan; Per capita disposable income within Kunming's urban areas grew to 12,083 yuan; Kunming's average farmer outside of the city earning 4,003 yuan.[9]

Kunming Import & Export Commodities Fair

The China Kunming Import & Export Commodities Fair (known as 'Kunming Fair') is a regional trade fair jointly sponsored by seven local governments. Kunming Fair has been successfully held annually for fourteen consecutive years. In addition to a mass of domestic buyers and over 1,000 Chinese exhibitors, previous each fair attracted about 4,000 to 6,000 overseas guests from around fifty countries. The accumulated contracts signed for trade and investment during the fairs are estimated about 25 billion US dollars. See also, China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT), the main organizing body.

Flower industry

Yunnan has developed into the largest flower export base in Asia, with many Dutch experts having transferred technology to the area. The Dounan Flower Market, located in suburban Kunming, is the largest in China with daily sales of 2.5 million yuan (USD 300,000) from the 2 million sprays of flowers (as of 2006). The provincial government agency, the Flower Association, regulates the industry. [6]

Logistics

As part of the overall infrastructure network, road links between Kunming and Laos will soon be completed, forming part of a transnational highway that will eventually link Yunnan with Thailand. Projects such as these and the Pan-Asian Railway - a bold project linking Kunming to Singapore via Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, with a total length of 5,600 km of rail line, due for completion in the next few years - are likely to turn Kunming into a major logistics hub.

Kunming East Station is at present Yunnan province's only container handling depot, with direct links to only three provinces, Guangzhou, Guizhou and Sichuan, and onto the metropolitan district of Chongqing.These lines are currently being upgraded to carry double-stacked container wagons. In addition, there is a large shortage of rail cars suited for containers, and large volumes better suited to be transported in containers are still carried on flat-beds or general open wagon cars better suited to carrying bulk commodities.

In July of 2006, as part of the Kunming Development Plan, construction of a comprehensive intermodal container depot located in Jiaying, Chenggong County, about 20 km from Kunming City, one of 18 new rail container depots planned by the Railway Ministry across the country. The engineering construction program occupies an area of 16,000 ha, with a fixed investment roughly equal to RMB449.5 million (US$55.6 million). The new depot handles 63 million tons annually.

The Jiaying Depot is connected with the new system of highways built linking Yunnan to the increasingly important markets of Southeast Asia, facilitating cheap Chinese exports to the region and granting resource-poor China greater access to the region's massive raw material resources. Yunnan has thereby become a progressively important area in the Southwest's rail logistics both in terms of national and international logistics.

Transportation

Kunming Wujiaba International Airport

Kunming is situated on the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau. Rail and air are the main two methods to travel to or from Kunming from outside Yunnan.

Air

Kunming is served by an international airport, located 4-5 km southeast of central Kunming that have new international and domestic terminal buildings next to each other. Kunming has air connections with several Chinese and Southeast Asian cities. CAAC shuttle buses (¥5) serve passengers between the airport (Tuodong Lu) and the city center. Transport by taxi cost around 15 yuan and it takes about 20 minutes. Three public buses run on the route including No. 52, 67 and 78.

There are flights to most of China's major cities including Beijing, Xi'an, Guilin and Shanghai. International flights are to Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Vientiane, Rangoon, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur and Hong Kong. The airport has a few regional (provincial) connections including Dali, Lijiang, Zhongdian, Xishuangbana, Baoshan, Jinghong, Manshi.

Flights from Kunming to: Baoshan (3 weekly; 30 min); Beijing (6 daily; 2 hr 35 min); Changsha (1 or 2 daily; 1 hr 30 min); Chengdu (6-9 daily; 1 hr 5 min); Chongqing (4-7 daily; 50 min); Dali (5 weekly; 30 min); Deqin (3 weekly; 2 hr); Guangzhou (5 daily; 1 hr 20 min); Guilin (1 or 2 daily; 1 hr 30 min); Guiyang (1 or 2 daily; 1 hr 10 min); Hong Kong (1 or 2 daily; 2 hr 45 min); Jinghong (3 daily; 55 min); Lijiang (4 weekly; 40 min); Mangshi (2 daily; 45 min); Nanning (2 daily; 50 min); Shanghai (2-3 daily; 2 hr 30 min); Xi'an (2-4 daily; 1 hr 40 min).

The now defunct Yunnan Airlines was headquartered in Kunming until it was acquired by China Eastern Airlines. China Southwest Airlines used to operate routes to and from Kunming, until it was merged with Air China. Other than China Eastern and Air China, Kunming Airlines, Shanghai Airlines, Dragonair, JAL and Thai Airways International are the other main airlines that operate out of Kunming (see also Kunming Wujiaba International Airport).

Rail

Several road and rail routes link Kunming to Thailand, Vietnam and Laos, which provide Yunnan province access to seaports of Southeast Asia. The provincial rail network is limited - one down through the southeast to the Vietnamese border (via Hekou), and a line to Xiaguan, near Dali - though Kunming is well linked to the rest of the country via Sichuan and Guizhou.

Yunnan is connected with other parts of China mainly through the Guikun (Guiyang-Kunming), Chengkun (Chengdu-Kunming) and Nankun (Nanning-Kunming) railways.

Kunming has two railway stations:

  • Kunming Railway Station is at the southern end of Beijing Xi Lu. Compared with the other railway station (North Railway Station), Kunming Railway Station services most of the trains to places to other provinces of China. Trains run north to Chengdu, southeast via Xingyi to Baise and Nanning in Guangxi, and east through Guizhou, via Liupanshui, Anshun, Guiyang, into the rest of the country. Tickets are sold in three days in advance.
  • Kunming North Railway Station (serviced by the No. 23 Bus) is for routes to Hekou and Vietnam. Every Friday and Sunday, a train departs to Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. It takes about 16 hours to reach Hekou (a seat is ¥35, berths around ¥90), and 32 hours to Hanoi (hard sleeper lower bunk ¥175, upper bunk ¥235).

Trains from Kunming to: Beijing (daily; 48 hr); Chengdu (3 daily; 18-21 hr); Chongqing (2 daily; 23 hr); Guangzhou (2 daily; 45 hr); Guilin (2 daily; 30 hr); Guiyang (5 daily; 12 hr); Hanoi (daily; 28 hr); Hekou (1 daily; 16 hr); Kaiyuan (2 daily; 8 hr); Nanning (daily; 20 hr); Panzhihua (3 daily; 6 hr); Shanghai (2 daily; 60 hr); Xiaguan (daily; 8 hr); Xichang (3 daily; 12 hr).

Road

A street in Kunming

Yunnan has built a comprehensive highway system with roads reaching almost all the major cities or towns in the region. Bus travel across the region is extensive. Buses head from Kunming to destinations such as Dali and Lijiang several times a day.

There are four major long-distance bus stations in Kunming with the South Bus Station and Railway Square Bus Station being the most primary.

  • South Bus Station faces the Kunming Railway Station in Beijing Xi Lu, with standard, luxury, express and sleeper buses departing for all over Yunnan and neighboring provinces. Buses depart here generally fall into three types: Regular, Faster, and Luxurious. A regular bus runs slower and usually the bus condition is not so good as the faster one. The standard bus to Jinghong takes 21 hours and costs ¥119, while a luxury bus takes 16 hours and costs ¥152. A luxury bus to Xiaguan (for Dali), which leaves hourly from 8am to 7pm, takes 4 hours (two less than the regular service) and costs ¥103, and one to Lijiang which takes only nine hours and costs ¥152. Other destinations covered by this include Zhongdian and Hekou (11 hours, ¥95).
  • Railway Square Bus Station is smaller than SBS and the majority of the buses depart from the station are private-run. Usually no fixed schedules are available and buses will leave when they are full. There are standard and sleeper services to Dali, Jinghong and elsewhere in Yunnan.

Buses from Kunming to: Anshun (24 hr); Baoshan (18 hr); Chengdu (36 hr); Chuxiong (6 hr); Dali (12 hr); Gejiu (5 hr); Guiyang (72 hr); Hekou (16 hr); Jianshui (5 hr); Jinghong (11 hr); Kaiyuan (5 hr); Lijiang (11 hr); Mangshi (22 hr); Nanning (72 hr); Panxian (12 hr); Ruili (24 hr); Shilin (3 hr); Tonghai (2 hr); Wanding (25 hr); Xiaguan (10 hr); Xichang (24 hr); Xingyi (13 hr).

Leaving China by road into Vietnam and Laos is also possible through the respective crossings at Hekou in southeastern Yunnan or Bian Mao Zhan in Xishuangbanna.

The Kunming-Bangkok Expressway is first expressway from China to Bangkok via Laos.

Local

Public buses and taxis are the two main means of transportation within the city. There is no metro/subway system.

Over one hundred public bus lines crisscross the city center, covering the whole prefecture. Prices are usually 1 yuan for a no air-conditioned and 2 yuan for air-conditioned.

Taxis are plenty with the starting price at ¥8 for the first three kilometer and ¥1.6 added for per extra km. After 10pm price rises to ¥9.6 for the first 3 km and ¥2.7 added to per extra km.

Cycling is common, and many hotels around the Kunming Railway Station provide bicycle rental services usually priced 2 yuan/hour and 10 yuan/day.

Central Kunming

The city hangs off two main thoroughfares: Beijing Lu forms the north-south axis, passing just east of the center as it runs for 5 km between the city's two trains stations; while Dongfeng Lu crosses it halfway along, divided into east (Dongfeng Dong Lu), middle (Dongfeng Zhong Lu) and west (Dongfeng Xi Lu) sections as it cuts right through the business center. The far end runs out of the city as Renmin Xi Lu, the first leg of the Burma Road. Most of the city's famous hotels and foreign consulates lies along Dongfeng Dong Lu and the southern half of Beijing Lu, while the majority of specific landmarks and shopping district are north and west of the center around Dongfeng Xi Lu and Cuihu Park (Green Lake Park). Circling most of this is the city's first highway ring road, Huancheng Lu, though others are planned.

Education, science and technology

Kunming remains a major educational and cultural center in the southwest region of China, with universities, medical and teacher-training colleges, technical schools, and scientific research institutes.

Colleges and universities

Note: Institutions without full-time bachelor's degree programs are not listed.
See also List of universities in the People's Republic of China.

Research institutes

Schools

Health

Hospitals

  • Yunnan Provincial Red Cross Hospital and Emergency Center, is the main general hospital in Kunming.
  • Yunnan Provincial First People's Hospital
  • First Affiliated Hospital of Kunming Medial College
  • Kunming Mental Hospital, founded in 1955, houses over 400 patients.

Public security

The headquarters of the Kunming Municipal Public Security Bureau is on Beijing Lu. Its foreign affairs department, located on Jinxing Huayuan, Jinxing Xiao Lu in the northeast of the city, handles immigration and travel visas.

Drug trafficking

See also: Illegal drug trade in China

Kunming has a pivotal role as a major conduit point in international drug trafficking as it is the closest major Chinese city situated near the Golden Triangle in Southeast Asia. The Kunming Municipal Public Security Bureau Narcotics Squad is the specialist counter-narcotics police service. Police confiscated at least three tons of drugs in Yunnan in 2005.

Kunming Municipal Compulsory Rehabilitation Center in Kunming is the main rehabilitation center for drug addicts, mostly recovering from heroin addiction. International drug rings have used Yunnan and Kunming to channel new synthetic drugs (like methamphetamine) as well as traditional drugs like heroin. Opium was until recently in widespread medicinal use by many of the minority peoples of the province, however after the Opium War the Chinese government has made growing the poppy illegal, and all but stamped out its production within the borders of Yunnan.

Diplomatic representation

The following countries have a diplomatic mission in Kunming:

The following countries have official trade offices:

Twinnings

Kunming has partnership agreements with the following cities:

People

People from Kunming include:

  • Benedict Anderson, scholar (born in Kunming)
  • Cai Xitao, botanist
  • Chih-Kung Jen, physicist
  • Pierre Jean Marie Delavay, 19th century French missionary, lived and died in Kunming
  • Nie Er, composer (born in Kunming)
  • Frank Shu, Chinese-American astrophysicist, born in Kunming
  • Lamu Gatusa, professor and writer
  • Li Guoxing [11], China's first face transplant patient. His face was terribly disfigured in 2004 after an attack by a bear. He received a partial face transplant operation at Xi'an's Xijing Hospital in April 2006, the second operation of its kind following a French female patient in 2005.
  • Li Weiwei, Olympics handball player
  • Liu Fang, pipa player
  • Maran Brang Seng, Burmese politician (died in Kunming)
  • Tang Jiyao, general and warlord of Yunnan, died in Kunming
  • Tu Wei-ming, ethicist (born in Kunming)
  • Wen Yiduo, poet and scholar, (lived and assassinated in Kunming)
  • Zhang Xiaogang, artist, born in Kunming
  • Zhu De, military leader (studied in Kunming)
  • Zhu Youlang (Ming Dynasty emperor), (fought and was executed in Kunming)

Diplomats:

National Southwestern Associated University:

See also

References

  1. ^ Kunming Online Encyclopedia.
  2. ^ "Last Stand". Time magazine. Monday, Dec. 19, 1949. Retrieved 2007-12-03. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  3. ^ "China hosts giant horticultural expo". BBC World Service. May 1, 1999. Retrieved 2008-01-21.
  4. ^ (Xinhua)
  5. ^ Ma, Guihua (June 29, 2004). "A farewell to two zoos?". China Daily. Retrieved 2008-01-21. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  6. ^ flickr images [1][2][3][4]
  7. ^ Chairman Prime Written by Cheeky Chinese Lips / Karate Party
  8. ^ "Kunming Travel Guide". China Highlights. Retrieved 2008-01-21.
  9. ^ Kunming Municipal Bureau of Statistics. Economic data for 2007. Template:Zh icon

Further reading

  • Kunming Statistical Yearbook-2007 Template:Zh icon China Statistics Press [12].
  • Qi Duxia (1999). A Complete Guide Series of Travel and Tourism in China - Kunming. China Travel & Tourism Press. ISBN 7503214910.
  • Carl Fingerhuth, Ernst Joos (2002). The Kunming Project: Urban Development in China - A Dialogue. Birkhauser Verlag AG. ISBN 3764367423.
  • Franklin, B. Evans (2005). 600 Days in Kunming China, 1944-45. AuthorHouse. ISBN 1420821172.
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