Field notes
The journal
What we've learned walking this city — written when there's something worth saying, not on a schedule.
Yunnan2 min read
Yanjin — The Narrowest Town in China
Yanjin's town centre is a strip of buildings a few dozen metres wide, wedged between a cliff and a river. There was nowhere else to put it, so it went up instead of out.
Yunnan2 min read
Ximeng — Va Country on the Myanmar Frontier
Ximeng is the Va heartland in China — mountain villages on the Myanmar border where the drum culture, the songs and the social structure are still the organising facts of life.
Yunnan2 min read
Weixi — Lisu Country Between Two Rivers
Weixi sits between the Mekong and the Salween in the Three Parallel Rivers, and almost nobody visits. It's Lisu country, it holds the main population of Yunnan snub-nosed monkeys, and the road in is the attraction.
Yunnan2 min read
Shadian — A Hui Town in the Yunnan Hills
Shadian is a Hui Muslim town in southern Yunnan built around a mosque of remarkable scale — a reminder that Chinese Islam is a thousand years old and not confined to the northwest.
Yunnan3 min read
Pu'er — Where the Tea Actually Comes From
Pu'er is not a plantation region pretending to be historic. The tea trees on Jingmai mountain are centuries old, grown in forest rather than rows, and the trade route out of here shaped half of Asia.
Yunnan2 min read
Menglian — Little Thailand on the Myanmar Border
The Dai of southern Yunnan share language, script, religion and cooking with the Thai — because they were the same people before the borders arrived. Menglian is the quiet version of that, without the crowds of Xishuangbanna.
Yunnan2 min read
Luoping — Karst Cones in a Sea of Yellow
For about three weeks in late winter, eastern Yunnan turns fluorescent yellow and hundreds of karst cones stand out of it like islands. Then it's over for another year.
Yunnan2 min read
Lijiang and the Road to Shangri-La
Lijiang's old town is a UNESCO site and busy with it. What makes the trip is what surrounds it — Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, quieter Naxi villages, and Tiger Leaping Gorge on the way to Shangri-La.
Yunnan2 min read
Honghe — Terraces, Tin Towns and the Vietnamese Border
Honghe runs from the Hani rice terraces down to the Vietnamese frontier, taking in a metre-gauge French railway, a tin-mining city and one of China's great Confucian temples on the way.
Yunnan3 min read
Deqin — Under a Mountain Nobody Has Climbed
Deqin sits at the northwest corner of Yunnan beneath Meili Snow Mountain, whose main summit has never been reached. After 1991, when a climbing expedition was wiped out, it was closed for good.
Yunnan2 min read
Dali — A Lake, a Mountain Range, and the Bai Towns Between
Dali sits in a trench between a 40-kilometre lake and a 4,000-metre ridge, and the Bai villages along that strip have been the good life in Yunnan for a thousand years.
Yunnan2 min read
Cizhong — Tibetan Catholics and a French Vineyard
French missionaries reached this stretch of the upper Mekong in the 19th century, built a church, and planted grapes. Both are still here — and the congregation is Tibetan.
Yunnan2 min read
Azheke and the Hani Rice Terraces
The Hani terraces climb 1,500 metres of mountainside in Honghe, and they are still farmed. Azheke, the village at their centre, runs an unusual scheme: residents share the ticket revenue for keeping their houses traditional.