Yunnan Travel Guide / China Highlights

Yunnan, in China's southwest quadrant, represents the fast great region to join the Chinese empire. Even today many Chinese think of it as a "frontier province" , although it was Kublai and his successors whose forces entered these mountainous lands that lie just below the Tibetan plateau and abut Vietnam, Laos and Burma.

Yunnan is a rich area in subcultures ,centering around the ethnic heirs of the peoples who originally inhabited the area, long before the arrival of the Han and the Mongols. It is in these subgroups, the Naxi ,the Yi, the Bai and the other who give a rich patina of diversity and color to the Yunnan scene, contributing with their colorful ethnic costumers, their traditional songs and dance, to the attractive life of the cities the villages. The fairs and the festivals.

Yunnan is mountainous enclave with peaks ranging up beyond 18,000 feet in which narrow rivers flow, swiftly between high gorges, among them the River of Golden Sands, the upper region of the Yangtze.

In few provinces of China is so great a diversity of natural conditions and culture to be found as in Yunnan. It's capital Kunming is a great modern city. But only a faraway are to be found remote areas seldom visited by touring foreigners, cut off by precipitous mountains from easy communication with the outside world. In these natural enclaves the visitor can observe cultural layers going back not only for hundreds of year into the past but sometimes, thousands. Because of these natural barriers even with modern communications many segments of Yunnan are rarely visited by outsiders and the presence of a foreigner from beyond the mountain ranges is an event to be treasured .

Yunnan's climatic temperament encapsulates ranges from the frigid zone and the temperate zone through to the torrid zone . It enjoys to very special. Geographical and climatic condition that is beneficial to many different species animals to live and prosper in a natural setting that is free development.

There is no end to the wonders of Yunnan, stone drums, stone forests, ancient temples, religions, worshipping not gods but the sky, the earth , the mountains, languages whose origins are lost in the mists of antiquity. And even Burma Road which once provided a gateway of international supplies and aid to war~time China in the great year of world war ¢ò. The old French narrow gauge line connecting Yunnan and Vietnam build at the beginning of last center passing through mountain is still used both for passenger transport and freight transport.