For the last decade, the elephant in the living room of China's relationships with the countries through which the Mekong River flows has been the growing number of dams built on and planned for the Lancang River – as the Mekong's headwaters in Yunnan are known.

The river - which in February was at half its normal level for that month - is a source of food and livelihood for the 65 million people living in its basin in Yunnan, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia.

On Monday, Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva met with Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Hu Zhengyue, telling Hu that residents of the lower Mekong region were concerned about the river's recent low water levels and were uneasy regarding the lack of clear information about China's dams on the Lancang, according to a Nation report.

Despite Abhisit's polite request for better information, Thai officials came to China's defense, saying that the recent low levels in the lower Mekong basin – the lowest in half a century – were primarily due to a drought in Laos. Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya said that rain in Laos normally accounts for 35 percent of the Mekong's water supply and that only four percent of the river's total water was held behind Chinese dams.

China currently has three dams operating on the Lancang, with a fourth at Xiaowan scheduled to commence operation in 2012. If completed, the Xiaowan hydropower station will be the world's tallest dam, rising almost 300 meters and capable of retaining 15 billion cubic meters of water.

Plans for a protest outside the Chinese embassy in Bangkok next month by residents of the northern Thai city of Chiang Rai suggest that residents of China's neighbors downstream may become increasingly vocal about the impact they feel Chinese dams are having on the river.

The Bangkok protest will be timed to coincide with the first Mekong River Summit, organized by the Mekong River Commission (MRC) and scheduled to be held in the Thai beach town of Hua Hin from April 2 to April 5.

The conference's theme, "Transboundary water resources management in a changing world" is slightly undermined by the fact that the MRC's membership only includes Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia, with Myanmar and China only participating as "dialogue partners".

It is difficult to imagine China making concessions to protestors, governments or anyone else for the time being. The Bangkok Post is reporting that a letter sent last month to Yunnan Governor Qin Guangrong by the Chiang Rai provincial government demanding the release of water from Lancang River dams was rebuked by Qin, who said the water was needed in Yunnan for agriculture during the dry season.

In addition to the protest related to the Mekong's current low levels, some Thai villagers will also attempt to deliver a petition to China seeking compensation for flooding in 2008:


In May 2009, the United Nations said China's plans to eventually build eight dams on the Lancang "may pose the single greatest threat to the river". China, however, is not the only country building dams on the river. Laos has plans for 23 dams on Mekong tributaries and the Mekong itself to be finished in the coming year, with Vietnam and Cambodia also planning dams of their own.

Lancang River image: news.china.com.cn

Most of Yunnan's popular travel destinations are places where visitors chill out, take in some scenery and maybe go for the occasional trek or daytrip to surrounding areas. But some places such as Luoping and Yuanyang primarily attract photographers – Luoping for its mountains and yellow fields of rapeseed flowers and Yuanyang for its rice terrace-covered mountains.

During the Chinese New Year holiday, we spent four days in Yuanyang with two shutterbug friends in search of that perfect rice terrace shot. After driving six hours due south from Kunming, we arrived at the Yuanyang county seat of Nansha (南沙), taking the high road into the mountains another 28 kilometers before reaching Xinjie (新街, image below), the nearest town to the rice terraces and the place people are usually referring to when discussing Yuanyang.

It had been four years since our last visit, and not much had changed in the town itself. As it was the new year holiday, there were throngs of visitors, most of them staying in the Yunti Hotel or the Yunti Shunjie Hotel, which was once a dreary hotel run by police.

It was when we went out to visit the terraces that recent changes became evident. The upper road that leads out of Xinjie toward the rice terraces had been relaid as a brick road and was much smoother than before. The fork where the road splits off to the Duoyishu/Bada scenic spots or the Laohuzui scenic spot were finally marked, but there was also now a ticket booth for Duoyishu and Bada. Commercialization of the rice terraces has begun in earnest.

Aside from road improvements and ticket booths, the composition of the people shooting the terraces was dramatically different from a few years ago. Whereas Yuanyang previously attracted primarily Europeans, Japanese and Hong Kongers, domestic tourists outfitted with thousands of dollars of equipment were ubiquitous. The majority of mainland tourists to Yuanyang nowadays hail from Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong and Kunming.

Sunrise and sunset are the best times to shoot the terraces – during our time in Yuanyang we shot three sunrises and three sunsets. Here are some brief introductions to some of the top spots for taking photographs in Yuanyang:

Laohuzui (老虎嘴)
Laohuzui is the most popular place in Yuanyang to shoot sunsets. The spot's name literally means 'tiger mouth', as somewhere in the myriad curving terraces there is reputedly something resembling a tiger's mouth. We were unable to see anything remotely tigerlike, but it was breathtaking nonetheless.

Laohuzui has two viewing platforms, one high up near the access road that has recently been enclosed by a 200 meter fence. There is also a lower platform that can be reached after walking down a set of switchbacks. You may want to skip the lower platform if you have bad knees or smoke three packs of Honghe cigarettes a day, as the climb back up is fairly strenuous.

There is no shortage of young Hani women offering to help carry camera bags, tripods or backpacks back up the hill for five yuan. On the surface some may seem a bit jaded by the growing number of wealthy tourists, but in general they are all happy to converse if you make the effort.

The upper platform can quickly become a noisy traffic jam before sunset, when tour buses, private cars and trucks clog the narrow road outside the upper viewing platform. Regardless of which platform you choose, it is advisable to show up at least an hour before sunset to get a good spot.

Entry to Laohuzui is 30 yuan or 15 yuan for children, the elderly or disabled and is paid at an on-site ticket booth.

Duoyishu (多依树)
We left the hotel a bit before 6:00 to catch the sunrise at Duoyishu an hour later. We weren't the only ones looking to secure a prime spot for viewing the sunrise – about 200 photographers had their tripods set up when we got there, and many more arrived afterward.

In addition to photographers, there were plenty of local Hani of all ages selling hard-boiled eggs for one yuan each, plus some older Hani women cooking potatoes and stinky tofu on small barbecues.

If you are looking for more variety than the two viewing platforms can offer, you may want to consider heading into the fields. The footpath connecting the viewing platforms heads downhill into the terraces – this is how most photographers get into the terraces.

An alternative way to get into the terraces is to walk about 200 meters south on the road near the upper viewing station. On your left there will be a handful of small footpaths leading from the road into the terraces, offering a different perspective on this expansive valley without having to shoot into the direct path of the sun's light.

Entry to Duoyishu is paid at the aforementioned fork in the road – 60 yuan gets you access to Duoyishu, Bada, Quanfuzhuang and several other spots along the same road.

Bada (坝达)
Most visitors to Bada stop by in the morning on the way back to Xinjie from Duoyishu or they come out in the late afternoon to catch the sunset. Bada has one of the biggest collections of terraces and is easy to photograph from different angles.

Bada has two viewing platforms that offer views at similar heights but different lateral perspectives. Additionally, there are a few footpaths near the second platform leading up into some of the higher terraces, or down below, where new vantage points into the valley open up.

In addition to the countless soft curves and hard bends that can be found in the terraces below Bada, there are also plenty of small huts which make for interesting objects with which to anchor one's shots. Due to the height of the mountain behind Bada, the sun's rays don't hit the terraces below until an hour after Duoyishu.

Should you be tired from waking up to catch the sunrise, there is a small restaurant at Bada offering instant coffee.

Quanfuzhuang (全福庄)
Our last morning in Yuanyang, we decided to do something different and try the comparatively lo-fi viewing areas at Quanfuzhuang. While your correspondent was passed out in the car, his companions managed to take some of their most gratifying shots of the trip.

Should you tire of the crowds at the three aforementioned sites, Quanfuzhuang is highly recommended. In addition to fewer people, there is also easier access to the terraces.

Quanfuzhuang image: John Seelinger

The Kunming government has made many seemingly spur-of-the-moment decisions to change the city's image in recent years, from eliminating most outdoor dining to planting 800,000 trees in one year to the current campaign to remove the anti-burglar metal cages mounted outside of windows.

After initially announcing that it would require the removal of all the protruding cages, known as fangdaolong (防盗笼), public backlash persuaded the Kunming government to only require that the cages on windows facing streets be removed.

Your correspondent was recently notified that the cages outside the streetside windows of his sixth-floor apartment were to be removed yesterday afternoon at 4:00. We've heard both good and bad stories from different people about their experiences with the cage removal, so we thought we'd share ours:

3:50 pm
I return home early from the office. A crew of four men are hard at work removing cages from the building next to mine. One man is looking down from the roof of the building, another is looking up from the bottom and two are inside cages, their power saws emitting showers of sparks.

I'm told that there are several apartments ahead of me in the queue and mine will have to wait until after five. I go up to my apartment, drop my bag onto the sofa and head for the kitchen. After contemplating a sinkful of dirty dishes in need of attention, I decide to head down the street for a beer in the sunshine, with the idea of being home by five.

4:30 pm
Just as my beer arrives, I receive a phone call from my landlady saying that the cage crew has been ringing my doorbell trying to get started on my cages. I ask her to tell them to wait 15 minutes. After downing the beer faster than I would have liked to, I'm on my way back home.

4:44 pm
I arrive outside my building. A man in a cage on the third floor starts scolding me for making him wait. I apologize for the inconvenience after reminding him that he told me they wouldn't be working on my apartment until after five. We both seem to take some pleasure in screaming at each other.

5:09 pm
The man in the cage, apparently in his early 40s, enters my home and surveys the work at hand. My apartment has two cages that need removal: one outside a spare bedroom, approximately two and a half meters across and another one wrapping around my kitchen, about ten meters in length. He says he and his crew are from Dali. They've been busy doing this for more than two months.

5:10 pm
The man begins screaming out the window, yelling directions at his younger coworkers. A power cord is lowered from the roof to the outside window, as is a small saw with a rotating disc used to grind through metal. After plugging in, he's ready to go.

Two men, both in their 20s, one in a yellow jumpsuit, the other in red, rappel down on thick ropes, stopping outside the spare bedroom cage. The older man on the inside grinds away at where the cage meets the building.

5:27 pm
The two rappelers start yanking on the cage, as the man from Dali pries at the cage with a screwdriver. The cage eventually gives, offering a pleasant unobstructed view of Changchong Mountain in Kunming's north.

5:29 pm
The rappeler in the red jumpsuit walks into my bedroom with a confused look on his face and asks if it's possible to exit my apartment via my bedroom closet door. I direct him to the entrance of my home and he disappears.

5:37 pm
Work starts on the cage outside my kitchen, with the man from Dali squatting over my sink. The man in the red jumpsuit has reappeared outside my window from above.

5:41 pm
There are three men with power saws hitting the cage at different locations. The floor of my kitchen is vibrating.

5:53 pm
The three men try to figure out why one section of the cage outside my kitchen is not cooperating. After a short discussion, a consensus is reached regarding where to cut. The guy in red makes way for the guy in yellow, whose power saw is evidently superior.

5:58 pm
My apartment is filled with the smell of smoke. The guy in red notices that I'm taking photos of them working.

6:04 pm
The first section of the kitchen window cage is lowered down to the bottom of the building. All three men disappear and regroup on the roof of the building. Ropes are repositioned to offer access to the next section of cage.

6:13 pm
The men have returned, the elder man, standing on my kitchen counter, puts three cigarettes in his mouth, lighting all three and taking a deep drag. He hands one cigarette to each of the men dangling outside my kitchen. Grinding recommences. The elder man screams something indecipherable over and over. It is unclear who, if anyone, he is addressing.

6:21 pm
The elder man says that they've been hitting the shorter cage segments first, before finishing up with the longest segment. He then continues on in much heavier dialect, exhaling smoke. I furrow my brow and pretend to understand before grunting in agreement.

6:23 pm
The elder man says something in dialect that I can't understand. Laughing, he walks out of my apartment. The two younger men outside the window remove the penultimate cage segment. The end is in sight.

6:33 pm
The men are repositioned and are hitting the home stretch. All three are grinding away in different spots, sparks flying in multiple directions.

6:39 pm
I am called into the kitchen by the elder man. He informs me that it's okay to close my windows now - they've finished their work. Before I can snap a final shot, the largest segment of cage outside my apartment is lowered away. I say goodbye to the elder of the three, who has already left my apartment. I turn my head just as the two younger men drop out of sight, yelling up at their coworker on the building's roof. Contemplating the sinkful of dirty dishes, I once again feel thirsty.

Independent filmmaker Zhao Dayong (赵大勇) is riding a growing wave of media attention and critical acclaim: he was the only Chinese director with a film in last year's New York Film Festival and in March he will be a featured director at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Zhao will also premiere his new movie The High Life at the Hong Kong International Film Festival later the same month.

Western media has taken to Zhao, with some writers considering Zhao to be the newest Chinese-director-of-the-moment, following in the footsteps of Zhang Yimou and Jia Zhangke.

Zhao's film Ghost Town (废城) has been the main driver of the growing buzz around the director outside the mainland. The film is a stark look at the Yunnanese town of Zhiziluo, where the local Lisu population's Christian residents are coping with demons of the past and extinction in the future. Ghost Town made its domestic debut in Beijing in 2008 and was well-received at the Yunfest Visual Forum in Kunming last spring.

Zhao, a Manchurian from Liaoning who was once an oil painter in Beijing and runs an ad agency in Guangzhou, teamed up with David Bandurski of China Media Project in 2008 to found the film company Lantern Films China. To date, his company has produced five films.

In addition to filming and traveling in Yunnan, Zhao is also connected to Kunming by marriage. This Chinese New Year he stopped by GoKunming's office for a pot of Yunnan coffee and a chat. Here's how things went:


GoKunming: Welcome back to Yunnan, sorry our office is such a mess.

Zhao Dayong: You guys are lucky to live in Yunnan, I wish I could. Don't worry about your office, this is what a young company's office should look like. My office is a mess too.


GK: Much of the attention you've received has been for Ghost Town, what was it about Zhiziluo that made you want to film there?

Zhao: Seeing people with belief and faith. I'd never seen that in my life. I was going to shoot a film at a site in rural Yunnan and my father-in-law mentioned there was a place not far from there where kids' textbooks were all in English. It wasn't English, it was the language of the Lisu people – a missionary created a Romanization system for them a while back.


GK: When did you first start coming to Yunnan?

Zhao: I first came here on holiday in '99. I went to Lijiang and remember an old woman sweeping an alley and how good it looked in the light. She then started fanning a small coal oven – the interplay between the morning light and the smoke was fantastic.

GK: You're attending international film festivals and getting plenty of good press in the West, but are still relatively unknown in China… how does it feel to be increasingly well-known overseas but not in your own country?

Zhao: We want more Chinese to see our films because they're about our lives. Mainland China is a huge market but the channels for reaching this market are very limited. Most foreigners who watch our films find them fresh and different, but it may be difficult for them to appreciate on a deeper level.


GK: A lot of Chinese filmmakers have started out with strong independent film credentials, only to later become wealthy and accused of losing their edge. Are you afraid of making money?

Zhao: No, I'm not afraid of making money, but I'm not afraid of not making money either. You're not going to make money making independent films – be it in China or elsewhere – the most important thing about making an indie film is that you do it for yourself. You can do it for the rest of your life and you'll never feel poor or bored. If there's enough cash to finish the film – and eat – then that's good (laughs).


GK: What were your reasons for starting Lantern Films?

Zhao: Of course you need to be a legitimate entity in order to distribute your own films, but we also have a long term plan. In the future we may start releasing other people's works.


GK: What role do you think film should play in society?

Zhao: Some films make money and some make people happy, but if you're talking about art, a director can give the audience insight into life, into society. For a film to impact society, there needs to be space for contemplation – you have to affect people's thinking. A film like Avatar does well because there's no need to think.


GK: The Kunming government has declared its intention to make Kunming into the 'Hollywood of China', what are your thoughts on this?

Zhao: I think this is empty thinking, it has nothing to do with us.
First and foremost, the government wants to make money. Sure, Kunming and Yunnan have great weather and beautiful scenery, but there needs to be a plan, a market, better traffic infrastructure and the bureaucracy needs to be streamlined.


GK: How do you decide what to shoot?

Zhao: I need to shoot what I'm feeling. There's more out there than any one person can shoot – I just need to focus on what matters to me.


GK: What are your plans for the year of the tiger?

Zhao: I've got a script for a new film and am looking for investment, I need to put out at least one film every year. I'm a workaholic.

Photo credits David Bandurski/Sara Yurich

It's official: this month Kunming will launch direct flight services to Dubai, joining a small handful of other Chinese cities with air links to the Middle East.

China Eastern Airlines announced last week that it will launch flight services between Kunming and Dubai on February 22. The thrice-weekly flights include one direct Kunming-Dubai flight and two with stopovers in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

The direct service, MU755/6, will depart Kunming at 4 pm and arrive seven hours later in Dubai. MU2021/2 will also leave Kunming at 4 in the afternoon, arriving in Dubai around eight hours later after stopping in Dhaka.

The new air connection is expected to boost already booming non-oil trade between China and Dubai. Additionally, Yunnan is home to one of China's largest Muslim populations, after Xinjiang, Ningxia and Gansu – which should lead to more Yunnan Muslims visiting the Middle East as leisure and religious tourists.

The addition of flight services to Dubai is another step in Kunming's evolution into an international air hub. Since the end of 2007, Kunming has added flight services to Kolkata, India and Kathmandu, Nepal.

The biggest step forward in Kunming's emergence as an international aviation hub will be the opening of Kunming's new airport. The 12 billion yuan (US$175 million) airport is scheduled to open in 2011.

The airport will be located about 30 kilometers northeast of downtown, just past the town of Dabanqiao (大板桥镇). Considerable progress has been made on the airport since construction began in 2008, with the steel skeleton of the airport terminal nearly completed and base earth layers ready for the runways.

The new airport and other infrastructure projects outlined in Kunming's ambitious 12-year development plan, which was unveiled in 2008, promise to bring major changes to the city. Alongside construction of the airport is a four-lane expressway that will link the new airport with the eastern end of Dongfeng Dong Lu via interchanges at the second and third ring roads.

Also, the timeline for construction of light rail line number six, which will run from downtown Kunming to the new airport, has been pushed forward, with construction beginning next year. The light rail was originally going to be extended to the airport by 2020 and is now projected to be completed within five years.

Photos of the new airport expressway and airport construction site:



Dubai image: Dubai Travel Guide

Kunming's current 'sunshine government', headed by party secretary Qiu He (仇和) and mayor Zhang Zulin (张祖林), has had its hands full addressing the city's infrastructure, health care, education and environmental problems over the past two years, but that may just be the beginning.

According to a Kunming Info Hub report, 'evil' is the next target:


What exactly is being referred to by the word 'evil'? Leading contenders probably include official corruption (a favorite target of Qiu's when he was an official in Jiangsu), organized crime or illegal drugs.

Given Qiu's recent statement that official corruption is a primary factor behind Kunming's high housing prices, it wouldn't be a surprise if some high-profile corruption cases emerge in the coming months.

The results are in for the annual ranking of China's top universities by 21st Century HR Report (21世纪人才报) and once again Yunnan's top universities lag behind much of the rest of the country.

For the third year in a row, Beijing's Peking University topped the list, followed by Tsinghua University in Beijing and Fudan University in Shanghai. The top five were rounded out by Zhejiang University in Hangzhou and Shanghai Jiaotong University.

Yunnan, China's ninth-largest province in terms of population, only had two universities make the top 100 this year. Yunnan University slipped two places from its 2009 ranking to number 64 this year and Kunming University of Science and Technology barely made it in at the 100 spot.

Compared to its neighbors in southwest China, Yunnan fared better than Guizhou and Guangxi, who had one university each, with Guizhou University placing 89th and Guangxi University 95th.

Sichuan and Chongqing had much stronger showings, with Sichuan University ranking 12th and Chongqing University 31st. Sichuan was represented by an additional three universities in the top 100 and Chongqing's Southwest University ranked 50th.

The comparatively high quality of university graduates in both Chengdu and Chongqing is one of the main reasons that the two cities have eclipsed the rest of southwest Chinese cities in the race for domestic and foreign investment.

Yunnan University Party Secretary Liu Shaohuai (刘绍怀) told local media that slight ranking fluctuations were a normal phenomenon.

Liu said that one organization's rankings shouldn't be the basis for assessing an academic institution, adding that Yunnan University would do everything it can to be in the top 50 within a decade.

Last Friday while much of the world was nursing the hangover of a decade of war and terrorism, economic turmoil and environmental degradation, China and its Southeast Asian neighbors took a big step toward regional integration with the launch of a new free trade area (FTA). The long term implications for Yunnan are massive.

China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have now entered the first phase of an FTA, eliminating tariffs on around 7,000 items including fruits, vegetables, textiles and machinery. These goods represent roughly 90 percent of trade in the new economic bloc, which is the world's largest in terms of population and third-largest after the EU and NAFTA in terms of GDP.

The first phase includes China and the more developed ASEAN members: Brunei, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. On Friday these countries also launched the first phase of an FTA within ASEAN itself. The remaining members – Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam – will join the ASEAN China FTA in 2015.

Although it does not directly border any of the first phase countries, Yunnan has much to gain from the FTA's launch. It has water, air and highway connections to Thailand plus air links to Malaysia and Singapore, all of which are expected to become even busier trade routes. The launch of the FTA has long been viewed as a major milepost in the rise of Yunnan as China's gateway to Southeast Asia.

As some observers note, the FTA is more than just a step toward trade integration, it is also a major strategic achievement for China, whose political power in Southeast Asia already greatly surpasses that of regional rival India and is also seriously challenging American influence in the region.

China's soft power in Southeast Asia will undoubtedly grow in step with trade within the FTA, and much of this influence will be projected from Yunnan.

In the coming decade, China and Southeast Asia will become increasingly connected by a vast network of highways and rail which will provide cities in Yunnan with cheap overland access to markets in Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. Seated at the northern end of this transport web, Yunnan is poised to become an increasingly important international trade hub.

The initiation of the ASEAN China FTA is a modern revival of the ancient tea and horse caravan routes from centuries ago known as the South Silk Road, which linked China with Southeast Asian markets as well as Tibet and India.

Total trade between China and Southeast Asia was US$100 billion in 2004 and US$231 billion in 2008, but this is just the beginning. Bilateral trade – much of which will be passing through Yunnan – is expected to double over the next decade.

Difficult as it may be to imagine, Yunnan's days as an economic and political backwater are officially over.