having biked the area extensively and always on the lookout for traffic free areas, I can recommend the following:
Diqin (I assume you mean Shangri-la): head out east on the East Ring road, over Baishuitai, Haba and the east end of the Tiger Leaping Gorge. Go to the west end. Do the trek back to the east. Hop in a ferry or take the new bridge over to Daju. Get transport or hike or ride towards Lijiang on this old road. It has a couple inevitable touristy spots, though. From Lijiang, if you are walking, there's a beautiful hike over Shigu (at the first bend of the Yangtze) on an old horse trail towards Jianchuan. If you can't hike, you're stuck to a fairly tourist-laden road to Jianchuan.
At Jianchuan head out to Shaxi, do Shibaoshan etc. Continue down the valley over Yangbi, or head out to Yunlong if that's not too far out of your way, go into Dali. From Dali take the old road over Chuxiong to Kunming.
Of course, if you can meander more, I suggest you approach Kunming from the north.
Kunming to invest in public electric car fleet
发布者Great news. I assume foreigners won't be able to make use of it, but I would very much welcome anything that brings down the number of cars bought and driving around on the street.
Way to go, Kunming. Perhaps you're a spring city after all. And what a timeframe!
Woman dies of bird flu in Yunnan's Shangri-la
发布者they're derivatives of the influenza A virus, not the common cold. The fact that they get names is because they are different diseases that both threaten large populations and need different treatment.
That they just called it a cold before is because medicine wasn't as developed as today and because, you know, a cold is just a cold, and no strains of it can be cured while its symptoms can be treated in the same way.
Report: Rubber plantations threaten biodiversity and livelihoods
发布者As indicated by Meine Van Noordwijk, it would be good to have a roundtable with the different stakeholders in the industry and perhaps create something like a 'green label' for rubber, making it easier for users and manufacturers elsewhere to gauge their impact.
National park system in the works for China
发布者Also don't forget that family names don't necessarily relate to the other meanings of the character.
In Hmong and Yi areas, if you see a 巫 or any other seemingly meaningless character, I would also argue that it's safer to assume transliteration of a Hmong/Yi word, as neither Mandarin nor Hanzi belong to these people.
Many examples can be found around Yunnan, but they're often most striking in Tibetan areas (甘孜, nothing to do with sweet stuff, just sounds like Tibetan Garze) and Dai areas (猛论, not a fierce debate, but Meng a transliteration of the Dai/Thai Mouang which means village).
Wild mushroom season arrives with a friendly warning
发布者The link above wasn't parsed properly, this one should work:
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