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.
Infrastructure money continues to pour into Kunming
发布者I believe that being part of WTO means that you cannot tax the hell out of private cars.
Look at Vietnam: a two-wheeled paradise until WTO forces them to lower tax on imported cars, which means everyone is going to start driving their cars which means that paradise is going to hell in a handbasket.
So don't blame China alone - blame all members of WTO, the car-producing ones first.
Kunming's former party boss charged with corruption
发布者Well here's nothing shocking.
People involved in major (and seemingly unnecessary) construction projects often have dirt on their hands.
- The metro, gobbling up eight years of the city's annual revenue, is IMHO unnecessary (reducing car culture, or an above-ground or elevated bus system would be wiser), slow (elevated systems are faster to build) and expensive (elevated systems are cheaper to build), and even somewhat dangerous (the city is largely built on a mire).
- Changshui, while certainly a better-looking and more modern airport, has been a headache for pretty much anyone. Wujiaba didn't have nearly as many fog issues and transport to the city centre was convenient. Changshui's metro connection hasn't been finished for years.
- My Chinese colleagues say that everyone knows that tree planting is _the_ preferred way to engage in corruption these days. Something about the fluctuating price and the maintenance costs. I'll ask again tomorrow.
Three massive projects that are expensive, only partially necessary, badly planned and where it's easy to use construction delays and unexpected costs as a smokescreen for a wad of cash here and there.
www.worldofnonging.com/2013/11/kunming-in-deep-metro-woes/
Documentary Under the Dome captivates China
发布者Large-scale farming is by no means the answer. The burning of trash is usually because there's no adequate trash collection service. The burning of rice stalks is a problem but not because they don't rotate crops (you don't rotate crops with rice afaik). There would be alternatives to rice stalk burning, as below paper suggests:
www.ijesd.org/papers/318-M00040.pdf
Documentary Under the Dome captivates China
发布者The YouTube version has (fledgling) Chinglish subtitles.
England's Prince William in China, to visit Yunnan
发布者I thought I'd read that Xishuangbanna is the only native elephant land where populations are actually growing, due to China's protection measures - not true anymore?