Maybe using traditional chinese architecture (ornaments, rooftops aso.) and bring it together in a new style (not an architect, just my thoughts). There are places in Kunming, were you feel like you're not in China anymore... makes me a bit sad, but that's how it is.

OK, but I think we need to remember that modern 'western' architecture is not quite as 'western' as it is modern, one just has to go back a century or more in much of Europe, and even in the US. All traditions are simply processes of change, some occurring faster than others. None of which means I particularly like or dislike the direction these processes take. We're not so much in China as we are in modernity - or perhaps postmodernity, I'm not going to argue - and 'China' is only a part of it, despite all nationalist hype, and it's happening to us more than we are doing it.

Hmmm - guess that's all pretty obvious.

"There are places in Kunming, were you feel like you're not in China anymore"

not anymore, as in since 1966?

A confusion of past and present, which especially affects those who get their ideas of someplace else before they come to it and then insist on the reality of those ideas in the face of what's in their face when they get there. Manipulative commercial and nationalist opportunists benefit from the satisfaction of tourists from Shanghai with the amusement park that is Lijiang, or with water fights held daily in Jinghong.

Smoke and mirrors.

There are daily water fights in Xishuangbanna?!?! That's awesome!

@yankee00: I wasn't even planned in 1966, so no answer to this question.

I heard China looked like China before then.

@yankee: well, there were huge communal farms...& no wall around Kunming - it went down about 1950, along with a lot of others in other cities. Not sure when the wall around Beijing went down, but Tiananmen square had yet to be built.