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 residents rally against chemical plant
Posted byit's not as much about PX as about the quality standard of the plant. China is notorious for corner-cutting resulting in rattling structures. You don't want a rattling chemical plant in your back yard.
Kunming residents rally against chemical plant
Posted byIan: yes it needs a phase to improve. And protests are inherent parts of governmental development. It's impossible for every person to know all the details of everything. People have work and family to care about. But other decisions are nonetheless impacting their lives. That is why people that have time and capacity to think will think for them. That's how it's always been.
Kunming residents rally against chemical plant
Posted byIan, you have a point in your first post. But in any country's protests, there is always a majority that does not exactly know what they are demonstrating against. Just as people voting Obama don't necessarily know his entire program. What matters is that, if a select group is able to understand the problem (from what little information leaks out), they can convince a larger group to fight for their cause. Much like politicians and parties in the West do. We call it democracy. So by those (our) standards, China possesses some sort of democracy.
Also, you don't see any foreigners complaining the lack of democracy in this country. They are complaining about the dirty tricks the government is playing to keep people from voicing their opinions: threatening to fire and imprison, that's just blackmail.
Finally, it's not entirely right to say that there is no democracy in China. According to a Chinese friend of mine, there is something called a 听证会 (tingzhenghui), a public hearing, where larger projects are submitted to a public vote. Some of the anger in this case is that there was no such hearing about the building of this plant.
From the banners, it looks that Kunmingers mostly care about health and blue skies, an easy life with enough to survive on. As more and more people reach that level where they have enough to survive comfortably, more and more people are going to stand up against things that impact their quality of life.
But, as someone put it: "I care about this city, I have family here. But we are all happily driving some 300,000 cars inside this city- and no-one is protesting that." Very good point.
Yuxi-Mengzi: China's newest railway
Posted byGreat news- by the way: the Kunming to Yuxi stretch takes 1h50m and costs Y28 (hard seat).
Kunming battling Chinglish
Posted byJeremy; same problem. If they had any clue, they'd have chosen another font.