Hundreds of angry shop owners brought traffic on Huancheng Nan Lu to a standstill Saturday morning to protest the pending demolition of Luosiwan market, according to a ChinaNews.com.cn report.

At the height of the disorder, a car was smashed and rocks were thrown at police by shop owners who were eventually dispersed with tear gas. Police instructed the protesters to air their grievances with a group of government officials that had been sent hastily to Wuhua Stadium.

Protestors told reporters that they were demanding compensation for shops they had bought in an auction in 2006 at an average cost of two million yuan. The market's property rights are owned by a group of more than twenty shareholders representing investment from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Luosiwan is the largest comprehensive wholesale market in Yunnan province. With average foot traffic of 100,000 visits daily and more than 10,000 vendors, it does roughly 10 billion yuan in business annually. It is one of the 10 largest markets in China.

"The government is forcing us to demolish, yet we're not getting compensated," one shop owner who purchased his shop three years ago said.

"Where's our compensation? Everybody's gotta make a living!"

A new Luosiwan market is currently being built southeast of downtown Kunming on the way to Chenggong. The new market - a small section of which is already open - will be several times larger than its predecessor and will have its own hotel attached to it.

Image: ChinaNews.com.cn

Yesterday Kunming's municipal government began an ambitious new campaign to remove the ubiquitous gobs of spit that cover the city.

Rather than introducing fines like Hong Kong or pushing public campaigns against spitting as has been done in Shanghai, the clumsily named Kunming Municipal National Hygiene City Establishment Task Force (昆明市创建国家卫生城市指挥部) has chosen to distribute millions of small green bags that would-be street hockers can fill with their phlegm.

Each day, the municipal government will distribute 116,000 of the free antibacterial bags, which it refers to as "environmentally friendly phlegm bags" (环保口痰袋) as well as "dragon saliva bags" (龙涎袋).

Distribution of the bags will take place in streets (16,000 per day) and at bus stops (10,000 per day) in downtown Kunming. Beijing Lu and Dongfeng Lu will be the initial focal areas for the program.

At yesterday's press conference announcing the beginning of the new anti-loogie drive, Olympic torchbearer Yang Guixi (杨贵喜) read aloud the philosophy behind the campaign:


In a city where spitting wherever one wants is a deeply ingrained habit for a substantial portion of residents, getting people to stop spitting in public is a rather lofty goal, reminiscent of the city's failed attempt to ban car horns at the beginning of 2008.

What not so long ago seemed unthinkable will soon be a reality – it will be possible to fly directly from Kunming to Taiwan. China Eastern Airlines will launch once-weekly flight services from Kunming to Taipei Taoyuan International Airport on December 27, according to sources at China Eastern Airlines' Yunnan subsidiary in Kunming.

A company spokesperson told GoKunming today that the services from Kunming to the Taiwanese capital will be handled in the same way as other international flights out of Kunming Wujiaba Airport. Mainland Chinese will need to apply visas via the Kunming Municipal Public Security Bureau. Flights will be available to foreigners traveling between the mainland and Taiwan, with different countries subject to different visa policies.

Previously, anyone flying between the mainland and Taiwan had to do so via a third city such as Hong Kong, Macau or Tokyo, making the trip both inefficient and expensive. Now the trip from Kunming to Taiwan will only be expensive: full price for a round-trip flight on China Eastern from Kunming to Taipei is 10,250 yuan before tax.

[Update: It appears we received incorrect information from the China Eastern representative we spoke with -- it is being reported elsewhere that the flight is 2,000/3,200 one-way/round trip. The December 27th flight will be discounted at 800/1,500 one-way/round trip. All prices are pre-tax.]

Full price before tax for a round-trip flight from Kunming to Shanghai – which is roughly the same distance as Taipei from Kunming – is 3,800 yuan.

Kunming isn't the only mainland city getting new direct flights to Taipei, tourist city Xi'an and the business hub of Shenzhen will both have flights to Taipei by the end of this month, according to a TravelChinaGuide.com report.

The opening of flights between mainland China and Taiwan is expected to be a major step in improving ties between the People's Republic of China and Taiwan, which has been under separate administration for nearly 60 years.

Ironically it was recent negotiations between the Communist Party of China and the Nationalist Party aka Kuomintang – formerly bitter enemies who fought two civil wars before the Nationalists fled to Taiwan in 1949 – that led to the long-awaited opening of direct flights between the mainland and Taiwan.

Taipei image fjny's flickr photostream

Related article: Cross-Strait cooperation leads to arrest

When discussing China's environmental movement, few areas of the country get as much attention domestically or internationally as Yunnan does.

The reasons are plentiful: Yunnan is China's most biodiverse region, it is home to around half of the country's minority groups, it possesses massive hydropower potential and after a bit of a late start it is now fully on the economic development bandwagon.

Home to the headwaters of the Yangtze, Mekong and Salween rivers, Yunnan's abundant natural resources support not only Yunnanese but also millions of people elsewhere in China, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. Because of this, what happens in Yunnan has ramifications beyond the province.

China's Green Beat has recently produced two Yunnan-focused clips, the above piece looks at the Nu River, one of the two rivers left in China that has yet to be dammed. Although the Yunnan government appears determined to dam the river, there are hydropower options that would likely be able to electrify local villages.

However, exporting hydroelectric power has become big business for Yunnan, which sends electricity to markets including Hong Kong and Vietnam. For this reason alone, it is difficult to imagine the current plans to dam the Nu to be shelved by the provincial or central governments.


This second clip focuses on the consumption of biofuel in Lijiang. Overcollection of wood for fuelling inefficient stoves is one of the main threats to that region's ecological balance and biodiversity – the smoke from the primitive stoves is also responsible for eye disease among the local elderly.

More efficient stoves are being introduced to the region, reducing the average villager's wood consumption from 50 kilograms/day to only 15. These stoves also eliminate the danger of eye disease from cooking one's daily meal. This piece also takes a look at biofuel as a source of gas for cooking and fertilizer for food.

Related articles:

Official: Yunnan still hopes to dam Nu River

Video: Kunming's no-car days

Yunnan Governor Qin Guangrong (秦光荣) asked India to open a consulate in Kunming during a meeting with Indian Tourism Minister Ambika Soni in New Delhi last week, according to Indian media reports.

Direct flights between Kunming and Kolkata, capital of eastern India's West Bengal state, were launched in late 2007, but visa regulations and lack of a Kunming consulate make it difficult for Chinese living in southwestern China to visit India.

In order to obtain a visa, applicants must go to India's embassy in Beijing or its consulates in Shanghai and Hong Kong. For people living in Yunnan, it's often easier to skip the Kunming-Kolkata flight and fly to nearby Bangkok where there is an Indian embassy and more flight options to India.

While meeting with Qin and a delegation of Yunnan officials and entrepreneurs last Wednesday, Soni invited the visitors from Yunnan to invest in India's tourist infrastructure and called for closer cooperation between the two countries.

During the visit, the Yunnan Provincial Tourism Administration signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the West Bengal Tourism Directorate, West Bengal Tourism Development Corporation and Travel Agents Association of India Eastern Chapter to "build a mutual bond on tourism practices, exchange and understanding."

Indian tourist visits to China are roughly quadruple the number of Chinese visits to India.

Like most other Chinese cities, Kunming has been racing toward abstract ideas such as 'modernity' and 'development' via extensive demolition of the remaining older parts of the city to make way for gleaming high-rises filled with offices, apartments and retail space. First-time visitors to Kunming, be they Chinese or foreign, have to put a real effort into finding the few older parts of the city that are still around.

Until 1952, Kunming was a walled city – the wall and its gates are long gone, but their existence still echoes today in place names like Xiao Ximen (小西门, 'Lesser west gate') and Beimen Jie (北门街, 'North gate Street'). There are also less obvious connections to the wall, such as Qingnian Lu (青年路, 'Youth Road'), which was once Kunming's east wall.

The city government in 1952 ordered hundreds of young people to tear down the wall and use its bricks to make a new road running north-south. To show its appreciation for the young people that demolished the east wall, the city government named the new street after them. With the wall out of the way, Kunming began marching toward a future in which for several decades development trumped culture heritage.

History is one of the primary contributors to any city's character, with older physical structures offering the most palpable connection to the past. In 2008, almost all of pre-1949 Kunming has been razed to clear a path for modernity. On some levels this could be considered true progress as many of Kunming's older buildings were built of earth and lacked simple amenities such as plumbing. That said, some may argue that wholesale demolition of a city comes at a psychological cost.

"I feel that many Chinese people have no faith," Kunming native and private photo collector Yin Xiaojun (殷晓俊) told GoKunming. Yin has spent the last 10 years researching a collection of photos by Auguste François (1857-1935), who served as French consul in south China between 1896 and 1904, during which he spent several years in Kunming and elsewhere in Yunnan working on obtaining a concession from the local government to build the rail line from Vietnam to Kunming, which was then known as Yunnan-fu (云南府).

"Many of us are looking for where we've come from and where we're going," Yin said. "Through the extensive photography of Auguste François, we can discover where we've come from. His photography is the earliest, largest and most complete collection of photographs documenting Chinese society at the end of the Qing Dynasty"

Armed with what was then state-of-the-art photographic and cinematic equipment, François traveled extensively throughout southern China and eventually followed the Yangtze from Yunnan to its terminus in Shanghai. His photographs are some of the earliest and most thorough photographic records of China and the motion pictures he took are thought to be the earliest motion pictures taken in China.

Over the last ten years, Yin has researched his entire collection of François' photographs, comparing them to documents from the Yunnan provincial government's archives as well as translations of François' memoirs. In order to make the photos more useful in a historical context, he has spent the last decade ascertaining the subject, location, social background and photographer.

After acquiring 1,241 François photographs and motion pictures via purchase and exchanges with French cultural organizations, Yin held his first exhibition of 360 photos from the collection in Kunming in 1997 at the Yunnan Provincial Museum. More than 250,000 people bought tickets to take a look at Kunming at the start of the 20th Century, setting an attendance record for a single exhibition at the museum that still stands today.

Subsequently Yin was invited by 44 mainland cities to bring his collection to their top museums – he chose four: Beijing, Xi'an, Zhengzhou and Chengdu. In 1999 he ceased exhibiting the photographs because he felt a need to find out as much as he could about each shot's story.

Fast-forwarding to today, Yin says he has completed his research and is preparing several projects related to the François photo archives. In October of last year, he traveled to the locations of all the François photos to document the current conditions of the places François shot more than a century ago. His travels took him to Singapore, Hong Kong, Guangdong, Guangxi, Yunnan, Sichuan and Shanghai. He is planning on using the then-and-now photos in a new book he began writing this year.

Yin said he would also like to organize a new exhibition of François' photos highlighting the massive change in China over the last century. His end game, however, is to build a museum that displays the collection permanently.

GoKunming thanks Yin Xiaojun for providing a sample of photos from the François archives to share with our readers. Over the coming months we will publish 25 photos and their stories every Wednesday. We hope that the photos will help bridge the gap between Kunming's distant past and its dynamic present.

Contact Yin Xiaojun: His ten years of researching the François photos behind him, Yin Xiaojun is open to discussing possible cooperation with individuals and organizations interested in the collection. Yin can be contacted at yinxiaoj(at)public.km.yn.cn.

Auguste François image: Association Auguste François

The 2008 Olympics have already focused global attention on Beijing, but other cities will also host selected competitions. Regatta events will take place in Qingdao and soccer/football matches will be held in Shenyang, Qinhuangdao, Tianjin and Shanghai. Even Hong Kong – technically an 'international' flight from mainland China – will host the Olympic equestrian competition this year.

The decision to hold equestrian events in Hong Kong is tacit acknowledgment that the equestrian facilities and traditions in the former British colony are superior to anywhere on the mainland. Despite the existing world-class facilities, organizers of the equestrian events in Hong Kong are addressing even seemingly minute details. A prime example of this attention to detail is the hiring of Kunming-based arboricultural consultancy Asia Tree Preservation (ATP) to ensure that tree shade at the Hong Kong Golf Club complements equestrian events rather than interferes with the events and their broadcast.

ATP was established in Kunming last year by the father-son team of Don and Jon Picker plus longtime friend Jeff Legue, all certified arborists and Kunming residents. Don Picker has 25 years of experience as an arborist, a profession he says the average person has some difficulty understanding.

"Usually I'll tell people we're 'tree doctors'," said Picker, adding that despite the lack of general knowledge of arboriculture in Asia, the profession is quickly taking a foothold in this part of the world due to the training work done in Singapore by Dr Bill Fountain of the University of Kentucky.

"In Singapore, there's been about two or three hundred arborists certified in the last six years," Picker said. "Malaysia and Hong Kong have become increasingly interested in arboriculture in recent years too."

What is arboriculture? In a nutshell, it is the selection, management and removal of shrubs and trees with the aim of reducing hazards and promoting harmony with an area's needs. Arboriculture has been recognized as a profession for about 40 years.

Beginning this week, ATP will be helping the 122 year-old Hong Kong Golf Club with the management of its banyan trees and eucalypts, some of which are as high as 30 meters and require climbing and pruning by trained professionals. ATP was initially hired to help the golf club prepare for the upcoming Hong Kong Open golf tournament, after which they were asked to assist with the maintenance of the grounds for the Olympic events this summer.

Despite acceptance in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, arboriculture has yet to catch on in mainland China, said Don Picker, who is Chairman of the International Safety Committee of the International Society of Arboriculture (ISA). Picker is also an ISA-certified arborist. Last year he helped with the translation of the organization's Tree Climber's Guide into traditional Chinese – he said he hopes to help with a simplified Chinese version for the mainland soon.

According to both father and son, Kunming could use the advice of a professional arborist, particularly with regard to the practices of 'topping' trees (cutting off the tree tops to encourage horizontal growth) and painting the lower portions of trees white.

"We'd like to see the elimination of 'topping' in Kunming," Jon Picker said. "Topping exposes the trunk of the tree to rain, which leads to core rot, and the branches that grow after topping are susceptible to breaking in the future, which creates a hazard."

Strolling virtually anywhere in Kunming one is able to see trees that have been topped. Most trees have also had their lower portions painted white, a practice that the Pickers cite as a major peeve in tree maintenance in Kunming.

"Historically, a lime base paint was used to repel insects and there has also been an illumination element to the white paint on trees," Don Picker explained, "But now it seems that the practice exists primarily because people think it looks beautiful."

After finishing their work in Hong Kong, ATP hopes to focus on cooperation with local universities in Kunming. However, as Don Picker acknowledges, few people appreciate the work of arborists as the aim of their work is generally subtle and unobtrusive.

"The challenge in our industry is that the average person doesn't really look at trees until something grabs their attention, which usually happens after some kind of environmental damage occurs or a tree has been pruned," the elder Picker said. "Arboriculture is both a science and an art - we prune in a way that doesn't alter the tree's appearance."

Related Links:

International Society of Arboriculture

Treesaregood.org