Construction work has begun on a new airport near Lugu Lake, according to a Xinhua report citing local officials.

The 837 million yuan (US$122.6 million) airport will be located 35 kilometers from Lugu Lake (泸沽湖), which is located in the northeast of Lijiang prefecture, approximately 200 kilometers (124 miles) from the city of Lijiang. It is generally reached by bus or car from Lijiang, but mudslides and flooding often block roads.

The 60 square kilometer lake straddles the border between Yunnan and Sichuan provinces at an altitude of 2,685 meters and features eight islands and several beaches and bays.

Lugu Lake is popular with domestic tourists for its mountain and lake scenery as well as for the local Mosuo (摩梭) people – population 40,000 – who are designated as a subgroup of the Naxi (纳西族) people and are best known for their matriarchal society, a label which is not fully accurate.

Mosuo women make business decisions and property is passed down along the female line, but men hold political power in Mosuo society, which prevents the Mosuo from being a pure matriarchal society.

The Mosuo are also known for their 'walking marriages' (走婚), in which women choose male partners to visit their bedroom after dark. The man typically returns to his own home early the next morning.

Once completed, Lijiang Lugu Lake Airport is expected to offer flight services to Kunming and Guangzhou. The airport is projected to handle between 1.5 million and two million passengers annually.

Lugu Lake image: rexythegreat via Flickr

One of the biggest tourism destinations in Yunnan without an airport has just jumped into the queue. The Yunnan Civil Aviation Bureau announced that construction will begin next year on Lijiang Lugu Lake Airport, according to a Kunming Daily report.

Lugu Lake (泸沽湖) is located in the northeast of Lijiang prefecture, approximately 200 kilometers (124 miles) from the city of Lijiang. It is generally reached from the Yunnan side by bus or car from Lijiang, with mudslides and flooding often making roads impassable.

The lake straddles the border between Yunnan and Sichuan provinces at an altitude of 2,685 meters and features eight islands and several beaches and bays. It is popular with domestic tourists for its mountain and lake views as well as for the local Mosuo (摩梭) people, who are officially listed as a subgroup of the Naxi (纳西族) people and are best known as a matriarchal society, a label which can be misleading at times.

Mosuo women are the heads of households – they make business decisions and property is passed down along the female line – but Mosuo men hold political power in society, which prevents the Mosuo from being a true matriarchal society.

The Mosuo are also known for their 'walking marriages' (走婚), in which women choose male partners to visit their bedroom after dark. The man typically returns to his own home early the next morning.

Although the majority of walking marriages tend to be long-term, Mosuo women have been misleadingly portrayed as sexually promiscuous to domestic tourists, many of whom visit Lugu Lake looking for more than clean air and mountain vistas.

Lijiang Lugu Lake Airport will receive an initial investment of 900 million yuan (US$132 million) and will offer flight services to Kunming and Guangzhou. The airport is projected to handle between 1.5 million and two million passengers annually. The airport's construction will reportedly coincide with a local government plan to build the area into a 'tourist town of matriarchal society'.

Lugu Lake image: zol.com.cn

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A recent study focusing on the spread of HIV in Yunnan has revealed significant shifts in which demographics are at higher risk for becoming infected with the virus that causes AIDS, according to a Tsinghua University study cited in a Bloomberg report.

According to the study, which was authored by Zhang Linqi, executive director and professor at Tsinghua's Comprehensive AIDS Research Center in Beijing, HIV infections spread via heterosexual contact accounted for 38 percent of all cases in 2006 in Yunnan.

Intravenous drug use, which had accounted for all of Yunnan's infections in 1989, dropped to 40 percent in 2006. Intravenous drug use was how HIV first entered and spread throughout Yunnan, which is located just north of the Golden Triangle. As of 2006, Yunnan had 48,951 HIV cases and 3,935 AIDS patients.

In general, intravenous drug users are being surpassed by women and homosexual men as the fastest-growing gender demographics, while in ethnic and socioeconomic terms urbanized Han Chinese are overtaking rural minorities

"HIV/AIDS is spreading beyond the high-risk populations," Zhang told Bloomberg, "It is the responsibility of every citizen to help control the further spread. More needs to be done in a much bigger and more effective manner."

The study focused on 3.2 million blood samples taken in Yunnan between 1989 and 2006. It found that between 1996 and 2006, the proportion of Yunnan HIV cases that were women rose from 7.1 percent to 35 percent. In 1996 the gender ratio for HIV infections was one woman to every 13 men, by 2006 that ratio had changed to 1:1.9.

In addition to gender pattern shifts, ethnic trends have also changed. Between 1989 and 1995, the Dai and Jingpo ethnic minorities in rural southern Yunnan were most at-risk for HIV infection – today the Han ethnic majority accounts for 60 percent of Yunnan's HIV cases.

"The high percentage of infected are now due to sexual contact," Bloomberg cited Zhang as saying. "It has begun to move from farmer, minority groups in rural areas into worker, Han-majority urban settings."

The study's researchers concluded that although less than one percent of China's population is HIV-positive, resolute action must be taken to address China's HIV/AIDS situation before it makes further headway into the general population. The study called for expansion of social programs targeting HIV as well as free medical treatment for the infected.

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As a teen growing up in the United States in the 1980s, photographer and artist Colette Fu (傅三三) went out of her way to alter her appearance and identity in hopes of reducing her 'Chineseness'. Today, Fu has returned to her Chinese –and Yi – roots on a quest to document all 25 of Yunnan's officially recognized ethnic minorities.

Fu and her camera have been traveling throughout Yunnan for nearly a year on a Fulbright grant to support a photographic pop-up book introducing Yunnan's minorities, everyone from the Akha to the Zhuang.

This is the second time for Fu to live in Yunnan, where her mother – a member of the Yi ethnic minority – was born. It was in 1993 while teaching at Yunnan Minority Institute in Kunming that Colette took interest in her Yi ancestry. Coincidentally, her great-grandfather, once a powerful leader among the Black Yi branch of the Yi, was one of the founders of Yunnan Minority Institute.

After learning enough Chinese to travel around Yunnan alone, Fu began to explore Yunnan's ethnic diversity, taking photos wherever she went. This time around, she has kept an extensive photo blog featuring photos and collages of the unique cultural smorgasbord that is Yunnan.

"My foremost goal is to inform and promote awareness of existence of Yunnan's minorities, who are changing quickly despite being widely inaccessible or even unknown to people outside of China," Fu said.

"For me, this project is a highly personal one as I am descended from the Yi," she said. "An old Yi man told me, 'Although an eagle flies far into the distance, its wings will fold back. For the Yi, the ultimate goal of life is to find the path of your ancestors.'"

Colette Fu has provided GoKunming with a collection of photos of different minorities she has taken photos of during her travels around Yunnan, which can be viewed in the GoKunming photo gallery under the tag Colette Fu.

GoKunming thanks Colette for her contribution – if you would like to contribute photos or other content to GoKunming, please contact us via the GoKunming contact form.

Editor's note: This post was written by Kunming-based translator and cultural consultant Jeff Crosby, who has taken delegations of Yunnan folk musicians to the United States. Crosby writes the blog South of the Clouds.

Gen Dequan (哏德全), the famous Dai folk musician, passed away Tuesday night of an apparent brain hemorrhage. He was a master of the hulu (葫芦丝), a reed instrument fashioned out of drinking gourds which is popular among the Dai and many other ethnic groups throughout Yunnan and Southeast Asia. He was fifty years old.

Known as "King of the Gourd", Gen Dequan was instrumental in popularizing the folk music of the Dai people, and making their music a household name throughout China, synonymous with the cultural diversity of Yunnan Province. Throughout his career he toured many cities and countries, sharing the musical traditions of his people.

I was fortunate to know him. We first met on the Yunnan Revealed tour in 2005, when I was tour manager and he was a performer. He came again with us to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in 2007. He was a good man and a phenomenal musician.

GoKunming thanks Jeff Crosby for his contribution. If you would like to share a story with GoKunming readers, please contact us via the GoKunming contact form.

Editor's note: Every week for the remainder of 2008 GoKunming will publish photos from the collection of Auguste François (1857-1935), who served as French consul in south China between 1896 and 1904, during which he spent several years in Kunming. The photos have been provided by Kunming resident and private collector Yin Xiaojun (殷晓俊). GoKunming thanks Yin Xiaojun for providing us a glimpse of Yunnan at the beginning of the 20th Century.

Year: 1901-1902
Subject: Yunnan's ethnic minorities
Location: Southern Yunnan

Background:

In addition to the time he spent as French consul in Kunming, Auguste François also spent time traveling in southern Yunnan, where France was building a railroad from Vietnam to Kunming. In the course of his travels, he had the opportunity to photograph some of Yunnan's smaller ethnic groups for the first time.

Spending most of his time around the ruling Manchu of the Qing government and the majority Han, it seems that Yunnan's other ethnic groups piqued François' interest.

The Yi slave

The above photo is of an ethnic Yi (彝族) man. The man is a slave and a member of the White Yi (白彝) branch of the Yi people, who were not typically enslaved, unlike their unfortunate cousins the Black Yi (黑彝), who were considered a slave race. Note the man's Manchu-style braid.

A Catholic girl in Honghe

The girl in the above photo was a resident of southern Yunnan's Honghe prefecture (红河州). François noted in his journal that the girl, who is believed to be from the Hani ethnic group (哈尼族), was Catholic – a result of French missionaries venturing into Yunnan in the 1860s. The Hani, who today are concentrated primarily between the Lancang and Yuan Rivers, share ancestral roots with the Yi.

Today the French missionaries' legacy is still palpable in Yunnan, with several old churches dotting the province, plus thriving coffee and wine industries that owe their origins to beans and grapes introduced by the missionaries as they traveled the province.

Miao girls in Mengzi

The above image is of three young women belonging to the Miao ethnic group (苗族), also known as Hmong. François took the photo while in Mengzi (蒙自) in southeastern Yunnan. This photo sticks out within François' photos of China for having a more anthropological feel.

The Miao originally lived in southern China but eventually began migrating into the northern regions of Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam in the 1700s for political and economic reasons. The Miao that stayed in Yunnan moved up into the mountains as more Han Chinese moved into the region. This isolation led to cultural and linguistic fragmentation of the Miao.

Multimedia phenomenon and arguably China's best-known female rock star Wu Hongfei (吴虹飞) will be playing a special unplugged performance tonight at Halfway House.

Wu is lead singer for the Beijing-based band Happy Avenue (幸福大街) and is also a well-known magazine journalist and author of books including The fish who loved Xiao Long and The double life of A Fei.

A member of the Dong ethnic minority originally from Sanjiang, Guangxi, Wu is a graduate of the prestigious Tsinghua University in Beijing, where she majored in environmental engineering and the editing of scientific books.

Wu's lyrics range from the abstract and fantastic to dark and melancholy. Whether with Happy Avenue or playing solo, her music has been called many things: poppy, folk, goth and more. Tonight's performance at Halfway – co-organized by Wheatfields Bookstore – features Sam Debell on drums, Ma Li of Wheatfields on the mouth harp and Zhang Shuang playing violin, with Wu playing acoustic guitar.

Wu has been blogging from Kunming recently, her Sina blog can be found here. She is currently touring to promote her new solo album Rouge (胭脂).

Tonight's show starts at 9:30 pm with opening act Fang Blues Band (坊乐队), tickets cost 15 yuan.

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The Kunming municipal government has recently released a slew of statistics related to the the city's population breakdown. Here's a brief rundown of some of the stats:

Ethnic minority residents in Kunming = 759,500

China is often viewed by outsiders as a rather homogenous country, but in fact the Chinese populace is more diverse than it is given credit for. Aside from being home to some of the largest Muslim and Christian populations on the planet, China is also home to 56 officially recognized ethnic groups.

Yunnan boasts the highest ethnic diversity to be found in any of China's administrative regions, with 26 ethnic groups - including the numerically dominant Han majority - scattered throughout the province's diverse landscapes. As capital of Yunnan, Kunming is home to the greatest collection of ethnic diversity to be found in the province. According to municipal population statistics, 759,500 ethnic minorities were registered as Kunming residents in 2006.

Of the more than five million people registered as residents in Kunming last year, more than four million were Han. The Yi people were the most prominent minority in the city, with more than 400,000 residents. The least-represented ethnic minority in Kunming were the 75 Dulong people living in the city. Here are the numbers:

Han (汉族): 4,383,500
Yi (彝族): 400,200
Hui (回族): 149,000
Bai (白族): 73,200
Miao (苗族): 46,100
Lisu (傈僳族): 17,700
Zhuang (壮族): 14,000
Dai (傣族): 13,200
Hani (哈尼族): 11,000
Naxi (纳西族): 8,400
Manchu (满族): 4,800
Buyi (布依族): 3,400
Mongol(蒙古族): 2,500
Lahu (拉祜族): 1,700
Tibetan (藏族): 1,500
Yao (瑶族): 1,100
Jingpo (景颇族): 1,100
Wa (佤族): 1,000
Bulang (布朗族): 441
Pumi (普米族): 421
Shui (水族): 294
Akha (阿昌族): 263
Nu (怒族): 156
Jinuo (基诺族): 135
Dulong (独龙族): 75

Male-to-female ratio = 1.05:1

Since its initiation in 1979 China's one-child policy has had a major impact upon the mainland populace, with one of the most notable population trends being an increasingly unequal gender ratio. According to new government statistics, some Chinese provinces are averaging gender ratios as unbalanced as 1.35 males to every female. When compared with much of the rest of China, Kunming has one of the more balanced gender ratios, with a male-to-female ratio of 1.05 to 1.

Per capita green space = 8.45 square meters

Although it is nicknamed the Spring City, Kunming is a very urbanized city undergoing massive change. The local government seems to be increasingly focused on increasing green space (绿地) in the city and plans are in motion to create larger parks near the Lianhuachi area northeast of Yunnan Normal University as well as other parts of town.

According to municipal statistics, Kunming's per capita green space now stands at 8.45 square meters - much higher than the national target of 0.95 square meters per capita. This statistic is only inclusive of 'constructed areas' (建成区) of the city, which ostensibly does not take the myriad plots of land under construction throughout the city into account.

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