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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China praised for HIV/AIDS efforts

Tags: Dai, ethnic minorities, health, HIV/AIDS, Jingpo, Tsinghua University, Zhang Linqi

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.

Tags: Colette Fu, ethnic minorities, Fulbright Program, Yunnan Minority Institute, 傅三三

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.

Tags: Dai, ethnic minorities, Gen Dequan, hulu, Jeff Crosby, music

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.

Tags: Auguste François, Catholic, coffee, ethnic minorities, Hani, Hmong, Honghe, Mengzi, Miao, missionaries, wine, Yi, Yin Xiaojun

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.

Related article: Ma Li and the Kunming underground

Tags: entertainment, ethnic minorities, Halfway House, Happy Avenue, live music, Ma Li, Sam Debell, Tsinghua University, Wheatfields, Wu Hongfei, Zhang Shuang

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.

Related stories:

Woman preparing to undo attempt on her life - 29 years later

Kunming gets a spring greening

Video: Sounds of the Yunnan Countryside

Tags: demographics, ethnic minorities, gender balance, green space, population

Yunnan Yuansheng Indigenous Music and Dance Studio is the only theater in Kunming dedicated to preserving and promoting the music and dance traditions of Yunnan's twenty-five ethnic minorities. Yuansheng Studio features 15 full-time performers from Yunnan's Yi and Wa minorities - many of whom are some of the last living masters of their musical traditions.

The video clip above contains some of the numerous highlights of Yuansheng's performance of its production Sounds of the Yunnan Countryside. Filmed and edited by Kris Ariel, this performance from last Monday illustrates the remarkable vocal and instrumental versatility of each Yuansheng performer.

Yuansheng Studio's summer season will be wrapping up in the coming weeks, but there will still be performances each week, including Thursday (Aug 30). Tickets for the 90-minute show cost 60 yuan and performances start at 8:30 pm. For more information about upcoming performances, contact Yuansheng Studio at 2400237 or 13354608051. Yuansheng Studio is located within the Loft/Chuang Ku art compound at 101 Xiba Lu.

Yunnan Yuansheng Indigenous Music and Dance Studio
源生坊剧场
101 Xiba Lu (Inside the Loft)
西坝路101号（创库内）
Tel: 2400237, 13354608051

Tags: arts and entertainment, ethnic minorities, Kris Ariel, Sounds of the Yunnan Countryside, video, Yuansheng Studio

Beginning next Wednesday Yunnan Yuansheng Indigenous Music and Dance Studio (aka Yuansheng Studio) will launch weekly performances of Sounds of the Yunnan Countryside, a mix of traditional music and dances of the Yi, Bai and Wa people that has toured extensively throughout China and overseas.

The roughly 90-minute performance features native performers donning traditional costumes and playing traditional instruments. After opening night on Wednesday the 20th in the Yuansheng Studio theater, performances will be held every night except for Monday nights.

We asked troupe vice-director Shi Wanheng why he thought Sounds of the Yunnan Countryside was important. The 61-year-old native of Taoyuan Village in Shiping County, Honghe Prefecture said it was a matter of saving the art and traditions of Yunnan's minorities.

"Our group is protecting minority culture and transmitting it to a new generation," Shi said, "If we don't nurture understanding of these cultural traditions today, they will disappear."

Sounds of the Yunnan Countryside, which in 2005 was performed at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, will perform Tuesdays through Wednesdays from 8pm to 9:30pm in the Yuansheng Studio theater until November. Yuansheng Studio is located in the Loft art compound, which is also known as Chuangku (创库). Click here for our review of Sounds of the Yunnan Countryside.

NOTE: GoKunming reader discount! Tickets for Sounds of the Yunnan Countryside - which normally cost 180 yuan - are being offered to GoKunming readers at a reduced price of 100 yuan. Just say you want the GoKunming discount and Yuansheng staff will hook you up with an 80-yuan discount.

Yuansheng Studio
源生坊剧场
101 Xiba Lu, inside Chuang Ku
Tel: 2400237, 13354608051

Tags: ethnic minorities, Sounds of the Yunnan Countryside, Yuansheng Studio