As domestic and international travel to Yunnan increases, the province has been rapidly expanding its aviation infrastructure. What few know is that the foundation of the province's airport network was laid more than 70 years ago by Americans and Chinese working for an often-misunderstood Chinese/American-owned commercial airline known as China National Aviation Corporation, or CNAC.

Founded in 1929 by aircraft manufacturer Curtiss-Wright, CNAC – originally known as China Airways – ran into difficulties dealing with Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government and was sold to Pan American Airways in 1933.

CNAC fared better in China under Pan Am management and began to service routes linking the US, Pan American's Pacific network, and China's major urban centers, first flying into Kunming in 1935. It was one of two commercial airlines operating in China in the 30s, the other being Lufthansa's JV with the Nationalists, Eurasia Airlines. Runways were hard to come by in China at the time, and CNAC had a competitive advantage with its several river planes, which often made water landings on the Yangtze and other waterways.

War was to quickly alter the fates of both Eurasia and CNAC. After the invasion of China by Nazi Germany's ally Japan, the Chinese military absorbed all the assets of Eurasia Airlines. By the end of 1941, CNAC was making evacuation flights as well as the dangerous supply runs between India and Kunming for which it became famous.

When the American Volunteer Group (AVG), aka the Flying Tigers, a group of volunteer fighter pilots flying for China, disbanded in July of 1942, the majority of its pilots joined CNAC rather than return to the US military. This blurred the lines between CNAC and the Flying Tigers as the 'original' Tigers were now seen in CNAC civilian uniforms.

American Diego Kusak, whose father Steve Kusak was a CNAC pilot, grew up on the Spanish island of Mallorca listening to stories about CNAC – and 1940s Kunming – told by many of the CNAC and original AVG pilots themselves. Kusak is bringing the CNAC story to Chinese museums for the first time in an exhibit featuring articles belonging to his father as well as local collector Gong Kangyi (龚康毅). 'CNAC over the Hump' is currently the featured exhibit at the Kunming Municipal Museum.

"This exhibit isn't about war, it's about the love of aviation that was behind the founding of CNAC," Kusak told GoKunming.

A major challenge for Kusak's exhibit is to clearly separate the histories of CNAC and the Flying Tigers, a name which was given to them by Kunmingers during the war, and the American military units that later came to fight and to transport over China. Most Chinese and Westerners are still unaware of the key differences between the commercial airline CNAC and the Flying Tigers, who flew missions against Japanese bombers and fighters from December 1941 to July 1942.

As Japanese forces gained ground in southern China and Burma (now Myanmar), Yunnan became a critical launching pad for both CNAC supply missions over the Himalayas - a route which became known as 'the Hump' – and AVG engagement with Japanese planes in south China and Burma. By 1942, when Allied forces came to join China in the war, Kunming became one of the major military air hubs of that time.

Kusak's exhibition is as much about the roots of aviation in Yunnan as it is about the turbulent history and politics of China and Asia in the 20th Century. Even while the Allies and the US military began to take control of most of the air routes over war torn China, CNAC managed to survive as a Chinese-owned, commercial and profitable airline. On one hand CNAC was flying under contract for the Allies, transporting weapons, soldiers, war materiel and medicines over the Hump.

On the other hand, CNAC was the only commercial airline taking passengers from Kunming into India and vice versa via the Hump route. At the time, no safer route existed out of China.

'CNAC Over The Hump' features dozens of photos plus film of China, Yunnan and Kunming in the 1930s and 40s. It will run at the Kunming Municipal Museum through the end of March. The museum is open daily from 9:30 am to 5 pm.

Plane images: CNAC Association

Steve Kusak image: Diego Kusak

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 Kunming at the beginning of the 20th Century.

Year: 1901
Subject: The White Pagoda (白塔, Baita)
Location: Near the intersection of Baita Lu and Tuodong Lu

Background:

While much of present-day China was under the rule of the flourishing Tang Dynasty, Yunnan was part of the Nanzhao Kingdom (南诏), an upstart regional power whose territory at one point would stretch from Chengdu to northern Thailand and from northern Myanmar to Guizhou.

Kunming first began to emerge as a major settlement – it was originally known as Tuodong (拓东) – more than a millennium ago, during the height of the Nanzhao's reign in the Eighth and Ninth Centuries. Based in Dali, the Nanzhao is known for its penchant for Pagodas, and it left its mark on Kunming with several structures, some of which are still standing, while others such as the White Pagoda (白塔, Baita) – succumbed to the pressures of urban development.

The White Pagoda, highlighted in the above photograph by Auguste François taken in 1901, has the unfortunate distinction of being one of the first important architectural structures in Kunming to be demolished to make way for increasing traffic. Back in 1901 there were no BMWs, SUVs or even QQs choking the streets – traffic tended to consist of pedestrians and the odd water buffalo cart.

By 1913, the Nanzhao had been nonexistent for 1,000 years and Tuodong had been going by its new name of Kunming for only one year. Five years before, the city was officially opened to foreign trade as an inland treaty port – a development which led to its first period of rapid growth. Kunming was highly coveted by France, which had three years earlier completed a railway linking the city with the port of Haiphong in present-day Vietnam.

As traffic flow reached new levels of congestion, it was decided by the city government that the White Pagoda, with its narrow tunnel and low overhead, would have to be demolished to make way for modernity. Today the sacrifice of the White Pagoda is commemorated by the name of the street that runs through where it once stood for more than 1,000 years – Baita Lu (白塔路).

The image below is a photograph taken in May, 2008 by GoKunming – 107 years after François preserved the White Pagoda on film.

Related articles:

Auguste François, Yin Xiaojun and Kunming at the end of the Qing Dynasty

Yuantong Temple's secret colonial past

Construction of 'Turtle Back' throws Kunming traffic into chaos

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 Kunming at the beginning of the 20th Century.

Nestled between the Kunming Zoo and the chaotic traffic of Yuantong Jie, Yuantong Temple (圆通寺) is an oasis of tranquility and reflection in downtown Kunming. Built during the Nanzhao Dynasty in the early 14th Century, this Chan Buddhist (aka Zen or 禅) temple is listed as one of the key Buddhist temples in China.

At the beginning of the Twentieth Century, Yuantong Temple temporarily served a purpose other than providing a place of worship. During the time in which French consul Auguste François was based in Kunming working on the railway from Vietnam to Kunming, his engineer on the project lived in the temple's main building, Yuantong Treasure Hall (圆通宝殿).

During this time, there were few foreigners living in Kunming and few places in which Westerners wanted to live – hence the engineer's selection of the building as his residence. Not surprisingly, his selection of a major Buddhist temple as his home led to some clashes with local residents who wished to worship, burn incense and present offerings to Buddha there.

After several months, François' engineer had had enough of altercations with local Buddhists and he moved out of Yuantong Temple, but not before François captured the building on film in 1902.

The image below is a photograph taken in June, 2008 by GoKunming – 106 years after François.

Today Yuantong Temple is a protected temple and is most definitely not available for rent. You can stroll around the temple compound and take in the pleasant architecture and also the fish- and turtle-filled moat for four yuan. Yuantong Temple is located at 30 Yuantong Jie.

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