Hi all

Myself and my wife are coming to Yunnan shortly to do some "field research" - she and her family are from Yunnan and run a restaurant chain here in Taiwan.

We've got the entire trip planned out for the cultural parts that we want to see, plus restaurants to visit, but we're looking for that little bit extra that we haven't seen before.

We'd be very interested to see examples of "old meets new" or "east meets west", such as bands that give a modern take on traditional music, yunnan influenced fashion, art galleries, food, design. Anything really!

In Kunming is best as thats where we have the most freetime. If anyone has any suggestions that'd be awesome!

Thanks, Ryan

You have just summed up Chinese culture of the under 60s. No jest. But this is low culture. Yunnan high culture?

You get chinese art with a western bias, but western music sung in chinese. Hip hop is really big here (sad).

Most fusion cooking here is god awful. Go to a big 5 star hotel and you can see them serve ch. food served in the w. restaurants. There are good w. and chain jap. kor. restaurants (kobe beef, etc.) but not fusion. The only good fusion cooking I have seen has been in Shanghai and Beijing. It will come to yunnan, but it will be a long time coming.
When it comes to food most ch. I meet are devoutly loyal to ch. food. Especially local cuisine. They see everything else as third rate. There are some exceptions among the young, but they are exceptions.

@ryanjgillies
GOKM (this website) has several well-written and informational articles, highlighting various local artists, to include a broad spectrum of native and contemporary arts, crafts, dance (dangsters et al) and musicians (musicians are artists, too...right?), to include some rising bands with unique sounds (Yunnan - home to 25?+ formally recognized people groups - the politically correct expression for "minorities").

Perhaps someone can bounce these articles, while @ryanjgillies mines GOKM's search button...

Hi folks, thanks for the details. We've been in kunming a couple of days now and have a couple more to go before we travel onwards - the articles here on GOK have been very useful in planning our stay here!