The bus from Luchun to Jinping goes via Pinghe, Zhemi and Mengla, so if you are heading for the minority areas along the Vietnamese border, you can get off early.

Best market is in Nafa, which appears as 金水河 on maps, for dates see www.yunnanexplorer.com/calendar/markets/nafa/ and generally for the area: www.yunnanexplorer.com/calendar/markets/map/honghe/

If you are heading for Laomeng, you will need to catch a minibus from Luchun as the main busses now go via the new highway that does not pass Laomeng anymore. From Laomeng there is at least one bus to Jinping via Tongchang and maybe another one via Laojizhai, Zhemi and Mengla.

@flengs

My friend told me he cycled a new road from Mojiang to Lüchun. It's not really marked on any map, but it should be there if I understood him correctly, though I haven't done it myself to verify.

Yes, there's also a new road from Lüchun to Yuanyang. That's a different new road.

Thanks ! So many new roads, I'll have to invest in the newest Yunnan road map money can buy. Won't have much time to look around for it in Kunming, so if you know which store has the best choice let me know.
I am not going to Laomeng (last time I was disappointed it's not what it used to be, much bigger but fewer minorities, in costume I mean). But I am very much looking forward to going through Zhemi and Mengla, that's good news.
By the way Ludwig : Great website, really impressive !

Ludwig, Excellent map. Great resource. Thank you!

By the way, Ludwig, since on the market map I find the default base layer a bit dark (Google Sattelite), I keep switching to a lighter setting such as Google Streets ou Physical. Do you know of a way one can register this setting as default on one's PC ? otherwise it goes back to Sattelite. But it's a small detail, your website is so helpful I am already quite addicted. Thank you !

@Casimir

The newest road maps won't help you. Yunnan's new roads are often not on any maps.
Google maps is the last place you should look. They're years behind.

The best maps I've found are sougou's online maps: map.sougou.com
They're not perfect, but they tend to update for new roads faster than any others out there.

Openstreetmap.org has been working on updating new roads as well, but still has a lot of gaps to fill

@Casimir

About the road from Mengla to Zhemi. The women in this valley are the most beautiful in Yunnan!