Modern Times

Han immigrants continued coming to Yunnan in the Qing Dynasty, but at a reduced rate. After the suppression of the Muslim Revolt the province was slow to recover and in no condition to welcome. for example, refugees from the collapse of the Taiping Rebellion. The declining power of the Qing Dynasty meant the court was in no position to sponsor Yunnan's recovery. The province did not really attract outsiders again until World War II. Many of those who fled to Yunnan from the eastern provinces stayed on after the war, increasing the proportion of Han in the population.

With the end of the Civil War and the post-1949 development of Yunnan more outsiders moved to the province. And now the Han settled in some of the remoter areas, too, staffing the administrative, education and security organisations. Immigrant farmers from Guizhou and Sichuan also set up new rural settlements. When the central government launched Deng's reforms more Han, especially from Sichuan and Zhejiang, moved to Yunnan for business reasons or to look for jobs in the expanding economy. But the basic proportion of Han to non-Han in Yunnan has been constant for decades.

Today the majority of Yunnan's Han are descendants of the Ming-era immigrants, who were hardy pioneers in their day, settling a distant land that only recently had become part of China. A measure of this frontier spirit persists today in the special attachment the Yunnanese have towards their homeland. It was the last Han-majority province to enter the Chinese body politic. With its unique geographical variety and large ethnic minority component it is different from other Chinese provinces and its people have so imbibed these aspects of Yunnan they refer to the rest of China as wai sheng-the outer provinces.

Ever since the 1980's and the economic reforms, Chinese in the “outer provinces”have been on the move. They have been migrating from village to town, from northern provinces to southern ones, from western areas to eastern areas, and occasionally in the opposite directions, in the belief the grass is always greener on the other side of the boundary.

Yunnanese mostly stay put. Of all the provinces in China, including the rich southeastern ones, Yunnanese would rather live in Yunnan. In chance encounters in the restaurants, a traveller finds that the more familiar he or she is with the sights of the province, the happier the local companion becomes, as if flattered personally by the attention the traveller has given to his beloved homeland.