The Transformation

Kunming commenced its modernisation in the 30's, especially after the Nationalist government moved to Chongqing during the Anti-Japanese War. The old walls came tumbling down and the urban extension began eating up the adjacent fields. The pace continued after 1949, with the last of the city gate towers demolished in 1953. By the time Yunnan was opened to tourists all the basic infrastructure of a modern metropolis was in place. Yet at the beginning of the 90's it was still a relatively tranquil, backwater provincial capital with nowhere near the hustle and bustle of cities to the east.

More used to the cities in the plains, which sprawled out over boring flat horizons, visitors flying into Kunming were struck immediately by its setting. Mountains flank three sides of the city and the upper end of Dian Lake the fourth. At 1893 metres altitude the air is slightly thinner and the skies richer. The climate is mild, never too cold in winter nor hot in summer, a condition which has earned it the nickname of Spring City. Traffic was still light back then, mostly bicycles, and many blocks of the old town, with its fascinating traditional architecture, were still intact. Kunming was an ideal venue for a long,leisurely stroll.

Certain streets were especially appropriate for getting the feel of Old Kunming. On Wuchenglu one could espy some of the best decorative carvings on the two-and three-story shop houses, along with one of the city's oldest churches. More old houses stood on Wuyilu and Guanghuajie, where the Bird Market is still located. The streets north of Green Lake, leading to the main gate of Yunnan University, with several nearby outdoor restaurants, and traditional tree-lined Jinbilu, with its rows of old yellow, turn-of-the-century buildings, were other popular walking areas.

Narrow lanes connecting the streets in the old town provided glimpses of what it was like to live in the heart of a Chinese city, without a shop to manage, too. In the late afternoons tea houses filled with older men chatting while smoking long pipes. In small inner-city parks they played board games. Itinerant traders wandered into town; Hui from Ningxia selling furs, Uighurs from Xinjiang with baskets of raisins, Tibetans hawking medicine, Sanis pedaling handicrafts.

A couple areas catered to foreigners, such as the row of restaurants on Beijinglu near the Kunhu Hotel, which are all still there, and the cluster of small restaurants in back of the university campus. Individual shops in other quarters posted bi-lingual signs in a bid to attract foreign customers. Some of these were oddly phrased, like the Jewelry and Queer Stone Shop on Baitalu and the one on Huguolu that used to offer Chinese and Alien Snacks.

By the middle of the decade Yunnan began to develop more rapidly and the pace of Kunming's modernisation accelerated. New skyscrapers rose every season. Vehicle traffic quickly multiplied and to deal with this fast-growing problem the authorities decided to widen some of the main thoroughfares, including those going right through the old town. Wuchenglu, with its old church and older homes, was destroyed and on a bright Sunday in October of '97 the shops on Jinbilu held their final Everything Must Go sale, the day before the wreckers came to start knocking down the buildings.

Destruction was not total, though. The new width stipulated for Jinbilu spared the Catholic Church, which was already set back far enough from the street. The new road was also made to swerve to the side of the old mosque, so that this venerable relic of Old Kunming remains untouched. Gateways in the classical style were erected on the walkway, as well as the connecting lane to the roundabout at the end of Nanpingjie. Flower beds were laid out along the road, as elsewhere in the city, in line with Kunming's preparation for the horticultural exhibits of Expo 99.

The exposition was staged in a specially constructed site not far from the Golden Temple, just east of the city. A decade's worth of development money was used to spruce up Kunming as well as all the prefecture capitals. Just west of Beijinglu, the river area was cleaned up and new parks created. Street merchants on the main roads were ordered off, but many, including the blind masseurs, set up in the corridors of the underpasses. Finally, to augment the new parks and gardens and decorate the cleaner, wider streets, the city set out two million flower pots.

Where the streets were not major thoroughfares and no plans were afoot to build hotels, banks or shopping centres, old neighbourhoods survived. One still interesting area is that around the Bird  and Flower Market, where birds and bird food, fish, fish food and fishing gear, ornamental plants, wood crafts, antiques and jade are on sale in a warren of small shops. Old shop houses and dozens of street stalls dominate the vicinity. Opposite the top end of the Bird Market two odd, wedge-shaped buildings face each other just below the memorial park.

One might bemoan the passing of so much of Kunming's old town, but besides its remnants and the excursions nearby, Kunming still has its good points: agreeable climate, a friendly population and a range of excellent restaurants. And as a transportation centre it is well connected to other parts of China and offers easy access to all the main attractions in the province, near and far.

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