Exploring China’s peripheries: Southwest 西南 Day 1: Kunming, Yunnan province

#2 A most humbling experience even Singapore's award winning airport cannot match. A free public phone that features internet access, stock market reports, weather reports to name a few. And yes it is free for everyone travelling, from the rural peasants to the nouveau rich to the foreign tourists.

#3 One of many, many real estate ads that are plastered around Yunnan – just one indicator of the level of affluence for the people around these parts.

#4 Depending on how you interpret this –  More signs of affluence, aspiration or opulence?

#5 So… My journey starts at Kunming in the frontier Yunnan province (it shares borders with Vietnam, Laos and Myanmmar, 25 of the 56 official Chinese ethnicities can be found here).
Here's a view of the interior of the airport facing east as the sun arises over the degraded mountain area, about 2,000m above sea level.

#6 View of the exterior of the airport. Only just opened in June this year, it features two runways and 66 gates.
Do check out its official website to catch a fuller glimpse of its grandeur – I am no architect but they finished building this airport (featuring very few straight lines…) in just under three years. Its aim (this I found out talking to a local party member) is to become a gateway to Southeast and South Asia. It was quite a spectacle looking around the vast expanse of mountain range all around.

#7 One might be hard pressed to believe Yunnan is one of China's poorest provinces. This is a view echoed by all the locals I spoke to. Here is a shot of the Zhong Ai archway first built arguably during the Yuan Dynasty. Kunming is a prefecture-level city that serves as capital of Yunnan province, and has a populaton of about 6.4 million.

#8 A wider shot of the Zhong Ai archway. Kunming has an important history of being the epicentre of China's southern silkroad back in antiquity. It wasn't always a piece of Han Chinese territory though, it was subjugated in 109BC. During the second Sino-Japanese war, much of China's wealthy and learned flooded here to build a bastion of finance and resources to resist the invading Japanese forces.

#9 This is Cuihu Park, located in the northern part of Kunming's city. Since 1985, seagulls from Siberia have been spending their winter months at the lake. In a display of harmony, locals and seagulls form a symbiotic relationship.

#10 Locals indulging in early afternoon Taichi at Cuihui lake park. Made a public park in 1910, the park, known as Green Lake park in English was first established during the 17th century.