Minggu, 22 Januari 2012

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Minggu, 15 Januari 2012

Yunnan Tourism

Yunnan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


History
Main article: History of Yunnan

The Yuanmou Man, a Homo erectus fossil unearthed by railway engineers in the 1960s, has been determined to be the oldest known hominid fossil in China. By the Neolithic period, there were human settlements in the area of Lake Dian. These people used stone tools and constructed simple wooden structures.
Around the 3rd century BC, the central area of Yunnan around present day Kunming was known as Dian. The Chu general Zhuang Qiao (??) entered the region from the upper Yangtze River and set himself up as "King of Dian". He and his followers brought into Yunnan an influx of Chinese influence, the start of a long history of migration and cultural expansion.
In 221 BC, Qin Shi Huang unified China and extended his authority south. Commanderies and counties were established in Yunnan. An existing road in Sichuan – the "Five Foot Way" – was extended south to around present day Qujing (??), in eastern Yunnan. In 109 BC, Emperor Wu sent General Guo Chang (??) south to Yunnan, establishing Yizhou commandery and 24 subordinate counties. The commandery seat was at Dianchi county (present day Jinning ??). Another county was called "Yunnan", probably the first use of the name. To expand the burgeoning trade with Burma and India, Emperor Wu also sent Tang Meng (??) to maintain and expand the Five Foot Way, renaming it "Southwest Barbarian Way" (????). By this time, agricultural technology in Yunnan had improved markedly. The local people used bronze tools, plows and kept a variety of livestock, including cattle, horses, sheep, goats, pigs and dogs. Anthropologists have determined that these people were related to the people now known as the Tai. They lived in tribal congregations, sometimes led by exiled Chinese.
During the Three Kingdoms, the territory of present day Yunnan, western Guizhou and southern Sichuan was collectively called Nanzhong. The dissolution of Chinese central authority led to increased autonomy for Yunnan and more power for the local tribal structures. In AD 225, the famed statesman Zhuge Liang led three columns into Yunnan to pacify the tribes. His seven captures of Meng Huo, a local magnate, is much celebrated in Chinese folklore.

Bronze sculpture of the Dian Kingdom, 3rd century BCE.
In the 4th century, northern China was largely overrun by nomadic tribes from the north. In the 320s, the Cuan (?) clan migrated into Yunnan. Cuan Chen (??) named himself king and held authority from Lake Dian (then called Kunchuan [??]). Henceforth the Cuan clan ruled Yunnan for over four hundred years. In 738, the kingdom of Nanzhao was established in Yunnan by Piluoge (???), who was confirmed by the imperial court of the Tang Dynasty as king of Yunnan. Ruling from Dali, the thirteen kings of Nanzhao ruled over more than two centuries and played a part in the dynamic relationship between China and Tibet. In 937, Duan Siping (???) overthrew the Nanzhao and established the Kingdom of Dali. The kingdom was conquered by the Mongol Empire in 1253, with its former dynasty of the Duans incorporated into the Mongol dominion as governors general of the new province. The Mongolian prince sent to administer the region with them was killed. In 1273, Kublai Khan reformed the province and appointed the Semuren Sayid Ajall as its governor.[3] The Yunnan Province during the Yuan Dynasty also included significant portions of Upper Burma after the Burmese campaigns in the 1270s and 1280s. But with the fall of the Yuan Dynasty in 1368, the Ming Dynasty destroyed the Yuan loyalists in the Ming conquest of Yunnan by the early 1380s.

During the Ming and Qing dynasties, large areas of Yunnan were administered under the native chieftain system. A war with Burma also occurred in the 1760s due to the attempted consolidation of borderlands under local chiefs by both China and Burma.
In 1894, George Ernest Morrison, an Australian correspondent for The Times, travelled from Beijing to British-occupied Burma via Yunnan. His book, An Australian in China,[4] details his experiences.
Yunnan was transformed enormously by the events of the war against Japan, which caused many east coast refugees and industrial establishments to relocate to the province. It assumed great strategic significance, particularly as the Burma Road was constructed from Kunming to Lashio in Burma during this time.

A scene of the Qing campaign against the Miao people in 1795.


Naturalists

From 1916 to 1917, Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews led the Asiatic Zoological Expedition of the American Museum of Natural History through much of western and southern Yunnan, as well as other provinces of China. The book, Camps and Trails in China, records their experiences.
Other notable explorers include Heinrich Handel-Mazzetti, George Forrest (botanist), Joseph Francis Charles Rock who from 1922–1949 spent most of his time studying the flora, peoples and languages of southwest China, mainly in Yunnan, and Peter Goullart, a White Russian who studied Naxi culture and lived in Lijiang from 1940 to 1949.
 


Geography
Main article: Geography of Yunnan



Snowy mountains in Diqing, north-west Yunnan.



Fields of canola in Luoping.



Erhai lake (???), Dali, Yunnan.



Lugu Lake, northern Yunnan.



The Yangtze River near the Tiger Leaping Gorge.
Yunnan is the most southwestern province in China, with the Tropic of Cancer running through its southern part. The province has an area of 394,000 square km, 4.1% of the nation's total. The northern part of the province forms part of the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau. The province borders Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and Guizhou Province in the east, Sichuan Province in the north, and Tibet Autonomous Region in the northwest. It shares a border of 4,060 km with Burma in the west, Laos in the south, and Vietnam in the southeast.
 

Climate

Yunnan has a generally mild climate with pleasant and fair weather because of the province's location on south-facing mountain slopes, receiving the influence of both the Pacific and Indian oceans, and although the growing period is long, there is little arable land. See Agriculture in Yunnan. January average temperatures range from 8°C to 17°C; July averages vary from 21°C to 27°C. Average annual rainfall ranges from 600 mm to 2,300 mm, with over half the rain occurring between June and August. The plateau region has moderate temperatures. The western canyon region is hot and humid at the valley bottoms, but there are freezing winds at the mountaintops.
 

Topography

The terrain is largely mountainous, especially in the north and west. A series of high mountain chains spreads across the province. There is a distinct canyon region to the west and a plateau region to the east. Yunnan's major rivers flow through the deep valleys between the mountains.
The average elevation is 1,980 m. The mountains are highest in the north where they reach more than 5,000 m; in the south they rise no higher than 3,000 m. The highest point in the north is the Kawagebo Peak in Deqin County on the Diqing Plateau, which is about 6,740 meters high; and the lowest is in the Honghe River Valley in Hekou County, with an elevation of 76.4 meters.
The eastern half of the province is a limestone plateau with karst scenery and unnavigable rivers flowing through deep mountain gorges; the western half is characterized by mountain ranges and rivers running north and south. These include the Nujiang (Thai: Salween) and the Lancangjiang (Thai: Mekong). The rugged, vertical terrain produces a wide range of flora and fauna, and the province has been called a natural zoological and botanical garden.
 

Borders

Bordering provinces are Tibet, Sichuan, Guizhou and Guangxi. Bordering countries are Vietnam (the main border crossing by road and rail is at Hekou–Lao Cai, the only land border crossing open to non-Chinese/non-Vietnamese), Laos (at Boten) and Burma (with the main border crossing at Ruili, the only land border open to non-Chinese/non-Burmese).
 

Lakes

There are several major lakes in Yunnan. The province has nine lakes with areas of over 30 square kilometers.[5] They include:

 

Rivers

Yunnan is the source of two rivers, the Xi River (there known as the Nanpan and Hongshui) and the Yuan River. The Hongshui is a principal source stream of the Xi River. Rising as the Nanpan in eastern Yunnan province, it flows south and east to form part of the boundary between Guizhou province and Guangxi autonomous region. Flowing for 345 km, it unites with the Yu River at Guiping to form what eventually becomes the Xi River.
The province is drained by six major river systems:

National parks

See also: List of national parks in China

UNESCO World Heritage Sites

Geology

The eastern half of the province is a limestone plateau with karst scenery and unnavigable rivers flowing through deep mountain gorges; the western half is characterized by mountain ranges and rivers running north and south. These include the Salween and the Mekong River. The rugged, vertical terrain produces a wide range of flora and fauna, and the province has been called a natural zoological and botanical garden.
Yunnan has vast mineral resources that are its chief source of wealth. It is China's leading tin producer and has large deposits of iron, coal, lead, copper, zinc, gold, mercury, silver, antimony, and sulfur.

Paleontology

See also: Maotianshan Shales

Biodiversity

Yunnan is China's most diverse province, biologically as well as culturally. The province contains snow-capped mountains and true tropical environments, thus supporting an unusually full spectrum of species and vegetation types. During summer, the Great Plateau of Tibet acts as a barrier to monsoon winds, trapping moisture in the province. This gives the alpine flora in particular what one source has called a "lushness found nowhere else."
This topographic range combined with a tropical moisture sustains extremely high biodiversity and high degrees of endemism, probably the richest botanically in the world's temperate regions. Perhaps 17,000 species of higher plants, of which an estimated 2,500 are endemic, can be found in the province. The province is said to have "as much flowering plant diversity as the rest of the northern hemisphere put together".[8]
The fauna is nearly as diverse. Yunnan Province has less than 4% of the land of China, yet contains about half of China's birds and mammals. Yunnan is home to, most notably, the southeast Asian gaur, a giant forest-dwelling ox, the tiger, and the Asian Elephant. Some already disappeared and are most likely extinct, like the Yunnan Box Turtle and the Yunnan Lar Gibbon. Yunnan Snub-nosed Monkey, also known as the Black Snub-nosed Monkey, is an endangered species of primate in the Cercopithecidae family.
See also Distribution of orchid species

Designation

Yunnan has been designated a:
  • "Center of Plant Diversity" (IUCN/WWF: Davis et al. 1995)
  • "Global 200 List Priority Ecoregion" for biodiversity conservation (WWF: Olsen and Dinerstein 1998)
  • "Endemic Bird Area" (Birdlife International: Bibby, C. et al. 1992) and
  • "Global Biodiversity Hotspot," as a part of the Hengdu Mountain Ecosystem (Conservation International: Mittermeier and Mittermeier 1997)

Natural resources

A main source of wealth lies in its vast mineral resources and mining is the leading industry in Yunnan. Yunnan has proven deposits of 86 kinds of minerals in 2,700 places. Some 13% of the proved deposits of minerals are the largest of their kind in China, and two-thirds of the deposits are among the largest of their kind in the Yangtze River valley and in south China. Yunnan ranks first in the country in deposits of zinc, lead, tin, cadmium, indium, thallium, and crocidolite. Other deposits include iron, coal, copper, gold, mercury, silver, antimony, and sulfur. More than 150 kinds of minerals have been discovered in the province. The potential value of the proven deposits in Yunnan is 3 trillion yuan, 40% of which come from fuel minerals, 7.3% from metallic minerals, and 52.7% from nonmetallic minerals.
Yunnan has sufficient rainfall and many rivers and lakes. The annual water flow originating in the province is 200 cubic kilometers, three times that of the Yellow River. The rivers flowing into the province from outside add 160 cubic kilometers, which means there are more than ten thousand cubic meters of water for each person in the province. This is four times the average in the country. The rich water resources offer abundant hydro-energy. China is constructing a series of dams on the Mekong to develop it as a waterway and source of power; the first was completed at Manwan in 1993.

Governance

Administrative divisions

Main article: List of administrative divisions of Yunnan
Yunnan consists of sixteen prefecture-level divisions:

Map # Name Hanzi Hanyu Pinyin Administrative Seat Population (2010)
Yunnan prfc map.png
— Prefecture-level city —
1 Kunming ??? Kunmíng Shì Panlong District 6,432,000
2 Qujing ??? Qujìng Shì Qilin District 5,855,000
3 Yuxi ??? Yùxi Shì Hongta District 2,304,000
4 Baoshan ??? Baoshan Shì Longyang District 2,506,000
5 Zhaotong ??? Zhaotong Shì Zhaoyang District 5,213,000
6 Lijiang ??? Lìjiang Shì Gucheng District 1,245,000
7 Pu'er ??? Pu'er Shì Simao District 2,543,000
8 Lincang ??? Líncang Shì Linxiang District 2,430,000
— Autonomous prefecture —
9 Dehong (Dai & Jingpo) ?????????? Déhóng Daizú Jingpozú Zìzhìzhou Luxi 1,211,000
10 Nujiang (Lisu) ???????? Nùjiang Lìsùzú Zìzhìzhou Lushui County 534,000
11 Dêqên (Tibetan) ??????? Díqìng Zàngzú Zìzhìzhou Shangri-La County 400,000
12 Dali (Bai) ??????? Dàli Báizú Zìzhìzhou Dali City 3,456,000
13 Chuxiong (Yi) ??????? Chuxióng Yízú Zìzhìzhou Chuxiong City 2,684,000
14 Honghe (Hani & Yi) ?????????? Hónghé Hanízú Yízú Zìzhìzhou Mengzi County 4,501,000
15 Wenshan (Zhuang & Miao) ????????? Wénshan Zhuàngzú Miáozú Zìzhìzhou Wenshan County 3,518,000
16 Xishuangbanna (Dai) ????????? Xishuangbannà Daizú Zìzhìzhou Jinghong 1,134,000
Of those 16 prefecture-level divisions, Yunnan has 129 county-level divisions, and 1455 township-level divisions.

Demographics

Ethnicity


Yunnan is noted for a very high level of ethnic diversity.[10] It has the second highest number of ethnic groups among the provinces and autonomous regions in China, after Xinjiang (which has forty-seven ethnic groups). Among the country's fifty-six recognised ethnic groups, twenty-five are found in Yunnan. Some 38% of the province's population are members of minorities, including the Yi, Bai, Hani, Tai, Dai, Miao, Lisu, Hui, Lahu, Va, Nakhi, Yao, Tibetan, Jingpo, Blang, Pumi, Nu, Achang, Jinuo, Mongolian, Derung, Manchu, Shui, and Buyei. Several other groups are represented, but they live neither in compact settlements nor do they reach the required threshold of five thousand to be awarded the official status of being present in the province. Some groups, such as the Mosuo, who are officially recognised as part of the Naxi, have in the past claimed official status as a national minority, and are now recognised with the status of Mosuo people.
Ethnic groups are widely distributed in the province. Some twenty-five minorities live in compact communities, each of which has a population of more than five thousand. Ten ethnic minorities living in border areas and river valleys include the Hui, Manchu (the Manchu, remnants of the Qing administration, do not live in compact settlements and are in all respects indistinguishable from the Han), Bai, Naxi, Mongolian, Zhuang, Dai, Achang, Buyei and Shui, with a combined population of 4.5 million; those in low mountainous areas are the Hani, Yao, Lahu, Va, Jingpo, Blang and Jino, with a combined population of 5 million; and those in high mountainous areas are Miao, Lisu, Tibetan, Pumi and Drung, with a total population of four million.
An oft-repeated proverb tells the story of three brothers who were born speaking different languages: Tibetan, Naxi, and Bai. Each settled in different areas of Yunnan and Tibet, respectively, the high area, the middle area, and the low area.

Languages

Most dialects of the Chinese language spoken in Yunnan belong to the southwestern subdivision of the Mandarin group, and are therefore very similar to the dialects of neighbouring Sichuan and Guizhou provinces. Notable features found in many Yunnan dialects include the partial or complete loss of distinction between finals /n/ and /?/, as well as the lack of /y/. In addition to the local dialects, most people also speak Standard Chinese (Putonghua, commonly called "Mandarin"), which is used in the media, by the government, and as the language of instruction in education.
Yunnan's ethnic diversity is reflected in its linguistic diversity. Languages spoken in Yunnan include Tibeto-Burman languages such as Bai, Yi, Tibetan, Hani, Jingpo, Lisu, Lahu, Naxi; Tai languages like Zhuang, Bouyei, Dong, Shui, Tai Lü and Tai Nüa or northern Lao dialect; as well as Hmong–Mien languages.
The Naxi, in particular, use the Dongba script, which is the only pictographic writing system in use in the world today. The Dongba script was mainly used to provide the Dongba priests with instructions on how to carry out their rituals: today the Dongba script features more as a tourist attraction. The most famous Western Dongba scholar was Joseph Rock.

Literacy


Sumtselin Gompa Monastery in Zhongdian.



A Tai woman in Yunnan, belonging to one of the many ethnic minorities of the province.
By the end of 1998, among the province's population, 419,800 had received college education or above, 2.11 million, senior middle school education, 8.3 million, junior middle school education, 18.25 million, primary school education, and 8.25 million aged 15 or above, illiterate or semi-literate.

Tourism

Yunnan Province, due to its beautiful landscapes, mild climate and colorful ethnic minorities, is one of China's major tourist destinations. Most visitors are Chinese tourists, although trips to Yunnan are organized by an increasing number of foreign travel agencies as well. Mainland tourists travel by the masses; 2.75 million Chinese visited Yunnan last October during National Holiday. Also a different trend is slowly developing; small scale and environmentally friendly ecotourism. At the moment projects in this field are often being set up with help of NGO's.
In 2004, tourism revenues amounted to 37 billion RMB, and thus accounting for 12, 6% of the provincial GDP. Another fact indicating the importance of tourism in Yunnan Province is capital Kunming hosting the China International Travel Mart every two years. This tourism trade fair is the largest of its kind in Asia and serves as an important platform for professionals in the sector. More than 80 countries and regions were present during the 2005 edition.
Tourist centres in Yunnan include:

Places of interest


The Three Pagodas



The Gucheng Mosque of Yunnan
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