As one of the small and dingy departure lounge at the airport in Kunming, waiting to sit on the flight to Xishuangbanna in the southwest, turn your attention to two large billboards visible near the window overlooking the crowded track. The posters, with bright celebrate despite the ongoing construction of two large hydroelectric power stations on the Jinsha River, the western branch of the Yangtze. The plant, built also to reduce the pressure on siltationThree Gorges Dam further downstream, in a clean and bright white and gray are airbrush, and the water flows around them a perfect blue and plausible.
You are currently many projects the construction of those in Yunnan, where economic development takes precedence over almost everything as given, and where the electricity companies from the east were to use noisy. A project that will stand the famous Tiger jump gorge - onSection of the Jinsha north of Dali - is also under way to stimulate significant international opposition. The International Rivers Network, says that the damage caused by flooding of the valley, the local "cultural heritage sites are" caused "irreparable damage". Also affected by the changes irreversible in a unique ecosystem.
Meanwhile, the provincial capital of Kunming to grow. The station, known as the most intolerable of all of China, is still surrounded byDebris and wooden partitions temporary identification of some new roads or buildings. The entire city will be road blocks and scaffolding, participated in the intimidation of cranes, it seems - like many others in China - on the verge of an explosion. While the government proclaims the slogan, mandatory or disprove beyond, "Development is inevitable."
In most western province of Yunnan, the clear waters of the Nu River seem to have received some sort of truce a few months ago. China is only water left untouched, the north windthrough some of the most beautiful landscapes of the province, was about to see a large are given by the national power crazy. Earlier this year, Premier Wen Jiabao said he had personally intervened to ask the developers to reconsider their plans. However, there is one, "rape" of the Nu's just a matter of time.
The philosopher Martin Heidegger chose two different approaches to nature, comparing the construction of a bridge with illustrationConstruction of a dam. Modern technology, he wrote, is "a method to remove the protection 'of nature. A bridge connects the two banks," show respect "for the river, but actually turns a power plant in the nature of his" own inventory. "The power plant is built in the river but the river is embedded in the power plant.
To describe the difference in perspectives of Heidegger Rhine as part of the inventory of modern technology with the Rhinea poem by Hölderlin. After it was destroyed by the technique, the river remains as an object of inspection provided by a group of tourists sent there by a business holiday. That description is appropriate in modern Yunnan. While companies power their way through rivers of the region, foreign tourists and domestic, ancient villages such as Dali and Lijiang have changed, and plans to improve transport infrastructure in the west and south will see the characterPrefectures as Xishuangbanna and the Nu River unrecognizable.
There are a number of bridges linking the banks of the Nu, but the preferred means of crossing by the local farmers seem even more pure than that. Hooking into a harness, consisting of a rope and a piece of flat canvas, fucking back and forth to speed on a cable secured massive, few trees and carry bags of cement, grain and livestock, sometimes even between the knees as doSun A farmer has agreed to take me. Throughout the autumn gray water and a lawn worn on the left bank of the Nu River, the intestine, shaking just fear gave way to a feeling of joy.
I took a long trip from Dali to drive Liuku jurisdiction of local cities in the western part of Yunnan, on the banks of the Nu River. The area is a picture of health, red and green solid and strong. Farmers spin past in motion, pieces of meat trade with local hostAccommodations and restaurants. At a stop along the road, one on a country road, a three-legged horse again missed the past is - quite lively in the circumstances. The whistle and a half, half bleating of native birds felt everywhere. small communities lived in wooden huts on the hills, emerged on Tuesday to act on local markets.
One is tempted to call the picturesque place, and each deserves to conserve Made Stick could. It 'been, however, dirt poor,and indeed much better and much more alive than a decade ago (according to our guide) would be most people who live here love, his stilted huts, their latrines, rural replace their drafty, with new buildings and the house of water.
Usually it is only an outsider to get sentimental. We after all go, go home elsewhere. Not sure that the lives of the poor in China would be improved by a greater degree were their stables, their slums, shanty towns to theirbecome a "World Heritage". On the other hand, it is clear that the proliferation of economic growth does not cause a lot of benefits for affected communities. It 'also clear that the ecology of the Yunnan - one of the most versatile and vibrant in China - is endangered.
Yet, across the Upper Mekong noted the mud filled, chocolate-brown waves and the negotiation of the pile of rocks down town over the van during a recent landslide votes, one can not help but besomehow affected. I was beaten, drugged and thrown into a rule of hundreds of poor-quality roads across China. Here the main challenge of the occasional Ford was right on a narrow mountain pass, but usually impeccable. In difficult conditions, road builders had done well.
Roads are the big thing Yunnan. Plans are underway to connect to a regional network of high-speed road Kunming with Singapore completed. Back wild elephants in the parkXishuangbanna, we were stopped by a fleet of trucks and steam rollers inching along to support a team of colorfully dressed workers spread grit on the track. Before us was the skeleton of a bridge, planted his bare pillars neighboring fields. The old road will end for most of the increase in freight traffic goes through the region and in Southeast Asia. Things are changing, we thought, and Jinghong, running in the city's major regions, but at a painfully slowTime will be educated, no doubt, an opportunistic migrants from the northeast of Sichuan or speed.
LIUKU a small village and local commerce for hundreds of small districts and villages scattered throughout the area, a few hundred kilometers west of Dali. What purists would think the locals would love it if the flow of tourists were suddenly pouring in from the trendiest areas in the east, but apart from the way in which nestles comfortably - if a bit 'chaotic - in the mountains along the banks of the Nu, there is little to distinguish the place. Its biggest advantage is its location, and visitors to see the great potential of the river where a few cafes now offer a lot of nightlife in the city.
Entering the city, an old temple of the Ming Dynasty, is located on the hill above the intersection of River and Nu River Yagoujia same. As usual, the temple looks like cardboard and constructedyesterday morning painted by industrious local school children. A huge laughing Buddha in gold paint adorn the gaff from its small stage seems to dominate. Dogs patrol the steps high and spinning every two inches long, nesting under doors and ceiling lighting.
Across the other side of the river, were the effects of the rainstorm last night to see clearly, the knee in the mud with the police and the road - the only way north is blocked - piles of displacedrock.
Foreigners, so prevalent in Dali, much less continue to Jinghong in the south, were nowhere to be seen. Hardcore travelers heading north to the enclaves of the Tibetans, or the old way of ethnic Lisu, Nu and the desire to see the country. Some come for the immense amount of butterflies native to see and deal with a few Japanese collector himself, to steal a few rare specimens in the eyes of local authorities a few years ago. There were also stories of an American coupleTravelers Crossbowed flee back Lisu hunters after the experiment, with some important local religious icon - the man with the story was not quite sure what was the object. The rest of the local legends aliens who receive Tibetans attacked by dogs and made from woods, bleeding. Yet even here the foreign object of fascination, rather than the type of visa-it-all-before you get to Shanghai or mocking the dollar and look at DaliLijiang.
Guides such as Lonely Planet abhor the current pace of development in China, of course, and as the years passed and new editions to print the complaints about the skyscrapers and highways seem to get more and more. China is losing its character.
We can understand that. Yet after a week on the road along the river Well, does not speak English and staying in hotels, for which we yearn after the pizza, fried banana and foreign influences raft Dali.Many agreed, and many hatched long tour foiled the plans for the attraction of the city's bars and cafes. Some foreigners get locked-year-long tour, not to leave, caught in a perPetual haze of marijuana and other clearly enough to teach a few classes in the capital and the cost of their accommodation.
Travel farther north on the road to the Liuku Fugong days later, the rain clouds over the mountains like smoke lingered, and dozens of blue, puffed three-wheeldown the slope on the road only. We were driving through construction sites where workers squatted on the dunes and through villages where mud duck horses and cows wandering past old and tired, and if small, friendly dogs lounged on almost everyone. Streams of water, suspended by a heavy rain storm the night before in a cascade, in the rough waters of Nu.
We stopped in a small village called Gudeng market, close to Binu Snow Mountain, Watching the local farmers an abusesome pigs disobedient blacks. Another gave us a glass of warm corn liquor, had produced only a makeshift stove in a plastic tube dirty. The dominant presence in the city was a center for family planning, where the government were the slogans on improving the quality of the population in a pair of pumped drowned Chinese disco rhythms, as determined by the market itself. Apart from family planning centers, there are other things that seem ubiquitousthroughout China, from Xinjiang to Shanghai and Guangdong, in order from Yunnan. One of these is the pool table. Another reason is the story of billboards for treatment of sexually transmitted diseases.
we came to understand the beautiful town of Fugong location Mid-Autumn Festival, residents - especially the Lisu minority - for the kind of opportunity would have liked Dali. Cafes, restaurants and a place on the trail would increase the square, andwould ultimately be far more value as a hydroelectric plant. Can be separated the two? Some of the villages along the Nu has not even one watt of power up to ten years ago. It 'a fact, further development - including the tourism industry - require more power.
Purists may look at the opposition, and may, in fact, to the slum - they prefer for a week anyway - in tents or in squalid, second-class hotels available route.However, she seemed apologetic at the reception of pension Gongshan. 'Are you sure you stay here? "He said.
The voice of the river, building, we found a large wooden house on a public water mill old. Self-driven wheels of the Nu River in a troubled part of the room softened with woven carPets and old tools Lisu - the costumes and weapons, the majority of people lined the floor. A dozen girls from a local hairdresser wereback dancing in the middle of one of the stages in the upper level of the building, moving two steps forward and two steps, hand in hand. We were greeted favorably, we encourage them to participate in drinking games. We have had a heart of a drink "(tongxinjiu) - where two people drink from the same glass, to touch her cheeks and lips - with each of them, the sweet liquor dripping clothes on our premises.
Crossing hours later, after the new bridge, and sing songs Lisu as we left,Company with our new friends, managed to stumble into a tunnel in the grounds of the local Public Security Bureau, where police were also Fugong celebrate Mid-Autumn Festival, a dance form that began when which we participate apparently running speed while kicking leg as high as possible in the air. Local police chiefs, according to the stereotypes of being drunk, which seem more or less international, told us that national bordersno matter that transcends friendship and all countries. We agreed.
The next morning, go outside the city and past a long row of old wooden houses with red doors and a number of garages that serve as shops and shabby dinner, we went Gongshan along a spectacular stretch of landscape, part of a 300 km gorge with waterfalls, rivers and white clouds surrounded by mountains on both sides perforated. Houses seemed to balance precariously on the plateau, just a stormtotal collapse. Women wore large squares of corrugated iron on the slopes, according to her children.
The entire region Gongshan, an old restaurant told me, has now been renamed Three Rivers Gongshan region. "" They're creating a brand, "said the man, thin shoulders shrugged. The Mekong River, the Nu Jinsha which all pass through, before trying their source, and local governments to move towards the market.
The city itself, another sleepCluster of houses, restaurants and commercial stations, accumulated in layers on the slopes of the river reaches the mountain was actually anything but intact. As in Liuku had already left the missionaries, so that a treasure of Roman Catholicism among the local minorities. Mothers sat on the steps of a church - a square, squat one-story affair with a bright red cross on the hill - wait for weaving on evening prayer. Prayer Alertswrought iron door of the church were written in a romanized version of the local Lisu language. A few hours later unlikely disco beat of a wooden house further up the hill, knocked, and the church was empty.
A Tibetan girl, works in a strange entertainment complex near other Catholic church in the valley below, asked us if we were brothers in faith. She said his name Mary's Catholic, and was Dimaluo, a mixture of ethnic Tibetan, Lisu, Drong,and another to the north along the river in some way. It 'was a sadness about her, as she tells the story of their lives, their training stalled on the death of his father, after a sudden and inexplicable "infection" and their preference for the country from which they celebrated.
Shops in the district, the posters of Zhou Enlai, Sun Yat-sen and the Panchen Lama easily influenced into the wind, and among them was the usual jumble of mooncakes, cigarettes and cheap, defective batteries.
WhatTell us about "pristine" places like Fugong Gongshan or was not so much the prospect of development, and "use" or "looting" or "flood" of local culture and character, but thousands of residents educated to a degree certainly declaration of intent, but also cut off the possibility of ambition stuck in a remote town to the nearest city requires only connected by one step, two days is to go through. Since we have the Three Gorges, which webegan to wonder if the victim made by the local landscape, in some significant, if we could allow these people a way out. After all, it might be appropriate for the vitality of a culture through its courts permeability, and much more precise, the opportunities it offers to its members to flee, and try something new.
Heidegger hated the way the Rhine to an object of the tourism industry has had as well as the hydroelectric industry, but on the Nu River, we have taken into accountthat the proposed construction of an airport in remote Gongshan, construction of highways and local economic development could actually good for the area, in the absence of other options. TV Heidegger hated and spent most of his final disgrace decades in a log cabin in the Black Forest, but had no choice. Residents Fugong Gongshan and have TV and they see the glitter of wealth and opportunity. But they have no business. And any chance.
Yet the"Current mode of development is about" is all about exploitation and the further enrichment of the eastern coast of China at the expense of West. The landscape is destroyed, the ecology is damaged and old farming communities near urban slums, where he moved little prospect of work or wealth. Here, as in the Three Gorges and other areas, one imagines that the local people collect small opening of the fruit. "
