Yunnan

The flood-prone Yangtze river, which runs from Yunnan in the southwest to Jiangsu and Shanghai on the east coast, has seen a massive increase in water volumes, causing flooding in many of its tributaries and bringing water volumes in the giant Three Gorges reservoir close to record levels.

The trip started out by ship from Singapore to Yangon, Myanmar’s commercial hub, where it continued by road to the country’s border with China at Chinshwehaw, on the border with China’s Yunnan province.

Beſide theſe in the Province of Yunnan, which is very large, lying towards the South, in the latitude of 24 degrees, there is a great Countrie inhabited by a particular people, who uſe another language and other cuſtomes. They have a little King called by the Chineſſes, Thu Quon, a Mandarine of earth, they pay tribute to the King of China, they uſe traffique, and live in peace.

On the South of this Province appears that of Junnang or Yunnan, divided into twelve Parts, whoſe chief Cities are, Yunnan the Capital of the whole Province ; Lingan ; Chinchian ; Cuivag ; Quanſi ; Juenkiam ; Chinyuen ; Xunnim ; Mumhoa ; Tali ; Chimtien ; Jummim : This Province is one of the richeſt, being ſtored with the beſt Metals, precious Stones, Musk and Silk ; and hath ſeventy five other Cities.

Of the eighteen provinces into which China Proper is divided, Yunnan lies farthest to the south-west. It is a mountainous country, rich in mineral products, and, up to the date of the recent outbreak, it formed the channel for an overland traffic with Burmah of considerable value.

I did not meet a single Chinese between Chê-to and Li-chiang in Yunnan¹- a journey that occupied about a month- and the Chinese language was entirely unknown.

Just as the Miao and the Yao had been pressed into Indo-China, the Yi were pushed out of the more eastern provinces of China by the slow advance of the Chinese. In Yunnan the Yi have moved generally toward the south. Up to the time of Mongol conquest in western Yunnan, the Yi had concentrated their population in Tali and Yungchang (now Pao-shan), (4) but today there are very few Yi living in these two districts. The most concentrated Yi population is to be fond in southernmost parts of Yunnan, the region inhabited by the Pai Yi.

There are huge arsenals, magazines and armories in Phong Saly, all operated by the Chinese Communists. Over 200 trucks are shuttling between Phong Saly and Mengla, in southern Yunnan, to replenish the supply, the report said.

In the Hsinhsiang District of Yunnan, twenty-odd plants produced a total of about 200,000 tons of chemical phosphates in 1973.

Michael Dobie moved to Liming in September 2010 with two friends who discovered the Chinese village in a travel brochure. Crisscrossed by dirt roads, the rustic setting in the mountains of Yunnan province offered few amenities.

Wild elephants that had been roaming the southern Chinese province of Yunnan for more than three months returned to a "more appropriate" habitat, Chinese experts told state media.

Mushroom traders expected matsutake prices to start dropping around late August, when large quantities of lesser-quality mushrooms hit the market. But this has not happened. Instead, some production bases in Yunnan — the southwestern Chinese province that makes up a third of China’s matsutake output and about 70 percent of exports — have seen the harvest drop by up to 90 percent this year, local officials told the Chinese financial outlet Caixin.

Deforestation for corn growing in the 1950s and 1960s has been blamed for the disappearance of the white-handed gibbon in the southwestern province of Yunnan. Their cries were last heard in the 1970s, according to state media.