Home UpKunming 2, the Road North

Here's a record of what we saw in 1990 when we set out from Kunming to Xhenziong.

First, we had a bit of time to wander around Kunming.

The city's markets were already responding to the liberalizing rural economy.

But there were still plenty of people doing the hardest physical labor.

A quantum leap: from manpower to horsepower.

Some women had bound feet; others wore hot-pink.

A modern city was emerging from the body of a traditional one.

On the way north we passed a smelting town.

The work was done in huts like these, smoking like an inferno.

The smelting was done in clay vessels arrayed in ranks like pots on a clay stove. In certain lights, the brew burned green. Zinc? Maybe.

Farther north, potatoes. An interesting crop—and clearly not something of any great antiquity, since potatoes arrived with the Europeans.

Compared to coastal China, Zhenxiong town was remote and poor, but the kids seemed happy.

A few miles north of Zhenxiong, this beautiful valley.

Corn, another American crop. In the background, a cave that swallowed up the water passing through the valley.

The cave mouth. The passage was some miles long. Local boys said that they had passed through it.