Kunming

The Dian kingdom ruled the lake basin until the Han annexation of 109 BC, leaving bronze drums, ornaments and models of its own society in tombs at Shizhaishan south of the modern city. Han armies established a commandery here in the second century BC, but control from the Chinese heartland was intermittent, and from the eighth century the basin belonged to Nanzhao, whose rulers built a fortified town on the site, and then to the Kingdom of Dali.

Mongol armies took Yunnan in 1253, and under the Yuan dynasty the province was governed from Kunming for the first time; the administrator Sayyid Ajall Shams al-Din, a Muslim from Central Asia, is credited with building canals, schools and temples and with the beginnings of Yunnan's Hui community. The Ming and Qing confirmed the city as the provincial capital. Wu Sangui, the general who let Qing forces through the Great Wall, ruled Yunnan from Kunming as a semi-independent prince until his revolt failed in the 1670s. French engineers linked the city to the Gulf of Tonkin by narrow-gauge railway in 1910, opening it to trade through Vietnam.

The twentieth century made Kunming briefly central. In 1915 Yunnanese forces launched the campaign that overturned Yuan Shikai's attempt to restore the monarchy, and during the war with Japan the city was the terminus of the Burma Road and the airlift over the Himalayas, a base for the American Volunteer Group and home to the exiled National Southwestern Associated University, which taught China's leading scholars in makeshift buildings from 1938. Post-war growth, heavy industry and, since the 2000s, new districts, metro lines and high-speed railways have transformed the plateau around the lake.

Kunming's character comes from being a plateau city at a crossroads. The Han majority speaks a south-western Mandarin dialect, and Yi, Bai, Hui, Dai, Hani and Naxi communities from across the province live, study and trade here, so minority dress, food and festivals are part of ordinary city life rather than a display. The Hui presence goes back to the Yuan dynasty and shows in mosques, halal restaurants and beef noodle shops in the centre.

Outdoor life is easy in a climate that rarely turns extreme, and the parks are the city's living rooms. Green Lake and Daguan Park fill every morning and evening with tai chi, ballroom and folk dancing, badminton, chess, choirs and amateur opera, and in winter the whole city goes to feed the gulls. Tea houses, flowers and camellias are points of local pride; the camellia is the city's flower, and Yunnan grows about half of China's cut flowers in the greenhouses around Chenggong.

The university tradition matters too. Yunnan University dates from 1922, and the wartime years of the National Southwestern Associated University left a lasting intellectual reputation, commemorated on its former campus. The composer Nie Er, who wrote the music of China's national anthem, was born in Kunming, and a monument to him stands in the Western Hills. Manners are informal and unhurried by Chinese urban standards, closer to Chengdu's pace than to the coastal cities.

About 8.5 million people live in the Kunming municipality, the great majority of them around the lake basin, and the city has grown quickly through migration from elsewhere in Yunnan. The centre is dense and low-rise in patches, with older blocks surviving between new towers; Chenggong, built on the eastern shore over the past twenty years for universities, offices and housing, absorbed much of the expansion and was slow to fill before students and residents arrived.

The economy rests on tobacco, which is Yunnan's largest industry, on flowers, fruit and vegetables grown on the plateau and flown out daily, on metals and chemicals, and on tourism and trade with South-East Asia. The railway to Laos and the airport's regional flights have made the city a logistics point for the whole south-west, and many residents work in education, government and health care.

Days start early, with markets, exercise in the parks and breakfast bowls of rice noodles, and slow through long lunch breaks. The lake defines the city's main problem: Dian Lake suffered severe pollution from sewage, fertiliser and industry from the 1980s, and decades of costly clean-up, wetland restoration and restrictions on lakeside building have improved it without solving it. Water supply, traffic and the cost of housing are the other everyday concerns.

Kunming eats rice noodles, mixian, at almost any hour. The famous version is guoqiao mixian, crossing-the-bridge noodles: a bowl of chicken and bone broth so hot that a layer of oil keeps the steam in, brought with saucers of raw chicken, ham, quail egg, chives and vegetables that the diner tips in to cook at the table. Xiaoguo mixian, small-pot noodles simmered individually in a brass pan with minced pork, pickles and chives, is the everyday breakfast.

Beyond noodles, the plateau's produce shapes the table. Qiguoji is chicken steamed in a lidded clay pot from Jianshui until the broth collects clear in the bottom, often with medicinal herbs. Xuanwei ham, cured in the province's north, appears sliced, in soups and in pastries. From June the wild mushroom season takes over, with matsutake, boletus and chanterelles cooked hard in oil and garlic — cooking them thoroughly matters, as several Yunnan species are toxic raw. Bai-style rubing goat's cheese and dried rushan milk sheets come in from Dali.

Street food centres on erkuai, pressed rice cakes that are grilled over charcoal and wrapped around a fried dough stick with sweet or chilli sauce, and on grilled skewers, tofu and potatoes dusted with chilli. Hui restaurants add beef noodle soup and flatbread. To finish, xianhua bing, the rose flower cake filled with sugared petals, is the city's souvenir pastry, eaten with Pu'er tea or with coffee grown in the south of the province.