Shanghai

Shanghai is located in eastern China, at the middle portion of the Chinese coast, and sits at the mouth of the Yangtze River.  Because of Shanghai's status as the cultural and economic centre of East Asia for the first half of the twentieth century, it is popularly seen as the birthplace of everything considered modern in China.

Due to its rapid growth in the last two decades, it has again become one of the world's leading cities, exerting influence over finance, commerce, fashion, and culture.  Shanghai is now aiming to be a global finance hub and international shipping centre in the future, and is predicted to become one of the world's main global financial centres, on the level of even London and New York in this regard.

Shanghai is the most populous city in China, with an estimated population of 23 million; 98.8% of Shanghai's residents are of the Han Chinese ethnicity, while 1.2% belong to various minority groups.  An estimated 700,000 people from Taiwan live within the municipality, and the South Korean communities have more than 70,000 residents.  Most Shanghai residents are the descendants of immigrants from the two adjacent provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang who moved to Shanghai in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, regions that generally speak Wu Chinese.  The vernacular language is Shanghainese, a dialect of Wu Chinese, while the official language nationwide is Mandarin.

Shanghai is also a popular tourist destination renowned for its historical landmarks such as The Bund, People's Square (the former racing track) and Yuyuan Garden, and its extensive yet growing Pudong skyline.  It hosted the World Expo in 2010, attracting 73 million visitors.  Shanghai is described as the "showpiece" of the booming economy of China.  Although often viewed as a modern metropolis, Shanghai still contains some picturesque rural suburban areas.

Shanghai does not have a definitive cuisine of its own, but modifies those of the surrounding provinces (mostly from adjacent Jiangsu and Zhejiang coastal provinces).  What can be called Shanghai cuisine is epitomized by the use of alcohol.  Fish, eel, crab, and chicken are "drunken" with spirits and are briskly cooked/steamed or served raw.  Salt-cured meats and preserved vegetables are also commonly used to supplement the dish.

Yunnan

Yunnan is a province of the People's Republic of China, located in the far southwest of the country.  The capital of the province is Kunming.

Yunnan became part of the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD) during 2nd century BC.  It became the seat of a Tibeto-Burman speaking kingdom known as Kingdom of Nanzhao in the 8th century AD.  Nanzhao was multi-ethnic, but the elite most likely spoke a northern dialect of Yi, which became established as the prestige dialect.  The Mongols conquered the region in the 13th century, with local control exercised by warlords until the 1930s.  As with other parts of China's southwest, Japanese occupation in the north during World War II forced a migration of majority Han people into the region.

Yunnan is rich in natural resources and has the largest diversity of plant life in China.  Of the approximately 30,000 species of higher plants in China, Yunnan has perhaps 17,000 or more.  Yunnan's reserves of aluminium, lead, zinc and tin are the largest in China, and there are also major reserves of copper and nickel.  Yunnan has over 600 rivers and lakes, which provide an annual water supply of 222 billion cubic meters.

Yunnan is the home of three UNESCO World Heritage sites:   the Old Town of Lijiang, the Three Parallel Rivers of Yunnan Protected Areas, and the South China Karst.

With a population of nearly 46 million people, Yunnan is noted for its very high level of ethnic diversity.  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 recognized ethnic groups, twenty-five are found in Yunnan.  Ethnic minorities in Yunnan account for about 34% of its total population.  Major ethnic groups include Yi, Bai, Hani, Zhuang, Dai and Miao.

The Bai people who have lived and fish along the shores of Erhai Lake, near the city of Dali for nearly 3,000 years.  Erhai Lake, is an alpine fault lake, and the second largest highland lake in China.  It is an important food source for the Bai people, famous for their cormorant fishing.

Lijiang

Lijiang is an ancient city with a history going back more than 800 years.  Lijiang is located in the foothills of the Himalayas in the northwestern part of Yunnan Province, and it borders Sichuan, China.  It is in a region where the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau converge.  Lijiang was once a confluence for trade along the old tea horse road.

Once a remote backpacker getaway, Lijang now attracts some more than 5 million tourists a year.  The world famous Old Town of Lijiang is renowned for its orderly system of waterways and bridges, and is an UNESCO Heritage Site.  Lijiang has a population of 1.1 million; the Nakhi are the predominant ethnic group.

The Nakhi are believed to be the descendants of the nomadic Qiang, an ethnic group inhabiting the Tibetan plateau since ancient times.  After being pushed south by other conquering tribes, the Nakhi finally settled in Baisha and Lijiang by 3 CE.  The Nakhi split into three groups while their ancestors were still in Baisha.  The ones who remained are known as the Nakhi, those in Dali are known as Bai, and those living around the Lugu Lake are called the Mosuo.  Even today, the three groups share similar customs.

The Nakhi are traditionally followers of the Dongba religion, rooted in the beliefs of the Tibetan Bön religion.  The Dongba script is a pictographic writing system used primarily by the priests.  The Dongba script appears to be an independent ancient writing system perhaps a thousand years old.  After the 1949 Communist Revolution in China, the use of Dongba was discouraged.  In 1957, the Chinese government implemented a Latin-based phonographic writing system for Nakhi.  Then during the Cultural Revolution, thousands of manuscripts were destroyed.  About half of the dongba manuscripts that survive today had been taken from China to the United States, Germany and Spain.  Today Dongba is nearly extinct, and the Chinese government is trying to revive it in an attempt to preserve Nakhi culture.

Shangri-La County

Shangri-La County was formerly known as Zhongdian County.  It was renamed in 2001 after the fictional land of Shangri-La in the 1933 James Hilton novel Lost Horizon, in an effort to promote tourism in the area.  And like the fictional Shangri-La, the ambiance of the town is distinctly Tibetan with prayer flags fluttering, mountains known by holy names, and rocks inscribed in Tibetan language with Buddhist sutras.

Shangri-La County is located on the famous Southern Silk Road, which originates in Sichuan province in the north, crosses Yunnan province and goes to Vietnam.  To this day, many travelers use the county town as a gateway into Tibet, either travelling many days overland by jeep to Lhasa, or by flying from the city's airport.  However, the town itself is a tourist destination, primarily due to the nearby Gandan Sumtseling Monastery and the largest prayer wheel in the world, Pudacuo National Park, and Tiger Leaping Gorge.

Built in 1679, the monastery is the largest Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Yunnan province, and is sometimes referred to as the Little Potala Palace.  It is also the most important monastery in southwest China.  The monastery belongs to the Yellow Hat sect of Tibetan Buddhism of the Gelukpa order of the Dalai Lama.

Situated 3.1 miles from the town at an elevation of 11,090 feet, its architecture is a fusion of the Tibetan and Han Chinese.  It was extensively damaged in the Cultural Revolution, when in 1959, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) of China bombed the monastery during their invasion of Tibet.  It was subsequently rebuilt in 1983.  At its peak, the monastery contained accommodation for 2,000 monks; it currently accommodates 700 monks.