Wow, I haven’t been updating for quite a while, not having anything very interesting to say (I know that has never stopped me in the past but I promise it wont stop me in the future either). If it wasn’t for all the spam, could have forgotten I even have a blog.

Not blogging or writing anything, I’ve had the free time & good fortune to be travelling again, particularly to spend a couple of weeks in North-West Yunnan, one of the most beautiful, most interesting parts of china, and always where my true home is in this country.

Not going to tire my sole reader with any travel stories – everyone, after all, has been to Lijiang or Tiger Leaping Gorge and have their own opinion, even if it’s – more often than not – the wrong opinion. For me, however, periodical visits to the rural areas of Yunnan serve as a kind of reality check. It’s easy to see only the well-regulated, fairly prosperous central Beijing, where I  happily dwell. and it’s is even easier to draw conclusions about China from what one sees here. It is sometimes useful, however to look elsewhere, and the Lijiang region is a pretty good example of a previously impoverished yet rapidly developing area of China, with a handful of environmental issues and minority conflicts thrown in for good measure.

So, then, during one long drive through the snow range, we saw two roads diverge in a yellow wood.

We took the one less traveled by, a road that leads to Baoshan township(宝山乡), the administrative name for what is actually a spread of small villages inhabited by Naxi minority people. I have written about the area and my extraordinary experience there before, including here and here.

For at least six or seven years now, the  people of Baoshan were waiting for an improved road to connect them to Lijiang city, the urban center for this region. A paved road to replace the current hard-to-navigate dirt road would – or so they hope – allow them access to markets  for their agricultural products. It would also supposedly draw more tourists (and their Yuans) to the villages, helping villagers to generate some additional income.

After years of talks and planning, that road is finally being constructed. Actually the 20 or so kilometers road has been under construction for over six months now, making accessibility to the township much worse than before, sometimes leaving villages cut off from the outside world for days at end. The work is being mostly done by hired local peasants with little experience ad hardly any heavy machinery except a small road roller and an old bulldozer very much similar to the one my two years old nephew loves so much to play with.

Not that people complain much: Their local government is giving top priority to the project, giving it most of the budget left after paying it’s officials to doze off in their offices everyday. Seriously, I believe the township government is actually slightly better than the Chinese average  (though it’s just my impression that might be wrong), and they seem to be genuinely interested in improving living conditions in their domain.

So far, no better or worse than the frustratingly slow pace things usually advance  in rural China, so lets go back to the point of diversion and take a look at the other road (not taken. by me. this time).

That one, snaking north through a high mountain pass, is a state of the art road, fully paved, complete with safety fences, road signs and wide niches for truck drivers to stop at (I know it sounds pretty standard and maybe not that impressive, unless you’ve got down some mileage in West China. Good secondary roads are pretty rare there). It was built in about three months to afford regular supply of workforce and materials to a big dam on the Yangtze, constructed by state owned HuaNeng power company.  

And that has made all the difference.

A road in Yunnan (not the one mentioned above)