The Yunnan Buzz
Since I started blogging about 4 months ago, there has been a steady upswing in news coverage about Kunming and Yunnan. Now it’s getting to the point that I can’t keep up with the flow of interesting environmental and development news. Today was particularly bad:
Lots of famous directors make movies in Yunnan because it’s beautiful here. Unfortunately, their filming is high environmental impact and they usually don’t bother to clear away their mess when they go. But according to this article, Chen Kaige is apparently going to get a “Green China” award as a result of the environmental mess he left behind at Bigu lake in Northwest Yunnan. WHAT??? “Sometimes a negative example can serve as a warning,” Xinhua quoted Wang Panpu, deputy director of the awards committee, as saying.
Yunnan tea is hitting the big time: according to some gross marketing news that google was kind enough to send my way, Peet’s Coffee&Tea company considers Yunnan tea one of “the finest black teas from the 2006 crop” on a list that also includes the much more well known Darjeeling. Some searching around revealed that Twinings specialty teas also sells “Yunnan Tea” Although certainly debatable, many believe that southwest Yunnan is the origin of the world’s tea trees.
A new-ish strain of bird flu, HN51 “Fujian-like,” has been found in Yunnan province according to this article and about a million others on the AP wire right now.
…one out of every 30 geese and one out of every 30 ducks in live markets tested positive for H5N1 in six southern Chinese provinces during yearlong surveillance […] The study was conducted in Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, Yunnan and Hunan, densely populated provinces where people live in close proximity to ducks, pigs and other farm animals, making the area a common breeding ground for flu viruses.
The article also notes that the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture has yet to give a sample of the new strain to the WHO, and speculates that the Chinese are trying to get ahead in the race for a vaccine. Great.
Lots of exciting info on the South East Asia transportation links via the recent China-ASEAN summit meetings on Monday and Tuesday:
Wen Jiabao promised to consider increased assistance to the Mekong River Bridge highway project connecting Kunming to Bangkok. Apparently Laos is running a bit over budget. Wen went on to mention China’s commitment to the Kunming-Singapore railway in his keynote speech.
Malaysia will be donating used railroad tracks to Cambodia to expedite that leg of the Kunming-Singapore railway. The article estimates the project’s total cost at 15 billion dollars, and finance seems to be the major obstacle at this point. As a matter of reference, costofwar.com places the total cost of the Iraq war at 339 billion dollars as of this writing.
Last but definitely not least, go read this fascinating article about where Kunming’s seafood comes from. Apparently my delicious squid teppanyaki is coming across the Myanmar border like contraband.
The Chinese and Myanmar government are buying off insurgents in some areas in order to open up the road (and apparently add a rail link) through Ruili. Further, China is helping Myanmar to build a bunch of hydro-power dams and oil pipelines — most likely to provide China with oil shipped in to Myanmar from other places.
Industry analysts speculate that those Myanmar-situated pipelines will be designed to transport oil and gas arriving by tanker from the Middle East and Africa to inland China, potentially saving Beijing time and money now spent sailing through the choked, pirate-infested and vulnerable Malacca Strait to China’s east-coast ports.
Pirates??? What??? Needless to say, this is by far the most interesting article I’ve seen in a long time. Maybe I’ll make a trip back to Ruili to check out the seafood trade with my downtime in December.
Comments
China has been working closely with North Korea to ensure that they are developing a nuclear device capable of delivering it’s payload around the world. China has recently entered the space race and will be the 3rd country to send manned space craft into orbit soon. Because of this all of their rocket scientists are focused on the design and production of their spacecraft. It was critical for China to help North Korea develop their weapons program because they are hoping to use the devices as deployment mechanism for airborn Bird Flu antidotes. On the surface this sounds improbably, but when you consider that both China and North Korea will immediately become the darlings of the world and instantly have more moral equity than the US and Canada combined, you can quickly see why they are doing this. The good news for us is that if they are successful, the thread of a bird flu pandemic will be practically neutralized.
Posted by: S. Bahl | November 2, 2006 12:49 PM
in case you hadn’t noticed, bird flu is a virus that affects birds, and unless you roll around in piles of chicken poop or handle raw meat all day, you really aren’t at risk. no one would bother going to the effort of developing an intercontinental ballistic missile to deliver a payload of antivirals for a bunch of chickens. not to mention that antiviral drugs can’t be delivered that way anyhow.
Posted by: epay | November 2, 2006 12:57 PM
You are the second hit for “migrant worker” on Google, just after the Wikipedia entry. Congratulations.
Posted by: Britt B. | November 5, 2006 1:42 AM
The owner and proprieter of Al Medina Bangladeshi restaurant across from the airport told me he gets weekly shipments of crabs from the Bay of Bengal via Kunming-Dhaka flights.
He stopped short of declaring himself the Crab King of Kunming, but he did seem to believe he was providing the city with most of its crabs.
Posted by: chris | November 6, 2006 11:02 AM