A few images from my first trip to mainland China back in the film days of the 90's.
In those days Yunnan was only accessible by a ten hour drive on the very steep and winding old Burma Road that once supplied Yunnan and the Flying Tigers with arms & supplies against the Japanese during WW II. It was rare, even impossible for the Chinese to visit here from another province.
I remember sitting at a tiny cafe eating yak burgers as farmers and their cattle strolled past in the dusty streets of quaint Dali. Walking on the street, local children and teenagers, having never seen Western faces, stared at us, mouths hanging open. Quite an experience.

Today, touted as the mythical, lost "Shangrila" (how many are there now?), it's a hot destination for Chinese and Western visitors, tiny Dali has it's own airport and hundreds of thousands of people come here annualy.
The province borders Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam.
Yunnan is situated in a mountainous area, with high elevations in the northwest and low elevations in the southeast. Most of the population lives in the eastern part of the province. In the west, the relative height from mountain peaks to river valleys can be as much as 3,000 metres (9,800 ft).

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