Below Jiuxiang: Rock Chambers and Human Traces
Jiuxiang’s cave landscape includes a record of human activity. At Zhangkou Cave, a published excavation connects rock chambers, layered deposits and stone tools.
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Kunming
14 articles
Ashima as a Story Sung: Sani Language and Memory
Ashima belongs to the Sani people of Shilin as a narrative told and sung. Its verse, changing tunes and family teaching carry a life beyond a single printed story.
The Stone Forest Is Not One Shape: Karst at Different Scales
The Stone Forest’s drama comes from variation: limestone breaks into towers, corridors and clustered forms rather than a repeated silhouette.
Guandu Jingang Tower: A Sandstone Passage
Built of sandstone, the Ming tower lets people pass through four arched openings in its square base.
Around Green Lake, How Kunming Holds Its Urban Memory
Green Lake is a small body of water with an unusually dense urban archive around its edges.
The Wetland Edge Between Kunming and Dianchi
At Dianchi’s southwestern edge, wetland is not a single strip of reeds. A government account describes water, river mouths, shallows and planted vegetation connected into a managed landscape—one with a date, a boundary and an ecological purpose.
What Bird Counts Can Tell Us About Dianchi’s Wetlands
A bird count is a record made at a time, along a route and with a method. At Dianchi, field observers and camera or drone systems are being used together; understanding the numbers begins with understanding how they were gathered.
The Many Histories of the Name Kunming
The name Kunming first referred to people in historical records before it became the name of a city beside Dianchi. Following that shift requires separating an old ethnonym, changing political geography and later explanations of the word.
When Dough Becomes a Figure
At a teaching studio in Songming, flour becomes a figure through colour, pressure and small adjustments. The work connects hand skill with the subjects an artist chooses to model—and with the students who learn to look closely.
The Making of a Yunzi Go Stone
A Go stone is small enough to disappear between two fingers, yet making one involves carefully selected minerals, heat, timing and a controlled drop. The craft is recorded across both Kunming and Baoshan, with different local names retained.
How a Museum Displays Yunnan’s Cultural Diversity
A museum does more than collect objects: it places them into categories and tells visitors how to look. At the Yunnan Nationalities Museum, the listed displays range from clothing and scripts to instruments, masks, crafts and pottery.
The Yike Yin Courtyard and Kunming’s Provincial Museum
A square courtyard house is a building people use, not just a pattern on a plan. In Kunming, the name Yike Yin points toward a compact courtyard form whose rooms and thresholds organise everyday life.