The city is home to 3.5 million people. Kunming is famed for its mild climate yearround. Its name is a reference to this reputation, meaning South of the Clouds. The streets are vibrant with shoppers, karaoke stalls, peddlers, and street performers. When I first arrived here in the land of the Great Wall, I expected to encounter a rather backward nation.
China is, after all, one of the world's last surviving communist bastions.
And communism, most Western scholars will have you believe, is the most baneful and regressive political system the world has ever known. Shortly after I emerged from the bustle of Guangzhou Airport, my port of entry, and onto the sidewalk outside the terminal, I realized how uninformed and patently ridiculous my vision of China had been. My first glimpses of modern China amazed me. High-risers loomed over the city, snazzy automobiles zoomed past me on the road adjacent to the terminal, and scores of merchants lined the sidewalks touting their wares. As I walked the streets of Guangzhou later that day, I recognized the same aggressive, Western-style capitalism I have known all my life.