Yunnan: A Chinese Bridgehead to Asia

We are often told that China is a continental-sized economy, but it is good to be reminded just how unique some of its provinces and autonomous regions are. Yunnan, with lengthy borders with Myanmar, Vietnam and Laos, is one of the most distinctive. As Tim Summers's study Yunnan: A Chinese Bridgehead to Asia makes clear, it has a diverse ethnic population (though those classified as Han Chinese make up over half the current population), a rich biodiversity and some of the most breathless natural scenery to be found anywhere in the People's Republic. Its history, too, which he covers in the third chapter of the book, ranges from a period of utter separation from the extant dominant polities and cultures of China that existed from the Han, Tang and Song Dynasties, through its gradual assimilation into the Ming and Qing empires to its total absorption as an integral part of China today.