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About Kunming
Kunming (昆明; Kūnmíng) is the capital and largest city of Yunnan province in southwest China. Known as Yunnan-Fu until the 1920s, today it is a prefecture-level city and the political, economic, communications and cultural centre of the province as well as the seat of the provincial government. Kunming is also called the Spring city due to its weather. It was important during World War II as a Chinese military center, American air base, and transport terminus for the Burma Road.
Located in the middle of the Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau, Kunming is located at an altitude of 1,900 meters above sea leveland at a latitude just north of the Tropic of Cancer. Kunming has as of 2014 a population of 6,626,000 with an urban population of 4,575,000 and is located at the northern edge of the large Lake Dian, surrounded by temples and lake-and-limestone hill landscapes.
Kunming consists of an old, previously walled city, a modern commercial district, residential and university areas. The city has an astronomical observatory, and its institutions of higher learning include Yunnan University, Yunnan Normal University and a medical college. On the outskirts is a famed bronze temple, dating from the Ming dynasty, and in the hinterland there is the Stone Forest.
Though having a nearly 2,400-year history, its modern prosperity dates only from 1910, when the railway from Hanoi was built. The city has continued to develop rapidly under China’s modernization efforts. Kunming’s streets have widened while office buildings and housing projects develop at a fast pace.
On 1 March 2014, 29 people died, and more than 130 were injured at Kunming Railway Station in what the Chinese Xinhua News Agency described as a terrorist attack. The attach happened only 6 weeks before we came to Kunming and the railway station was located only a few hundred meters from our hotel.