Matt Schiavenza

Greetings from Tengchong, Yunnan, where I’ve been staying the past two days after surviving the Bataan Death March–i.e. the bike ride over Gaoli Gong Mountain. We had initially planned to spend just a single day in Tengchong but have instead remained for two; the consequence of consuming some bad baijiu at the hostel bar and spending an entire morning in bed, recovering.

Tengchong looks like most other provincial-level towns in Yunnan, though less compact and more green. I had expected signs of gentrification owing to Tengchong’s popularity with travelers but haven’t seen much. The city is refreshingly down-to-earth with a buzzing night market and several simple restaurants.

Near Tengchong lies the town of Heshun, a village now known for the large numbers of locals who, flush with cash from the jade trade with nearby Myanmar, have emigrated. Heshun’s narrow, cobblestone streets and traditional architecture reminded me a bit of Lijiang, and in true Chinese form tour groups and kitsch shops have popped up everywhere.

Heshun might be ‘ruined’ in five years, though for now the it has retained its charm. In the course of researching a story I was put in touch with a middle-aged local man who lived in a traditional courtyard home on the outskirts of town.

Our interview ostensibly concerned the Burma Road, the famous supply route through India and Burma that supplied Allied forces in China during World War Two. Tengchong’s history is intertwined with that of the road, a subject I had intended to explore further.

In the course of our discussion the man instead spoke movingly of his family history. His parents were members of the Kuomintang, the Chinese Nationalist Party that governed the mainland from 1911 to 1949 and has dominated Taiwanese politics ever since. From the end of World War Two to 1949 the Kuomintang fought against the Communists in the Chinese civil war.

When the Communists won, the Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-Shek fled with much of the country’s treasury to Taiwan. Many of his supporters followed him. For the parents of the man I met, history was less kind. They were unable to flee.

Later, under Communist rule, the man’s father was accused of being a counter-revolutionary and a spy for Burma. He was imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution. After his release, his son sadly described him as a changed man; the years of torture and imprisonment had caused him to lose his mind.

I asked him whether he harbored any bitterness towards these years and he said no. Things were good now, so good that he could do what he wanted and buy what he pleased. When I asked whether he was concerned rampant tourism would ruin Tengchong’s spirit, he simply laughed and said that the economic development to him was progress.

Tomorrow we press onto Ruili, the capital of Dehong prefecture and a city which has supposedly shed its seedy image. By how much? We’ll have to see.