Using Google Earth to track [over] development in Yunnan and Sichuan

I've long suspected that there has been a lot of development in the the areas I have revisited in the footsteps of Joseph Rock - but it's always been hard to put a finger on exactly what has changed. Recently I have been browsing some of my former trekking locations using Google Earth's archive feature - this allows you to switch between satellite views from different years.  You can see the changes in the split picture above.

This is just one example of the huge changes in Yunnan: compare the Fei Lai Si viewing area outside Deqin in the decade between 2002 and 2012. I first visited the place in the late 1990s - or was it early noughties:

As the top photo shows, there was already a little viewing area at Fei Lai Si and  line of specially erected stupas from where the Meili Xueshan/ Kawakarpo could be viewed. There wasn't much else there - a couple of shops selling tourist trinkets and a noodle shop, if I remember rightly.

Fast forward to 2012 and Fei Lai Si had grown into a small town with scored of shops, restaurants bars and guesthouses - plus several rather grand hotels. The viewing area had been massively expanded and there was a big wall around it - with a ticket office now charging 70Y admission:

There's quite a few other examples of this kind of massive development. It's sad that some beautiful and quiet places have become over-run with tourists and spoiled by development - but that's the way of the world, I guess. This used to be a quiet road down a forested hillside - now it is lined with bars, shops and hotels:

More Google Earth then-and-now comparisons: Kangding

Yulin, near Kangding, 2002 (top) and 2014 (below)

When I did the trek to Gongga Shan (Minya Konka) in about 1996 the starting point was small village outside of Kangding called Yulin. It was just a few farm buildings along a dirt track about 5km out of town, in a narrow valley. I found a friendly local Tibetan called GerLer who was willing to guide me on the four day round trip to the Konka Gompa monastery.

Yulin was a quiet place with just a few Tibetan stone buildings and some strips of arable land next to a river rushing down from the Minya Konka range. There was a hot spring which had a baths built into a small brick building. That was about it. You can read about my adventures here.

I tried to find the village of Yulin again about three years ago but it had been completely overbuilt with what is now the New Town area of Kangding. It had literally been obliterated. In its place was an array of concrete civic buildings such as Law Courts and local administration buildings, in the usual Chinese government megalomaniac style. You can see in the top photo from Google Earth how the development has spread right up the valley, over what used to be rustic farmland and grazing land.

There was also a huge triple block of 12 storey  condominiums. you can see them in the Google Earth pic, but they don't look as tall on that as they are in real life. The Tibetan farmhouses and fields of old Yulin has just been swept away under roads and concrete. I didn't stick around and I didn't take any photos of the New Yulin. It was ugly.

I'll leave you with a picture of Yulin (looking back towards Kangding) from 1996, before the bulldozers moved in:

Cangshan Dali

No updates for a few months, I know. I've been in Heilongjiang - opposite end of the country from Rock's territory. Here's a picture of the horse pool from the mountains above Dali.

Jambeyang and Chanadorje 夏诺多吉 : by Rolleiflex (Kodak Ektachrome)

Not sure if I've posted this before but here it is: a great picture of the two mountains Jambeyang (left) and Chanadorje. Taken in late may on the third day of the kora around the three Yading peaks. It's taken from the 'cliff walk' just before crossing the high shoulder pass and heading up the Yetchesura valley. It is looking back at the way we have just come, on the right you can see the valley leading down from the Yaka pass and Chanadorje.

A treasure trove of reading material on Kham and western China

If you are like me and love reading the accounts of explorers in SW China and Tibet I have a nice little resource for your perusal - a whole load of online books by some of the notable names in this field. I'm talking about the likes of Frank Kingdon Ward, Sven Hedin, Ernest Henry Wilson and Eric Teichman. Scans of these old book have been uploaded by someone in India as part of a much wider website on the Himalayas: pahar.in. They are to be found in the Tibet section in that link. I have spent many weekends browsing second hand bookshops looking for many of these books, and now they are all there for the downloading. It takes all the fun out of it really!
I would recommend the book by Nakamura, which has a brief account of th Kawa karpo kora that he did when it was still an unexplored route in 1996 - and some excellent photos (see above).
Well, to accompany this discovery I will also include a photo taken with my Rolleiflex camera on my most recent trip into Tibet - this picture taken from Aben/Abing village (the north end) overlooking an eastern tributary of the Nujiang. It looks a lot wilder than I remember. Enjoy.

P-40 fighter, Kunming, 1944

I haven't posted in a while because i don;t have much to report. Since my last trip to Yunnan in October I have updated a chapter in my e-book about Joseph Rock's expeditions, which is still in the process of being edited by the guys at Camphor Press.
So in the meantime I will post some beautiful colour pictures of wartime Kunming, taken in 1944 for a US air force guy called H. Allen Larsen. He has published many more in a book called China in the Eyes of the Flying Tigers - I bought it at the Flying Tigers Museum in Kunming.
The photos give an impression of what the city would have been like in Rock's time.

Kunming 1944

Photo by H. Allen Larsen

Kunming 1944

Photo by H. Allen Larsen

Kunming canals, 1944

Interesting to see how the canals  - and the centre of Kunming - have changed so much in the last 80 years!.
Photo by H. Allen Larsen

Kunming street scene, 1944

Photo by H. Allen Larsen

Kunming 1944

Photo by H. Allen Larsen - from the book China in the Eyes of the Flying Tigers

Yunnan, 1944

Photo by H. Allen Larsen

Kunming kid, 1944

Photo by H. Allen Larsen

The Doker La pass - then and now (1924 and 2102)

Here's Joseph Rock's picture taken from the Doker La pass looking down the Tibetan side (ie to the west). The pass marks the border between Yunnan and Tibet, and is part of the famous Kawakarpo Kora that circuits the holy mountain of Kawakarpo (Meili Xueshan). I did the kora in 2012 with my two sons, one of whom can be seen in the picture doing the steep descent.

Then and now: Jambeyang, 1927 and 2012

The back of Jambeyang (South east face) as seen on the big kora round the three peaks of Yading.

Then and now: Choni monastery, Gansu

The old Buddhist monastery at Choni, now known as Zhuoni, in Gansu, where Rock wintered before going on his expedition to Amnye Machen.

Mount Chiburongi, near Gongga Shan

This is what you see on the second day walking up from Kangding en route to Gongga Shan

Bahang, Salween valley: 1926 and 2006

The old French missionary church as Bahang is still there. Now it is run by a local priest and the village is called Baihanluo. The local Nu people still drink corn liquor, as described by Joseph Rock. It is no longer such an isolated outpost. Trekkers pass through the village en route to cross the Sila pass to the Mekong. Other visitors drop in from the Nujiang valley by care. And this year a major road will open up connecting the Mekong and Nujiang valleys - it will travel just below Baihanluo.

Radja monastery then-and-now

Joseph Rock visited Radja monastery (also spelt Ragya) in Qinghai in 1926/7. He only intended to use it as a stepping off point to get to Amnye Machen but the stupid bugger tried to go up the Yellow river canyons instead of the nice easy route round the hills to the south. Easy to say that with hindsight, I suppose. Anyway, Rock floundered around in the Yellow river canyons for a week or so before giving up. The only view he got of Amnye Machen was through a telescope from about 70 miles away. You can see the whole new town of Lajia that has sprung up along the riverbank since his visit.

Radja monastery then-and-now

Here's a nice comparison pic of the monastery at Radja (Lajia in Chinese), Qinghai. It sits on the banks of the Yellow river beneath some crazy red cliffs. In this picture it seems like it hasn't changed much, but actually there is quite a large 'new town' to the left of the picture where in Rock's time there were just a couple of houses. I found it to be a very friendly place, probably on account of they don't get many visitors.