I’ve been taking a class over the last few months and have been reading a lot about the relationship between Muslim and Han Yunnanese. I have been considering the Shan identity and international migration between Western Burma and China. Meanwhile there are other groups such as the Northern Tai (Thai) in Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai along the Ping River in Northern Thailand. These people have a historical relationship with Luang Prabang and Sipsongpanna in China as well.
While Kunming, the center of the Ynnan’s administration is important, this doesn’t really consider the other regions in the province. Essentially there are four areas of importance: Dali, Tengchong, Sipsongpanna, and Batang. These areas are inherently Yunnanese by virtue of their imperial, nationalist or communist identities but they all have specific ethnic qualities that make them either Han, Muslim, Thai or Tibetan. Finally, the Yun-Gui plateau, which Yunnan shares with Guizhou, has many similar relationships with the Vietnamese and Zhang people.
This is series is a retrospective of my life taken from emails that I sent or received on the First of the Month.
