Kunming: lakes and eternal spring

At nearly two thousand meters' elevation in Yunnan, Kunming has earned the nickname "City of Eternal Spring" for centuries thanks to its mild year-round climate, rare for a city of its size.

The center and main lake are easily reached by metro.

Green Lake Park, in the heart of the city, hosts every winter thousands of migratory seagulls from Siberia that local citizens feed by hand along the shores, in a tradition that has lasted for decades.

The Yuantong Temple, the most important Buddhist sanctuary in the city, surrounds a central pond with a pavilion reachable only by swimming or by boat, a rarity among Chinese temples.

The Provincial Museum of Yunnan collects bronze remains from the kingdom of Dian, a pre-Han civilization that developed in this very area and was rediscovered only starting in the 1950s.

Just outside the city, the Stone Forest of Shilin, a UNESCO World Heritage site, gathers limestone formations up to thirty meters tall modeled by millions of years of karst erosion, close enough for a half-day trip.

The pavilion reachable only by boat at Yuantong Temple and the stone spires of Shilin share the same limestone geological origin, just a few dozen kilometers apart.

The seagulls of Green Lake, arriving from Siberia each winter, seem to have understood first what the city's name has promised for centuries.