Wenmingjie Quarter

Wenmingjie with the neighbouring lanes of Qianwangjie and Yongdaojie is the last surviving piece of old Kunming. The two-storey wooden shops with galleries and tiled roofs were built at the end of the Qing era and in the republican years, when trade with Burma and Indochina passed through the city. Beside them stands the stone building of the former Yunnan Young Men's Christian Association, a rare example in the city of European architecture of the 1920s. The quarter has been restored and given over to cafes and shops, but the plan of its narrow streets and its wooden facades have stayed as they were. Above the roofs rise the towers of the new business centre, and that contrast has become the chief mark of the place.

On the map