Jinghong and the temple of scorched earth

July 1, Jinghong, Yunnan: China certainly puts on a good face in its closest city to Burma and Laos.Photos

A city of shady palm-lined boulevards, intricately sculpted hedges, beautified buildings and efficient garbage disposal. Basically, it's not China...does this look like China?


All the major branded stores are here, including at least two Converse stores, yet the streets are quiet, peaceful even; salespeople don't even try to sell to you and most shops have no customers at all. It doesn't seem to matter though – unlike some other small cities we've been to I didn't see a single closed-down or vacant shop. It's so laid-back one wonders whether the whole thing might just be a giant set, with the residents paid simply to be there.

There are enough hotels to house various minority groups' entire populations, yet no visible evidence of tourists, probably due to low-season but still, where does the money come from?

Even the white-tile box-buildings are dressed up with fake eaves and fancy gold-painted corners. It actually makes a massive difference, along with the daily heavy rain, which, according to residents, is the reason for the buildings' cleanliness, and the city's in general.

There's none of China's usual hustling and social cannibalism, and strangest of all is the almost-total absence of black Audis.


Jinghong's surrounded by dense primordial rainforest – according to Wiki, the forests of southern Yunnan are special for staying unfrozen through the ice ages. Being in a basin, you can get glimpses of these jungles at the end of Jinghong's mostly-straight roads. So it jarred a bit when we turned a corner and a huge chunk of scorched earth on the mountainside came into view in the distance.


What jarred more was when I got a taxi to the Jinghong Temple, and the driver headed straight for that chunk of scorched earth, which turned out to be a lavish and entirely brand-new high-tech Buddha-worship "supercenter". For a hefty 120RMB entry fee you get to listen to pre-recorded monk chants blaring from loudspeakers, pass by 7-headed, 5-headed- 3-headed and 1-headed concrete dragons guarding the steps to the main temple, and inside you find the Buddha, who is giant indeed, surrounded by several large electric carousel display-units containing hundreds of mini-Buddhas.

The blessed wonders of modern concrete:







Further up the steps, past the "Sri Lanka", "Myanmar", "Laos" and "Thailand" mini-temples, which contain, as yet, no Buddhas, you reach a construction fence, behind which labourers toil on the next addition to the facility, which, I can verify, will have an excellent reinforced concrete skeleton.