Kunming: Walking Tour Around Green Lake and University Quarter

Kunming is one of China's most underrated cities. It doesn't announce itself to the world the way Beijing and Shanghai do. Spend your morning with us and discover the Kunming that you would have walked straight past on your own.

• Green Lake (Cuihu) and the old university quarter, on foot and mostly flat • Why Kunming is the most foreign city in China: it built a railway to Vietnam before it built one to Beijing, and had a road to Burma before a proper road to the Chinese heartland • Why the Second World War began in Asia years before it began in Europe • Three of China's leading universities, merged here in wartime exile, producing the country's first two Nobel laureates • An alley that was an emergency exit during air raids and is now an open-air gallery • Stories running from the 13th century to the war years to the city today • We point you to the best bowl of crossing-the-bridge noodles nearby before we say goodbye