[5] Wujiaba Airport served as the home of the First American Volunteer Group (AVG) of the Republic of China Air Force, nicknamed the Flying Tigers.

The city's economic importance derives from its geographical position, as it shares a border with various Southeast Asian countries, serving them as a transportation hub in Southwest China, linking by rail to Vietnam and Laos, and by road to Myanmar and Thailand.

Early townships on the southern edge of Lake Dian (outside the contemporary city perimeter) can be dated back to 279 BC, although they have been long lost to history.

During the reign of provincial governor Ajall Shams al-Din Omar, a "Chinese Style" city named Zhongjing was founded where modern Kunming is today.

It is considered by scholars to have been the city of Yachi Fu (鸭池府) where people had used cowries as cash and ate their meat raw, as described by the 13th-century Venetian traveler Marco Polo.

A great part of the city's wealth did not survive the 1856 Panthay Rebellion, when most of the Buddhist sites in the capital were badly damaged, converted to mosques or razed.

[citation needed] The opening of the Kunming area began in earnest with the completion in 1906–1910 of the Kunming-Haiphong Railway to Haiphong in north Vietnam (part of French Indochina).

[29] Although the Empire of Japan was focusing on ending the Chinese war of resistance at the Battle of Chongqing and Chengdu, Kunming was not out of the reach of Japanese air raids, and faced attacks by IJAAF and IJNAF bombers;[30] military assets and infrastructure were under regular attack, while the RoCAF 18th Fighter Squadron and units of the Air Force Academy at Wujiaba were tasked with aerial defense of Kunming.

[31] The city of Kunming was prepared as an alternate National Redoubt in case the temporary capital in Chongqing fell, with an elaborate system of caves to serve as offices, barracks and factories, but it was never utilised.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the start of the Pacific War in December 1941, Kunming acted as an Allied military command center, which grouped the Chinese, American, British and French forces together for operations in Southeast Asia.

The large state-owned Central Machine Works[35] was transferred there from Hunan, while the manufacture of electrical products, copper, cement, steel, paper, and textiles expanded.

After 1949, Kunming developed rapidly into an industrial metropolis with the construction of large iron and steel and chemical complexes, along with Chongqing, Chengdu and Guiyang in the southwest.

[dubious – discuss] In July 2005, the second Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) Summit was held in Kunming, with government leaders from China, Laos, Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam participating.

In addition to physical improvements to enhance Kunming's trade with Southeast Asia, the central and provincial governments have made financial preparations to assist the city's emergence.

[citation needed] In July 2006, talks at the ASEAN Regional Forum, China, Bangladesh and Myanmar (Burma) agreed to construct a highway from Kunming to Chittagong through Mandalay for trade and development.

About 96 km (60 mi) southeast of the city centre is the Stone Forest in Shilin County, a karst formation developed as a tourist attraction consisting of rock caves, arches, and pavilions.

[citation needed] Kunming is a significant horticultural center in China, providing products such as grain, wheat, horsebeans, corn, potato and fruit such as peaches, apples, oranges, grapes and chestnuts.

Until shortly before 2005, this street was full of wind-dried beef and mutton carcasses, pitta bread and raisin sellers, and huge woks of roasting coffee beans being stirred with shovels.

Rising behind a supermarket one block north off Zhengyi Road, Nancheng Qingzhen Si is the city's new mosque, its green dome and chevron-patterned minaret visible from afar and built on the site of an earlier Qing edifice.

In the small grounds of a now vanished Confucian temple off the western end of Changchun Road, there is an avenue of pines, an ancient pond and pavilion, and beds of bamboo, azaleas and potted palms.

Two large Chinese pagodas rise south of Jinbi Road and the city center, each a solid thirteen stories of whitewashed brick crowned with four iron cockerels.

Constructed in 1602 (the 30th year of the Wanli reign period of the Ming dynasty), all of its beams, pillars, arches, doors, windows, tiles, Buddhist statues, and horizontal inscribed boards are made of copper, weighing more than 200 tons.

[52] Haigeng National Training Center is located ten minutes away from Hongta on Dianchi (Lake Dian) near Kunming's award-winning Lakeview Golf Club and new condominium developments.

[53] Major sports facilities include: Kunming has three economic advantages over other cities in southwest China: significant natural resources, a large consumer market and a mild climate.

Due to its position at the center of Yunnan, one of China's largest producers of agricultural products, minerals and hydroelectricity, Kunming is the main commercial hub for most of the province's resources.

Kunming is a center of engineering and the manufacture of machine tools, electrical machinery, equipment and automobiles (including heavy goods vehicles).

Kunming will be the hub and terminus for the "Pan Asia High Speed Network" using high-speed trains to connect China, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.

The 1,800 km (1,100 mi) long Kunming–Bangkok Expressway begins at Kunming going down to Ban Houayxay in Laos; it then crosses the Mekong River to Chiangkhong in Thailand and eventually reaches Bangkok.

Kunming remains a major educational and cultural center in the southwest region of China, with universities, medical and teacher-training colleges, technical schools, and scientific research institutes.

5The claimed province of Taiwan no longer have any internal division announced by Ministry of Civil Affairs of PRC, due to lack of actual jurisdiction.