Travels in Kenming, China

At our August meeting, CDHS member Gregg Millett and his granddaughter Krystal Garrison presented us with a slide show of their recent trip to a Chinese city, Kunming, and let us participate in their overwhelming experience. They were assisted by Bingru Xie, who is a native of Kunming and presently a Ph.D. student at the University at Albany. She helped with authentic comments and answers to questions.

This is what Gregg told us about the background of the exciting trip:

In 1944/45 Gregg’s father, Lt.Col. Clinton Millett, MD, relocated an U.S. Army hospital via the Burma Road to Kunming, China, to serve U.S. air-crews who had flown combat missions against the Japanese, been imprisoned in China, and then released when the war ended. Kunming is located in Yunnan province in Southwest China, east of Burma (now Myanmar) and north of Vietnam. Gregg’s father was an avid photographer and took many Kodachrome color slides on the journey and after the hospital was in operation. These Kodachromes were well kept by his son as memorabilia together with all the letters his father had written from all the places he moved through and from Kunming.

By a serendipitous chance, Chinese people from Kunming learned about this collection and showed a keen interest. Influential people from Kunming took this opportunity to secure these pictures and to plan an exhibition. This perfectly fitted their project to revive the history of Kunming, a mile-high “city of eternal spring,” home of the country’s largest fresh-flower market, which is now a city of more than 3 million people and has discovered tourism as an economic asset. Negotiations took place with the result that Gregg Millett and his granddaughter were invited to Kunming to help putting together the exhibition of the 130 Kodachrome photographs which had been selected, in the Provincial Museum. Even their wish came true to stay with a Chinese family. Krystal is a photographer herself and took about 800 shots during their two-week stay.

When they arrived at Kunming after a long journey from NY-Kennedy via Vancouver and Hong Kong, they expected nobody would notice their arrival but they were surprised by four TV-crews and numerous journalists. In the following few days the Chinese team which prepared the exhibition did an amazing job (the slides had to be enlarged, printed, and mounted to the walls of the exhibition). The exhibition, which was a private enterprise, was visited by 300,000(!) people in the first two weeks. The Chinese government officials first had a hands-off attitude, but caught on when 12,000 people showed up on opening day.

The group of Kunming citizens which drove and organized the exhibition – the admission to which was free – included the president of the local bank (who himself designed the building, a skyscraper), the CEO of the tin company which employs 110,000 people, and an artist with amazing ideas and creativity who reminded Greg a bit of the Catalonian architect Antoni Gaudi. The two-week stay was filled with invitations and interviews, leaving a little time for sight-seeing and excursions.

The main attractions of the presentation were, of course, the slides – of his father’s Kodachromes and of Krystal’s digital images – providing an impression of how Kunming has changed between 1945 and 2004. The saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” is a good excuse not to even try to describe the many slides which were presented. Fortunately, many of them can be viewed on Gregg’s web-site: www.GreggMillett.com. They documented not only the tremendous changes which took place in Kunming – as in many other big Chinese cities – during the past half century, particularly in the most recent decade, but also some facts which might be quite surprising. For instance, that there are 26 ethnic subgroups living in Kunming and its suburbs, some of them having their own villages and keeping up their traditions and dress.

While religions do not play a large role in China today, Buddhism is a revered part of the nation’s cultural history, and Buddhist temples are also active again and Buddha statues destroyed in the wars are being restored in their full splendor.

A part of old Kunming is presently being rebuild and Col. Millett’s Kodachromes play an important role in this project. The opening is scheduled for next year and Gregg has been invited to participate in this celebration; he will return to Kunming in November and again next May.

At the end of the very impressive event, in good Chinese tradition, everybody in the audience received a little gift – a note card displaying a pair of pictures showing life in Kunming 1945 in 2004. He displayed a set of these attractive note cards displaying ten such pairs of then-and-now photos. These sets may be viewed on Gregg’s website and ordered, at $12 per set, from Gregg Millett, 738 Bobby Court, Niskayuna, NY 12309.