About a week before the Mid-Autumn Festival, twenty high school students from Shanghai arrived in Jinghong, the capital of Pu’er tea country, to explore the backroads and hills of Xishuangbanna and to learn more about the culture of the different ethnic minorities that live in this corner of Yunnan, just a hop, skip, and a jump from the Myanmar border. 

Concordia International School of Shanghai and The Hutong have partnered for the third year in a row on this 250km bike ride. The Yunnan Bike Journey gives students the opportunity to experience a different side of Yunnan, to get to know the local villagers of the Dai, Bulang, and Aini communities and to be welcomed into their homes.

The twenty students split up in five groups of four students each and went in and around the villages along the way to meet with the locals, to pose questions to them engaging in more in-depth conversations. We’ve collected some of their stories as a part of our Hutong Heritage Helpers initiative (which you can learn more about here).