Cuihu Lake Old Town

Cuihu — Jade Lake — is a 250-year-old artificial lake at the centre of Kunming's historic residential quarter, originally constructed during the Qing dynasty as a lotus pond and subsequently expanded as a public park. The lake sits at 1,890 metres above sea level and its mild year-round temperature (Kunming's "Spring City" climate averages 15 degrees Celsius annually) gives it an atmosphere distinct from equivalent parks in China's lower-altitude cities.

The winter seagull colony is Cuihu's most celebrated annual phenomenon. Each November, roughly 20,000 to 40,000 bar-headed gulls and black-headed gulls migrate from Siberia and the Tibetan Plateau to overwinter at the lake. The birds are fed by vendors selling bread and biscuits on the western shore, and the cloud of wheeling gulls against the backdrop of the lakeside trees and pavilions is one of Kunming's characteristic winter images.

The Yunnan Provincial Museum, south of the lake, holds a substantive collection focused on Yunnan's archaeological heritage — particularly the bronze culture of the ancient Dian Kingdom (circa 3rd century BCE through 1st century CE), with a remarkable collection of bronze drum-shaped storage containers decorated with complex figurative scenes of village life, battle, and sacrifice. The museum also covers Yunnan's remarkable ethnic diversity (26 officially recognised minority groups within the province).

The surrounding streets — Cuihu North Road, the Yuantong villa quarter — retain Republican-era residential architecture in a range of styles from French-colonial influence to Chinese-Republican hybrid, reflecting Kunming's position as an important Nationalist-period administrative and military centre.