Mengzi

Mengzi is a county-level city in the southeast of Yunnan Province, China, and the capital of the Honghe Hani and Yi Autonomous Prefecture. It lies about 243 kilometres southeast of Kunming and 400 kilometres northwest of Hanoi, in a fertile valley basin of the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau at about 1,310 metres above sea level. The Wikipedia article gives about 590,300 inhabitants at the 2021 census. Mengzi was a county until October 2010, when it became a city, and the county itself dates to 1276 under the Yuan dynasty. After the war between France and Qing China, the treaties of 1886 made it a trade port for goods moving through Tonkin, and the Imperial Maritime Customs Service opened an office there in 1899; tin and opium were the main exports. The French railway from Haiphong to Kunming, built in 1906 to 1910, bypassed the town and its importance declined. During the Second Sino-Japanese War the School of Arts and Law of the Southwest Associated Universities was briefly located here. The prefectural government moved to Mengzi from Gejiu in 2003. The region is known for the dish guoqiao mixian, the Over the Bridge Rice Noodle, and for South Lake, the old customs quarter and Bisezhai railway station. Bones of the Red Deer Cave people were reported from nearby Maludong in 2012.