Matthew Hartzell is from San Francisco in the USA. From childhood he liked geography. From 2009 to 2015, Matthew lived in Kunming, Yunnan. In his spare time, he travelled to almost all the county seats, villages and towns of Yunnan, developing a deep affection for this place in his heart.

“I hiked around Shangri-La, put up a tent to sleep on the mountain as high as 4,200 meters above sea level and enjoyed the charming scenes of glaciers and plateaus full of wild flowers.” One year later, Matthew came to Yunnan again. It was so familiar to him, as he had lived here for nearly six years, and it was already ten years after his first trip to China.

“When I came to China for the first time, I felt everything was fresh and strange.” Matthew still remembers his experience of looking for a youth hostel at Shenzhen. “In an unfamiliar city, I could not read Chinese, nor could I speak Chinese, and I had to look for the bus stations using Chinese characters in a tourist guide. Later, I met with an American who came to Shenzhen on business. He helped me book a room in a commercial hotel, so I could stay for the night.” Nowadays, this is now longer a problem, and Matthew can speak Chinese fluently.

In 2009, Matthew came to China again. After staying in Shanghai for some time, he began to settle down in Yunnan. He stayed for six years.

During these six years, Matthew worked as an English and sociology teacher, as well as a private tour guide. In his spare time, he left Kunming once every three weeks on average, going to tour the county seats and rural areas of Yunnan. He travelled more than 90 times in total, covering 120 county seats in Yunnan. He also visited countless other villages and towns, with a length of travel as much as ten thousand kilometres.

 “I looked for the undeveloped places in Yunnan with an authentic vibe, for out-of-the-way locations with few visitors.” Matthew said. He liked the national minority’s traditional clothes, liked to visit their unique buildings, especially the Dai Nationality’s bamboo towers and the Wa Nationality’s thatched houses.

Yunnan’s unique natural scenery and rich national minority cultures contain great tourism value, Such places include Shangri-La, Dali, Lijiang and other ancient towns. They are very much favoured by visitors from home and abroad. But as an adventurer with an interest in photography and traditional cultures, with a professional background in geography and history, Matthew prefers some “dark horses”. These include the Tibetan village of Dimaluo, Bingzhongluo near the Nujiang River, the Gaoligong Mountains, Mangshi, Lincang, Cangyuan Wa Nationality Autonomous County, Mengding Town in Gengma County, Ruili and Jinghong.

During his time in Yunnan, Matthew walked across most of its cities. “You can say I know the routes of communication and traffic here, and sometime know Yunnan Province better than many Chinese.”