Official inefficiency turns tourist site into lost paradise

My recent trip to Kunming in Southwest China's Yunnan province was quite disappointing: the food was exotic and delicious, and the climate pleasant, but I did not enjoy them. The greedy local tourism industry and the failure to treat the polluted Dianchi Lake, China's sixth-largest freshwater lake, have eroded my interest in this famous tourist destination.

Thanks to its beyond-description natural beauty and round-the-year mild weather, Kunming is known as "the city of spring". Although my journalist career has taken me to many places around the country, I had never set foot on this wonderland. Yet after joining a one-day organized tour to the famous scenic spot Stone Forest and taking a self-service trip to the Dianchi Lake the following day, I felt like going straight back home. As they say, the more one expects, the more one could be disappointed.

We found the only way to the Stone Forest was to join a one-day trip, because there is no convenient public transport to cover the distance of about 80 kilometers. Advertisement leaflets at the hotel lobby indicated such a trip could be unreasonably cheap. So we booked one such that cost only 100 yuan ($16.1) per person and set out at 8 am the next day.