Pu’er

Pu’er, city, southern Yunnan sheng (province), China. It is situated in a small basin among mountains some 5,000 feet (1,500 metres) in elevation, 19 miles (30 km) south of Ning’er (formerly Pu’er), the former centre of the Yunnanese tea trade, and about 355 miles (570 km) southwest of Kunming, the provincial capital.

Simao was already a minor town in the 14th century. It was given administrative status as a subprefecture in the 19th century and became a county town in 1912. It was then an important trading centre on the routes to Burma (Myanmar) and Laos. It was opened as a treaty port for trade with French Indochina (Vietnam) in 1895 and with Burma in 1896 and subsequently had a brief period of modest prosperity. The opening of the railway from Haiphong in French Indochina to Kunming in 1910 took away all its trade except that with Burma, to which it exported lead, tin, tea, and camphor, and its population shrank.

Pu’er was reputed to be one of the most unhealthy places in Yunnan, and its residents suffered in the 1940s from various epidemics and the plague. In 1950 it was largely deserted, and much of the surrounding basin was also abandoned. After 1953, however, when a road from Kunming to southwestern Yunnan replaced the old mule-train track, it again became an important regional commercial centre, distributing goods imported from Kunming and collecting local products, such as tea, camphor, and sisal. It was reestablished as a county in 1981—after having been merged into Pu’er county in 1958—and became a county-level city in 1993. In 2003 the city merged with Simao prefecture to create the prefecture-level city of Simao; in 2007 the city was renamed Pu’er, with the former Pu’er county renamed Ning’er and under its administration.

Pu’er is now an important tea-processing and trading centre in the province. It is also a collecting and distributing hub for local fruits and timber products. Since the 1990s, the city has further developed a good road-transportation system that supports heavy traffic. There are scheduled flights from the city to Kunming and some other cities in the country. Some 55 miles (90 km) southwest of the city, the river port of Lancang, located on the upper Mekong River, is also under the city’s administration; it has been opened to foreign trade since the mid-1990s. Pop. (2004 est.) 200,000.