Mengzi was a small county town in southeastern Yunnan Province, close to the China–Vietnam border.
It had a deep history, with over ten thousand years of human habitation and more than 2,100 years of county history. It was one of Yunnan Province's few ancient counties with a millennium-long history, an important birthplace of Yunnan civilization, and the starting point of its opening to the outside world. China's first privately owned railway, Yunnan's first customs house, first foreign bank, and many other "firsts" had appeared here in succession. It boasted three cultural calling cards: "the century-old Yunnan–Vietnam Railway, a century of port opening and trade, and a century of Crossing-the-Bridge Rice Noodles."
Of course, that was how Mengzi would be introduced later on. At this point in time, there was no such concept as cultural calling cards.
Mengzi's terrain consisted of basins, mountains, and karst formations, so the population naturally concentrated in the more comfortable basins. In the river valleys below 500 meters above sea level, the average annual temperature was 21°C, there were more than 340 days a year with temperatures above 10°C, and there was no frost year-round.
The climate was quite comfortable, though it still got hot when it was supposed to, and the damp cold could be unpleasant when it came. Natural disasters were frequent here as well—frost, late spring cold spells, spring droughts, flooding during the rainy season, scattered summer droughts, low autumn temperatures and overcast rain, as well as hail and strong winds in certain areas. There was scarcely a year without disaster.
As the saying went, nothing came without a price. After enjoying so much ease throughout the year, people had to suffer for a few days. That explanation certainly did not hold up, but there had to be some way of accounting for