Not all roads to China from the West go through Beijing or Shanghai. Kunming, the capital city of Yunnan Province, is one of a growing number of so-called third-tier cities attracting people from all over the globe.

"It seems like every year the foreign population is growing exponentially," says Kris Ariel, an American and one of the owners of Salvador's Café. "It went from a handful of foreigners five years ago to now you see them everywhere."

Each person has his/her own reasons for coming to Kunming, but most agree on some combination of agreeable weather, a laid-back pace of life, a low cost of living and great opportunities for travel.

Adi Sorek, from Jerusalem, first went to Beijing to study Chinese, but after two weeks she found that she was cutting into her savings faster than she could afford.

"A friend in Kunming urged me to come down and try it," she says. "I like the weather here, the pace of life is nice and my money will last me longer."

Kunming earns its nickname, "the Spring City," from its temperate climate. Although the rainy season often means showers for a week straight, residents here don't have to sweat through the humid summers and bitter winters that plague China's coastal cities. Yunnan Province also has great places to visit-Dali, Lijiang and Zhongdian (now called Shangri-La) lying to the north, and Xishuangbanna to the south; and the province has many lesser-known destinations worth visiting. Also, proximity to China's southwestern borders makes it easy for those who live here to explore Laos, Viet Nam and Thailand.

The foreign resident profile in Kunming looks very different from that of big coastal cities. You won't meet executives from multinational corporations here, and you'll find few people on expatriate stints with foreign companies. What you'll find instead is a large population of students, and some workers with environmental and health NGOs, with a few artists and entrepreneurs sprinkled in.

Students dominate the expatriate population. Some come on exchange programs-the United States' Duke University (Durham, North Carolina) and Washington University (St. Louis, Missouri) and the New School University (New York City) all brought programs to Yunnan University for the first time in the past year. But many people arrive as individuals and study either at one of the city's many colleges and universities or at the handful of privately run language institutes.

The Kunming College of Eastern Language and Culture (KCELC), housed on the sixth floor of a hotel building, opened less than four years ago. Growth has come quickly: It currently enrolls 200 students, and earlier in 2007 it had 300.

According to one veteran teacher, it's not just the number of students that's growing, but also the variety of countries they come from.

"My students used to be almost all Korean and Japanese," says Zuo Tingting, who teaches Mandarin at KCELC and Yunnan University. "Three years ago I had only two students from Spain. But every year, there are more and more students from Europe and America. Now most of my students are European. I think they come because of the good weather and the cheaper cost of living than in Shanghai and Beijing."

Zuo says her students won't likely stay in Kunming long, though. "Many of them have plans to head to Beijing or Shanghai and look for work after they have studied for a while."

While Kunming's chilled-out vibes is palpable and its foreign population is somewhat transient, it's also home to some industrious foreign entrepreneurs who are relatively settled in the city. But they're not typically exporters or manufacturers; instead, they run businesses that cater to the local community, both native and foreign. Salvador's Café was started by three Americans three years ago; in the same year, the British-run pub, Chapter One, opened down the street. Shortly after they opened, the website GoKunming.com was launched as a resource for local information, news and community discussion. The two-and-a-half-year-old site gets 40,000 hits a month and, at press time, had 765 registered users.

The expansion of its foreign population will likely continue, but Kunming is far from being a truly global city. But most of the foreigners here seem to like it that way. They enjoy the tight-knit community, the relative lack of bustle and the opportunity to explore China from a different vantage point.