Bob Bergin, who often writes about the Flying Tigers past and present, spent some time in Kunming recently. Here's his photo of the AVG's "Hostel Number One," which from December 1941 to June 1942 housed Chennault's headquarters group and one of the combat squadrons. (Another squadron was stationed at Rangoon, Magwe, or Loiwing, and the third lived a compound near the Kunming airport.) Sadly, the dragon-tail roof line of the original hostel has disappeared, and in its place there are third-story windows. I believe that when I visited Kunming in 1986, the hostel had become an apartment house; today, Bob reports, it serves as corporate offices, having been narrowly rescued from demoliton:
"The city has really grown around it. A few years ago, the Chinese industrial firm that bought the land, started to demoolish it. A protest led by Madame Gao Li Liang, daughter of Gao Chi Hang - the first Chinese pilot to shoot down a Japanese bomber in 1937. Demolition was stopped, and the building was given protected status by the city of Kunming. The building was then spruced up and is now used as offices by the firm. In time, when the buildings around it are torrn down, Hostel One will be restored to what it looked like when Chennault used it."
These photos are displayed on the building's front door. At left is Hostel Number One in the days of the AVG. (It was originally a university building, taken over by the Nationalist government to house the American combat unit.) At right is the former hostel after it was rebuilt following the Communist victory in 1949--very like its present status, but without the newer buildings that now press close to it.
And here's a model of the hostel as it is planned to look, the surrounding buildings torn down, a park-like setting replacing them, but alas no change to the roof line.
And here is the building identified as Chennault's residence, in what in the 1930s was the French quarter of Kunming. (The French had a strong presence in Kunming, as the terminus of the railroad up from Hanoi.) This is to become a museum housing some of Chennault's personal effects and Flying Tigers memorabilia--"Flying Tigers" being broadly defined in China as anything to do with the American aviation effort during the Pacific War.
