Paradise or Parking Lots?

This road, I've been told, leads to paradise. Everyone says my journey to the pristine village of Yubeng in the northwest corner of China's Yunnan province will take my breath away. I'm breathless alright. But for all the wrong reasons. My minivan is careening along a tiny ledge of compressed rubble, gouged out of a steeply pitched ravine, a few hundred meters above a tributary of the Mekong. I'm convinced I'm seconds away from becoming part of one of the small avalanches the van is leaving in its wake.

Will tourism help protect China's natural wonders or destroy...