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A recurrent critical argument in urban studies holds that theories about relationships between cities and globalisation need to account for a broader diversity of urban experiences and contexts. Scholarship needs to move beyond the narrow focus on a limited number of prototypical cities exerting high degrees of command and control in the global system through networks of specific corporations and sectors, and account for the diverse, inventive ways of being urban. This article contributes to the agendas of ordinary city and comparative urbanism by applying this epistemology to analyses of the recent urban development and urban strategies in Ruili, Yunnan, a small border city at China’s south-west frontier. It argues that, although not qualified as a global or world city, Ruili is a hub of busy connections and flows, drawing opportunities from a vast territorial frame and navigating multiple layers of social, economic, cultural and institutional embeddedness. Engaging with scale thinking to operationalise theoretical ideas in the ordinary city treatise, this study pays specific attention to two scenarios in the recent urbanisation of Ruili: (1) cross-border trade and the blueprint of local industrial upgrading; and (2) the rapid expansion of the jadeite and red timber economy.

Recent theoretical advancement in human geography has reconceptualised the border as a process and becoming, which is appropriated and constructed by myriad actors to yield diverse and changing meanings, and accommodate various needs and interests. This enables us to appreciate the dual qualities of the border, both as a barrier to be overcome and an enabling factor for practices and meanings. In particular, cross-border mobility plays an essential role in mediating meanings of the border and identities of those whose lifeworlds are affected by the very existence of the border. On the one hand, mobilities transgress territorial orders imposed by official conceptions of the border. But, on the other hand, the distinctions between economic, social and political milieus at the two sides of the border may give rise to heightened senses of difference and lead to diverging identities. Building on these insights, this article argues for a more nuanced, dynamic understanding of the relationship between border crossing and belonging. It examines two empirical cases: the cross-border attendance of Huashan Festival celebration for Miao people at the Sino-Vietnamese borderland, and the trans-border mobility of Buddhist monks from the Myanmar city Muse to the Chinese border city Ruili. Overall, this paper argues that the potentials of the border to both connect and differentiate are inscribed in the lifeworlds in the borderlands in equally visible ways. Also, this paper adds some twists to Scott's thesis on Zomia, and argues that we must not downplay the importance of the frame of nation-states in shaping the lifeworlds of border inhabitants.