Lijiang

UNESCO-listed Naxi old town in northwest Yunnan, beneath the snow-capped Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. Cobbled lanes, water canals, the Naxi minority's pictographic Dongba script.

Lijiang is a city in northwest Yunnan at 2,400 metres elevation, with a UNESCO-listed old town (Dayan Ancient Town) that has been a settlement of the Naxi people for around eight centuries. The Naxi (also written Nakhi) are an ethnic minority of around 300,000, indigenous to the northwest Yunnan-southwest Sichuan borderlands, with a distinct language, a unique pictographic writing system (Dongba script), and a social structure historically more matrilineal than the surrounding Tibetan and Han communities.

The old town is the reason people come: a dense quarter of cobblestone alleys, wooden-fronted shops, stone bridges over clear-running canals fed by the Jade Spring, and courtyard houses built in a hybrid Naxi-Han-Tibetan style. The layout follows the streams and lanes rather than a formal grid, which gives it a more organic quality than most Chinese heritage districts. The town was rebuilt substantially after a 1996 earthquake; the reconstruction is reasonably faithful. It is extremely busy during peak season (summer, Chinese national holidays, Spring Festival), when the alley bars and the music performances for tourists overwhelm the residential character. Early mornings and the shoulder seasons (March-April, October-November) are quieter.

The Jade Dragon Snow Mountain (Yulong Xueshan) rises to 5,596 metres directly north of the old town and is visible from most of it — a massive snow-capped ridge that forms the dramatic backdrop. Cable cars access two high areas: the Glacier Park at around 4,500 metres (where a glacier is still accessible but retreating visibly) and the Spruce Meadow at around 3,200 metres. The alpine meadow ecosystem and the mountain scale are both worth the excursion.

Black Dragon Pool (Heilongtan), on the northern edge of the old town, is a formal park with a moon-shaped pool reflecting the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain through an ornamental pavilion — one of the most-photographed compositions in Yunnan, and deservedly so.

Tiger Leaping Gorge, 60 kilometres north, is one of the deepest river gorges in the world: the Jinsha River (upper Yangtze) cuts through a 16-kilometre canyon with walls rising 3,000 metres from water to mountain summit. The two-day hike along the high trail is one of the best day-hiking routes in China, with basic guesthouse accommodation midway. The gorge is also on the road to Shangri-La, which is the next major stop on the northwest Yunnan circuit.