Lijiang aka: 丽江

Nice for a day or two. Good outdoorsy day trips all around. Only two hours to Tiger Leaping Gorge.

Summer 2006, I was part of a fabulous trip to this little corner of the world, and let me tell you, it is beautiful! We stayed at a great little hotel in Old Town and spent the two weeks wandering around this wondrous city. To give you a Western parallel, the city reminded me greatly of Venice, Italy.. it has all the beauty, energy, and history you could ever want. A place definately worth visiting!

i went there twice.

it’s a very nice place,love the long,narrow ancient roads.i do love walking through these old streets in the early morning!the feeling is great!

but,the tourist become more and more….:(

Very enjoyable – a good mixture of the old and the new. When I went last, my mother and I saw a concert performed by 20 orso old men, all playing instruments I’d never heard of. The fascinating thing was that those men were probably the last people to be able to play those instruments, as they were teaching no new musicians how to. It was remarkable – the sounds I heard were that of nothing familiar to me at all. Don’t miss Lijiang (and Dali!).

Oh yes, of course, there’s also the “world’s largest key” and the museum of “rocks that look like meat” .. tourist-y enough, eh?

when i went, the old town was pretty saturated with chinese (and a few western) tourists buying random crap from the souvenir stalls that have taken over the downtown. the “old town” now more resembles a shopping mall (set inside beautiful chinese architecture), though there are some out-of-the-way residential areas left for wandering around. but i guess western breakfast at the cafes is a bonus.

but definitely try heading north towards the jade dragon snow mountain, to check out the relatively undeveloped villages up there: yuhu, baisha, etc. here’s a picture taken in yuhu.