About Lijiang

Lijiang is situated in the northwest of Yunnan, it covers an area of 20 thousand square km. Its capital is Lijiang City, around 500 km from Kunming by land. Lijiang is a mountainous prefecture, more than 95% percent of its territory consists of mountains, only less than 5% is basins surrounded by mountains. Average altitude of Lijiang is 2400 meters, because of its height, ultraviolet rays in sunshine is quite strong. Jade Dragon Mountain and Lao Jun Shan Mountain are two major cordilleras of Lijiang, the highest point of Lijiang is the top of the highest peak of Jade Dragon Mountain, where elevation measures 5596 meters and snow remains through years. Jinsha River, which is the upriver Yangtze, and Langcang River, which is the upriver Mekong, are two major rivers that flow across Lijiang.

Lijiang is Naxi Nationality’s Autonomous Prefecture, population of whole prefecture is approximately 1 million, besides Han people and major ethnic group as Naxi, Bai, Pumi, Yi, Lishu, Tibetan and Miao nationalities also live in some areas of Lijiang, local ethnic population hits over 60% of total. Lijiang is a multi-nationality prefecture, which is featured with colorful and exotic ethnic traditions and customs.

Because of low-latitude location, Lijinag is under South-Asia Monsoon Climate and has distinct rainy season and dry season, November to April of next year is pretty dry and other months are quite wet, annual rainfall is around 1000 millimeters and average temperature is 12.6 degrees.

Due to complicated physiognomies, climate types in river valleys, in basins and on the mountains are different, this made Lijiang a perfect habitat of assorted plants, statistics shows that there are more than 3000 spermatophytes, more than 400 kinds of timber trees, and more than 600 sorts of medicinal plants growing in Lijiang, besides, Lijiang is also reputed as the Center of Azalea in the World, 57 wild species have been found to grow in the nature of locality. Rich floral resource of Lijiang is catching eyes of botanists from all over the world.

Besides bestowal from nature, the culture of Lijiang is same important attraction. Local Naxi people are still playing the music left from Tang Dynasty of 1100 years ago, it’s regarded as the Living Fossil of Chinese Classical Music, they also created their own written language in the ancient time, Dong Ba Language, which is a kind of ideograph and still being used, besides, in ancient Lijiang Town, in countless ancient buildings left from Qing Dynasty even Song Dynasty, regardless of the influence of modern tourism, local people are still performing their traditional way of living, peacefully and leisurely. For profound culture created by Naxi people, for their well maintained Ancient Lijiang Town, for their love for life and their wits to create it, UNESCO granted Lijiang as World Culture Heritage City in 1997.