Old Town of Lijiang

Start with your feet. The stones under you are smooth and slightly uneven, and polished to a soft shine by centuries of footsteps and hooves. Now listen. Somewhere close by, water is running. It moves fast and clear in a narrow stone channel at the edge of the lane. In Lijiang's Old Town, that sound follows you almost everywhere. It is the first thing many visitors remember, long after the photographs fade.

You are standing in Dayan, the historic heart of Lijiang. It sits on a high plateau in the north of Yunnan Province, in southwest China. The town grew over many centuries as a trading post and a seat of local power. In 1997, UNESCO added it to the World Heritage List. The listing praised the old town for keeping its traditional layout, its wooden houses and its working water system. For once, the label describes something you can still see and hear today.

This is, above all, a Naxi town. The Naxi are an ethnic minority of this region, with their own language, their own religion and their own traditions. Their ancestors shaped these streets. Look at the signs above the shop doors. Beside the Chinese characters, you will often see small drawings — a bird, a human figure, a sun, a mountain. These are Dongba script. It is a pictographic writing system, one of the very few still known in the world today.

Dongba is named after the Naxi priests who used it for ritual texts. These priests wrote down prayers, myths and ceremonies with pictures that stand for words and ideas. For a long time, only trained priests could read them fully. Today, the symbols appear on souvenirs, wooden plaques and painted walls across the old town. Some are decorative, but they come from a real and living tradition. Scholars around the world still study the old manuscripts.

Now, back to the water. Most of it comes from springs north of town, around a pool called Black Dragon Pool. From there, a river divides into smaller and smaller channels. These channels run beside the lanes, under the houses and below many little stone bridges. The town was built around the water, not the other way around. This is why the streets curve and wander. They follow the slope of the land and the path of the streams.

Here is a detail that many visitors walk straight past. In a few places, you will find a group of three connected stone pools, stepping down one below the other. Locals call them three-eye wells. Spring water fills the highest pool first. By local custom, that top pool is for drinking water. The middle pool is for washing vegetables. The lowest pool is for laundry. It is a simple and clever system. It also shows how carefully people here shared one precious resource.

You may notice something else that is missing. Unlike many old Chinese towns, Lijiang has no city wall. According to one popular local tale, the reason is a family name. For centuries, the Mu family ruled this region as hereditary chieftains under the imperial court. The Chinese character for Mu is a simple square-like shape. If you draw a box around it, the result is the character for trapped, or confined. So, the story goes, the Mu family refused to build a wall. It is a legend, but it is a good one.

The Mu family did leave a real mark on the town. Their former residence, known as the Mu Mansion, stands in the southwest of the old town. It is a large complex of halls, gates and courtyards. It was heavily damaged and later rebuilt, so much of what you see today is a reconstruction. Even so, it gives a clear sense of the power this family once held. Their rule here lasted for hundreds of years.

Near the centre, the lanes open into a wide paved space called Square Market, or Sifang Street. For centuries, this was the commercial heart of Lijiang. Traders came from Tibet, from central Yunnan and from much farther away. Lijiang was an important stop on the Ancient Tea Horse Road. That was a network of mountain caravan routes that carried tea, salt, horses and cloth. Imagine mule bells, loud bargaining and the smell of pressed tea bricks in this square.

Now look at the buildings around you. Most houses are built of timber, with walls of brick or earth, and dark grey tiled roofs. The roof edges curve gently upward at the corners. Many houses face onto a small inner courtyard, often with flowers, a carved wooden screen and a table for tea. This flexible timber frame matters. In 1996, a strong earthquake struck the Lijiang area. Many modern concrete buildings failed, but many traditional wooden houses survived it far better.

No honest guide can ignore the change that tourism has brought. Since the World Heritage listing, the number of visitors has grown enormously. Many old family homes are now guesthouses, bars, cafes and souvenir shops. In the evenings, music from the bars fills some lanes along the main canal. Many Naxi families have moved to newer parts of the city. This is a real debate here. How does a living town survive when so many people come to see it?

The quieter Lijiang is still here, if you look for it. Walk away from the main streets early in the morning. You may see older Naxi women in blue clothes, some wearing a traditional sheepskin cape on their backs. By tradition, round embroidered discs on the cape represent the stars. You may smell woodsmoke and fried baba, a local flatbread. And on a clear day, the white peaks of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain rise above the rooftops to the north.

Before you move on, pause for a moment beside the nearest channel. Look down into the water. It is clear enough to see the stones and green weeds at the bottom. It has been running through these lanes for longer than anyone here can remember. Feel the cobbles under your feet once more. As you walk away, listen for the water. It will stay with you, around every corner of the old town.