Yunnan IV · Lijiang

This is the fourth in a series of posts about our family trip to Yunnan.

As much as I loved Dali, the several dreamlike days we spent on the banks of the Erhai had to come to an end, as it was time to move on to our next destination, Lijiang.

Sitting at 2,400 meters, 400 above Dali, it also has nature to thank for its dramatic backdrop — in this case, a massive mountain called Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, rising nearly 6,000 meters above sea level. Lijiang in photos looks much like Grenoble or Innsbruck — low-lying traditional architecture below towering snow-capped peaks.

The temperature was consistently much colder than Dali, leading us to wear our insulated coats all day.

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The Naxi people are the minority group most prevalent in this area, though they have for centuries traded with other minority groups. The geography is such that the land is quite fertile, with nearly one-fourth of all plant species found in China occurring within this small area. We later realized this through the quality of the food.

The Drive from Dali to Lijiang

Whereas we went from Kunming to Dali via high-speed rail, we drove from Dali to Lijiang. We took the G5611 Dali–Lijiang Expressway, spanning 259 kilometers between the two cities.

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It opened in 2013 and features over 400 bridges totaling nearly 100 kilometers. There are also 10 tunnels totaling nearly 40 kilometers, including one over four-kilometer-long tunnel — the longest in Yunnan at the time of completion.

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There’d be long stretches where we felt as if flying through the air or burrowing through a mountain, with the repetitive tick-tock of lights and tunnel ventilation passing above.

As you can guess, the views were magnificent. As we drove on, we saw the white walls and dramatic roofs of Bai architecture give way to sparse mountains dotted here and there with a pagoda or a mausoleum.

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Sometimes we would see industrial factories strategically placed far away from city centers. But as we got closer to Lijiang, we started to notice that the architecture looked quite different.

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Jinmao Purelax Lijiang

Home in Lijiang was the Jinmao Purelax. It sits in the Gucheng District, north of the Lijiang city center, and combines traditional architecture with a contemporary hotel experience. The rooms, suites, and villas are all organized as if a small town or village. I started to notice this pattern of modern hotel experience housed within traditional architecture after our stay at the Pan Pacific Suzhou.

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Every day we enjoyed the long walk from the hotel entrance to our rooms, or from our rooms to the buffet where we took breakfast. Speaking of the buffet, we registered with the hotel for their New Year’s Eve dinner and were blown away. We kept our expectations low, and we were greeted with all manner of Chinese and Western delicacies — sashimi, hot pot, lobster, steak, plenty of local mushrooms, vegetables, cake, ice cream, etc.. Chinese people take food very seriously, so we shouldn’t have been surprised.

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The resort has a packed daily program of both complimentary and paid activities, including free portraits in costume, crafts experiences for all ages, water activities like kayaking on the central lake or fishing, and our favorite — the animals. Twice a week, some of the animals that lived on site, including alpacas, were brought out into the pasture-like meadow. For a small fee, we could buy carrots to feed them.

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Shuhe Ancient Town

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In the mornings, I snuck away for a light run. One of the days, I went to Shuhe Ancient Town. At just a bit more than a mile away from the hotel, it was close enough for me to explore while running.

I started before sunrise, so the ticket booths weren’t set up yet, and the tourists hadn’t yet filled the roads. It was just me and all of the shopkeepers and business people getting ready for the day.

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My feet felt their way over the stone streets while my ears focused on the faint trickle of the spring running through the center of the town.

The shops and attractions were all closed, with just a few shopkeepers sliding open doors and sweeping their section of path. This let my eyes focus on the architecture with no tourists in the way.

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Instead of the white walls with the dark roofs, I saw dark stone and wood-lined walls with plenty of color applied to the trim. The connection to Tibet was clear at that moment.

Baisha Ancient Town

Lijiang, like the other places we visited, is home to a few old towns. We had a hard time picking, but our guide suggested we check out Baisha Ancient Town. It’s quite an old place, first settled during the Tang Dynasty, but by the Song and Yuan Dynasties it had already established itself as a political and economic center.

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Interestingly, this town is the originator of the only living pictographic writing system in the world, now recognized by UNESCO as a Memory of the World heritage. We saw the emoji-like Dongba symbols on many of Lijiang’s road signs.

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Again, in this town, I got to take in the snow mountain as a backdrop, the Naxi architecture with its wooden siding and dark roofs.

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Local food

I came into this whole trip blind to the food of the region, and this time was no different. I didn’t know what to expect, but came away amazed. Across the old towns, we had street food and quite a few other meals, and the theme there was trade. We could see that they were borrowing ingredients and techniques from all over.

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While I didn’t have enough data points to succinctly state what made Naxi cuisine so unique, I came away feeling I needed to return to let my tastebuds start to map out the international connections that make up the Naxi culinary canon.

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The most memorable experience was on the first day after our first choice far too crowded and wouldn’t accept anyone without a reservation. So we went next door to a place with similarly high reviews.

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Here, the main dish on the menu was herbal free-range chicken hot pot. We came in, and they asked us very simply how many people and how much we wanted to eat — no menu. After that, they went to the back to butcher a chicken to order, while at our table they set up a charcoal stove. They brought us some fresh roasted corn and potatoes while the chicken cooked in a medicinal broth (老火汤). Then they brought on an elaborate spread of vegetables and noodles.

Then finally, when the soup was ready, they brought it out and set it on the charcoal. The most beautiful and delicious hot pot I’d ever had. I’d never seen anything like it. The chicken and all its entrails were included, so it was a little grisly to pick through and find the pieces to eat — it felt much more raw and one with nature. But the flavor of the broth was unlike anything I’d had before or since. It felt medicinal, warm, and comforting, even though the flavors were entirely novel to me.

MeLet Coffee

One of the more surprising discoveries I made in Baisha Ancient Town was MeLet Coffee. The small café only hinted at what lay within, but the moment I saw the word coffee, I had to peek my head in. I was greeted with walls covered in numerous varieties of locally sourced beans, and at the center, a tasting bar where the owner was hand-pouring cups of coffee. The tension between modern third-wave coffee served within a traditional building is what makes it worth visiting.

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I talked to one of the attendants to get a sense of what kinds of coffee and flavors are unique to the area, then put my name in the queue for a tasting.

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As I watched the tourists walk by, I sipped the coffee, noticing the tea-like aromas with the slightly silky mouthfeel. I could taste why Yunnan and its coffee are on the rise. The region has long been praised for its tea, but its coffee beans usually made their way into low-cost instant coffee. It’s only fitting that as other aspects of Yunnan’s cultural exports rise in popularity, its coffee does as well.

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MeLet and its coffee are a destination unto themselves. They offered every level of roast, beans of many different species and varieties, and even some experimental co-ferments. From the outside it may look like an ordinary pour-over café, but the cup I was drinking was nothing like what I was used to at home or anywhere else on my travels.

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Leaving wanting more

Lijiang didn’t leave me with the same strong feeling of wanting to retire there, but it left me as curious as I was after leaving Dali. I felt like I had barely scratched the surface of this immensely wide and deep culture.

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And while the altitude and the weather felt similar to Dali, in most other ways it felt very different. The view out our window, the architecture of the buildings and towns were all slightly different than what we had seen before.

While waking up every day and looking out the window to see snow-capped mountains was a treat in and of itself, there was one more place we had to visit — one of the major destinations for us in Lijiang. Look for that in the next and final issue of this series.

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Thanks to Q for reading drafts of this.