Yunnan Trio - Kunming 昆明, Dali 大理 And Lijiang 麗江
Posted On Sunday, April 8, 2007 at at 3:05 AM by Alvin
After the interesting bus journey from He Kou (河口) near the Vietnam-China boarder, we spent a few interesting days in Kunming (昆明), the capital city of the Yunnan province. We visited the famous 金馬碧雞坊 and 圓通寺. We also enjoyed greatly the peaceful and relatively quiet roads in the city; because all motorbikes in Kunming were electric !Journeying on from Kunming and reached relaxing Dali (大理). Dali used to be a powerful City State in ancient times and had a number of important Buddhist temples. We took a cable car up to the 點蒼山 national park for a 5 hours hike and just generally loved this manageable town with its easy-going pace and vibes.
Lijiang (麗江) was full of interesting alley ways and canals but packed up to its armpits (maybe even up to its eyebrows I think) with tourists; luckily we managed to find peace and quiet when we ventured out of Lijiang (where lazy tourists were few and far between) to the Jade Dragon Mountain (玉龍雪山) Range and The First Yangtze River Turn (長江第一彎) at the quiet village of Shigu (石鼓).
The First Yangtze River Turn deserves a special place in Chinese geography as this is where the mighty Yangtze River makes a 180 degrees turn from South- to North- bound ! The huge geographical and economical impact is that this first (of many thereafter) turns of The Yangtze eventually gives rise to the many great Chinese cities and civilisations along the East-bound Yangtze corridor of Chongqing, Wuhan, Nanjing, Shanghai !
