Lijiang Attractions - Old Towns

There are 2 old towns that we visited, one is called Shuhe (束河古镇) and another is Lijiang (丽江古城).

Our motel is inside Shuhe. It is a much quieter town than the other one. At night, there are less activities. The highlight of its activity is the nigh dancing which I’m going to share in next post. I actually prefer this town than Lijiang Old Town, due to its serenity and peace.

Top left – a quiet and peaceful morning, residents taking water from the river (drain?) to use)
Top right – the water is very clear, and you can see right through it to the bottom!
Bottom left – a shop owner making goods from silver with her tools.
Bottom right – the stone road is so smooth, which indicates this section of the road has been a few hundred years old. The longer it is, the smoother it gets.

And picture below is Lijiang Old Town at dusk:


Top left & right – entrance to the old town
Bottom left – this is the famous Bar Street (酒吧街), where you find a lot of bars in traditional format. Some even with local cultural dance, and some with the cross singing!
Bottom right - this is the Square (四方街), which supposedly for people to gather and dance. But no one did that when we were there, not as fun as the Shuhe old town.

We visited the House of Mu (木府) on our last day, which is situated just within Lijiang old town. It is where the local ‘king’ lived in, many years ago. He tried to imitate the Forbidden City (故宫/ 紫禁城), so lots of structures are quite similar to the one in Beijing – looks too familiar to me!


From here, if you walk to the top of the last room, you can view the whole Lijiang old town from here (picture above, at bottom right). Quite a spectacular view.