Yunnan Region Guide

Yunnan is the most ethnically and biologically diverse province in China, and it looks and feels less like the rest of the country than anywhere except Tibet.

Twenty-five recognised minority peoples live here, and in the south and west they are the majority. The Hani rice terraces at Yuanyang climb 1,500 metres up the hillsides in tiers that have been worked for over a thousand years and flood to a mirror in winter — one of the most photographed agricultural landscapes on earth.

Lijiang’s old town, with its canals and Naxi architecture, and Dali beside its lake under the Cangshan range are the established stops, both UNESCO-listed or close to it.

North, the land climbs to the Tibetan borderlands and Tiger Leaping Gorge, where the Yangtze runs through a defile three thousand metres deep.

And the climate is why Kunming is called the spring city.

The terraces

Yuanyang, in the south-east: over a thousand square kilometres of Hani terraces cut into slopes at gradients that should not be farmable, fed by a forest-and-channel water system a thousand years old. Stay in a village, and be at Duoyishu for sunrise between November and March when the paddies are flooded.

The northwest circuit

Dali beside Erhai lake under the Cangshan range, with Bai villages around the shore; Shaxi, a surviving horse-caravan town on the old tea road, which is what Lijiang was thirty years ago; Lijiang’s canals and Naxi old town; and Shangri-La with its Tibetan monastery at Songzanlin.

Tiger Leaping Gorge

A two-day walk on the high trail above the Yangtze where it cuts between two 5,000-metre massifs — among the best treks in China, with village guesthouses along the way.

The tropical south

Xishuangbanna, bordering Laos and Myanmar: Dai villages, Theravada temples, rainforest and tea mountains.

Kunming and around

The Stone Forest’s karst pinnacles, Dian lake, and the city itself, which is pleasant and unhurried.

Yunnan’s defining fact is diversity, and it is not a marketing claim.

Twenty-five peoples

China recognises fifty-six ethnic groups and twenty-five of them live in Yunnan, fifteen of them found nowhere else. Around a third of the province’s population is non-Han. The Bai around Dali, the Naxi at Lijiang, the Yi across the east, the Hani in the terraces, the Dai in the tropical south and Tibetans in the north-west are the largest, each with their own language, dress, architecture and religion.

Dongba

The Naxi kept a pictographic script — the only one still in use anywhere in the world — used by dongba priests to record ritual texts. It is genuinely pictorial rather than alphabetic, and a few dozen practitioners can still read it.

Matriarchal Mosuo

Around Lugu lake, the Mosuo practise a system in which property and family name descend through the mother, children are raised by their mother’s household, and partnerships are conducted through night visits rather than cohabitation. It has drawn a great deal of outside attention, much of it clumsy.

The tea road

Caravans carried tea north to Tibet for a thousand years, and the towns along the route were built by it.

Lijiang and Dali are heavily commercialised. Lijiang’s old town has largely been turned over to shops and bars and much of the Naxi population has moved out, which is a genuine loss and a cautionary example. Staying in Shaxi, Nuodeng or one of the smaller Bai and Naxi villages gives a far better sense of the place and puts money where it does more good.

Ethnic tourism here includes a good deal of staged performance. Community-run homestays in the Yuanyang terraces and the Xishuangbanna villages are a different proposition; ask before photographing people in dress, and understand that some costume you see is worn for visitors.

The terraces are a working farming system, not a viewpoint. Stay on the paths between paddies, and go with a local guide who knows which are private.

Elephants in Xishuangbanna: avoid riding and performance camps entirely.

Trekking Tiger Leaping Gorge: use the guesthouses on the high trail, which are village-run.

March to May and September to November are the best months across most of the province: mild, dry and clear, with rhododendron and azalea flowering in spring in the mountains.

November to March is when the Yuanyang terraces are flooded and reflecting the sky, which is what they are famous for — they are green in summer and gold at harvest, but the mirror is a winter thing, and the low winter sun is what makes it.

June to September is the wet season, with heavy afternoon rain, landslides on mountain roads, and the terraces at their greenest. The north is cool and pleasant; Xishuangbanna in the south is hot and humid.

December to February is cold in the north — Shangri-La sits above 3,200 metres and freezes — and mild in Kunming, which stays around 15°C.

Water Splashing Festival in mid-April is the Dai new year and the province’s biggest celebration.

What a day costs, by how you travel

Relative cost across the region

Yunnan is one of the cheaper Chinese provinces to travel in, and the village guesthouse network in the north is excellent value.