Naxi culture under Jade Dragon Snow Mountain — cobblestone canals and dongba script
Lijiang Old Town (Dayan) is a UNESCO World Heritage Site at 2,400m altitude in northwest Yunnan, built by the Naxi people and threaded by canals fed by Jade Dragon Snow Mountain (5,596m). Willow trees trail over stone bridges, traditional Naxi architecture lines the lanes, and the dongba pictographic script — still used by Naxi shamans — is among the world's last living pictographic writing systems. Lijiang is a gateway to Tiger Leaping Gorge, one of the world's deepest gorges.
Lijiang has been inhabited by the Naxi people for over 800 years and was the political centre of the Mu family, a powerful hereditary chieftain dynasty that controlled much of northwest Yunnan during the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644). The old town was devastated by a 7.0 earthquake in 1996 but rapidly rebuilt; UNESCO inscribed it the same year. The Naxi maintain one of China's most distinctive minority cultures: their dongba religion blends elements of Tibetan Buddhism, Taoism, and animism, documented in over 30,000 handwritten manuscripts in the pictographic script.