Traditions of Lijiang
A canal-threaded old town of the Naxi people, with a script of pictograms and a famed orchestra of ancient music.
Lijiang lies on a high plateau in Yunnan below the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. The Naxi people built the old town with canals, stone bridges and courtyard houses. They keep a pictographic script, the Dongba, which is the only living one in the world, and they play a form of ancient music that is performed with court instruments.
Naxi life
Dongba priests write and read ritual texts in pictographs, and their ceremonies mark births, deaths and festivals. The Naxi Ancient Music orchestra plays on old instruments in the style of the Tang and Song dynasties. In July the Torch Festival is held, with bonfires and dances, and in the spring the Three Fold Festival honours the town's protective spirit.
At the table
Naxi cooking includes baba, a round flatbread filled with sweet or savoury paste, and Lijiang ribs cooked in a clay pot. Yak butter tea is drunk in the mountains and cheese is made in the pastures. Tea from the nearby Pu'er region is traded here, along the old tea horse road.
Signature traditions of Lijiang
Also part of it, and being written: Naxi people (The ethnic group of Lijiang.), Dongba symbols (The pictographic script.), Tea Horse Road (The old trade route.).
A trail idea for Lijiang
- Dayan Old Town Wander the lanes before the crowds arrive.
- Black Dragon Pool A lake with a mountain view.
- Baisha village See old murals and meet traditional healers.
Written by the EveryParampara desk with AI assistance. Opening hours, markets and festival dates change; check locally before travelling. Customs differ from place to place and family to family. If this is your tradition and we have it wrong, tell us.
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Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Torch Festival: Zhangmoon618, CC BY-SA 3.0, source