Hello, my fellow friends,
Welcome to Lijiang--- this beautiful place. It’s my great honor to be your guide. Today I will take you to the ancient town of Lijiang.
A Brief Introduction to Lijiang
We will get there in a few minutes. So now I will give you a brief introduction to Lijiang. It is located in Lijing Prefecture in the Northwest of Yunnan province. The population of Lijiang Prefecture is over 1 million involving 21 nationalities, for example, the Naxi, Yi, Lisu, Pumi,etc. And later you will see the houses of Naxi people in the ancient town.
LijiangPrefecture is the major tourist area of Yunnan Province. It contains beautiful natural resources, unique minority amorous feelings, age-old minority cultures, and rich tourist resources. The scenic spots are mainly scattered in Lijiang County and Ninglang County. We can conclude them into:” two mountains, one town, one lake, one river, one culture and one folk custom.”. Two mountains refer to Yulong Snow Mountains and Laojun Mountains, one town is Dayan Town, one lake refers to Lugu lake, one river is Jinsha river, one culture is Dongba Culture and one folk custom refers to the Moso people’s custom, which we call the “Aixa”. What does that mean? I will leave it to you to discover. So you see Lijiang, with its rich resources in plants and animals, the natural beauties and the amazing minority folk customs, attracting more and more tourists from home and abroad.
Soon we will get the the Ancient town of Lijiang, it has a history of almost a thousand years. The scenes are unique and unconventional. It is one of the best historical, cultural cities at the state level in China. It consists of three parts: Dayan、Baisha、Shuhe. So why is it called Dayan? Because it is in the middle of Lijiang basin, and the Lijiang basin looks like a big inkstone, and in Chinese the pronunciation of that is “yan”.
What’s more,it is also a unique city throughout China.Have you heard about it? Yeah,it is a city which has no walls.It expresses the open-minded character of Naxi people.
TheEntrance
Ok, everyone, this is the entrance of the Dayan town. Maybe you have already notice the couple of the water wheels over there.Do you know the function of it ? It is used to transport water and to make use of hydropower to grind grains and crops.Besides it is the Chinese Characters written by Jiang Zeming. And there is an eye-catching pillar, we call it “Dragon Post”, which means the water dragon and indicates the wish to avoid the fire in the town.
Let’s get inside and have a look. The Dayan town is famous in China for its old and simple architectural style and the elegant art for the lay-out of the town. In the town the Yuquan River winds in many streams across the town and past all the houses. The roads here are parallel to the streams, and the door of each house is facing a stream. Whatever street and whatever lane you go in ,there is a small stream with small bridges across it here and there. As a saying indicates : A house beside a stream with a small briage across it makes a wonderful scene which you can only find here.” That’s why we regard Dayan town to be the “Oriental Venice”.
SifangStreet
Here we are. In the center of the ancient town, here is the Sifang Street. It is a place for country fair trades. Since ancient times, Sifang Street has been a collecting and distributing center of all kinds of products with travelers and traders going and coming everywhere. On a market day people of different minorities in their unique costumes come here to do business and make the place crowed and noisy. If you spend a whole day here, you can experience the poetic changes here. In the morning, the street stretch its arms and woke up; in the midday, it becomes a busy man; When the night comes, the light is on, it changes into a dressed young lady; And at night it becomes quiet and fell asleep.
Why the street has a name of “Sifang”? There are two kinds of explanation, one is that the ancient leader in Lijiang named it with a meaning of “spread his power around”, and the other is that “Sifang” in Chinese means four directions, and the street has people and goods from every area.
Do you know how do people clean the square? They create three wooden boards as a movable sluice in the western river.When the water overflows, it will remove the sluice, then the streets can be washed automatically. How wonderful!
KegongArchway
Now you can see the Kegong Archway. “Kegong” means achievements in imperial examinations. A question for you,do you know why do people construct the archway? It is used to commemorate three successful candidates in imperial exam at provincial level .What amazing is that they all came from the same family. So you can understand how much people care about the imperial exam.
Ok, that’s all for my introduction, now you have 30 minutes to appreciate the nearby scenery, help yourselves ! Please be careful and take your time!