Lijiang

Half a century ago, a Russian named Peter Ku was dispatched to Lijiang by the International Industrial Cooperatives. He was deeply enchanted by the "heaven-like scenes", and stayed in Lijiang for 9 years. In his book "The Forgotten Kingdom" he wrote, "Lijiang is rarely known to the outside world. It is the ancient Naxi Kingdom in south China which is almost forgotten..." As a matter of fact, Li Jing, the Vice Governor of Yunnan in the Yuan Dynasty admired 700 years ago, "The snow mountain in Lijiang is rarely found elsewhere in the world for it resembles thousands layers of piled up jade..." Xu Xiake, the great traveler of the Ming Dynasty traveled thousands of miles to Lijiang, the journey of which took him innumerable days and recorded the most brilliant chapters of his travelogues.

This is an ancient, picturesque land. This is a land everyone admires.

Nature the Great Creator showed extreme affection in his ancient piece of land. Apart from its abundant land, biological and mineral resources, Lijiang has huge reserve of tourism and hydropower resources. In Lijiang, there is the contemporary glacier which is the southernmost one on the north hemisphere. The Yulong (Jade Dragon) Snow Mountain is praised as the "Museum of Glaciers" and the "Kingdom of Plants". Xinzhu Natural Botanical Garden is known as the "Gene Bank of Plants on the Hengduan Mountains" and the Laojun Mountain in Lijiang is renowned as the "Kingdom of Rhododendrons". The "Morning Sunglow" scene of the Red Cliffs treats visitors with 3 sunrises and sunsets within a single day. The Ten-Thousand-Flower Camellia in Lijiang is praised as the "First Tree under Heaven". Entering Yuquan Park, visitors find themselves in the fairyland ...
        
The ancient Dayan Town of Lijiang has a history of over 800 years. The Town is well-known to the world because "each of the household is built by the stream and surrounded by willow trees". Therefore, Dayan Town is praised as the "Oriental Venice" and "Suzhou on the Plateau". Dongba sculptures of Lijiang were written in pictographs which are the only living written language of its kind in the world. In the Baoshan (Mountain of Treasures) Town, all people of the village live in a world of stone because almost everything there was carved out of stones. Baisha Murals in Baisha village have been listed for national-level protection of historic relics. The "Dongjing Music of the Naxi" bearing the melody and rhythm inherited from the Tang and Song Dynasties is known as the "Living Fossils of Music"... The natural and humanistic scenes of Lijiang have drawn many keen-sighted personages. It is no wonder that Li Lincan, the former Vice President of Taiwan's Imperial Palace Museum "got such extraordinary thoughts in his old age when he came to this land of never-melting snows", and wrote his voluminous books Magnificent Jade Snow Mountain and Thoughts Roaming the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. Dr. Rock, an American Austrian, was so deeply enchanted by the Dongba Culture of the Naxi that he stayed in Lijiang for 28 years during which he wrote more than 10 books. Guo Moruo, the literary giant of China showed extraordinary love in Lijiang, and wrote, "My heart is yearning for Lijiang, and I am always dreaming of visiting Lijiang again!"
        
Lijiang has extremely rich hydropower reserves. Meandering for 447 kilometer within Lijiang, the Jinsha River has a volume of annual flow of 49.12 billion cubic meters, enough for running 5 large hydropower stations, each having an installed capacity of 3 million kilowatts. Within the territory of Lijiang County, there are rich biological resources, and the County is known as the "Kingdom of Highland Plants". The County is dotted with more than 20 well-preserved virgin forests in which there flourish over 800 kinds of rare and precious medicinal herbs and over 3,000 species of seed plants. Apart from all these, Lijiang has abundant mineral and land resources, and the County shows remarkable perspectives of economic development.
        
In October 1994, the Party Committee and People's Government of Yunnan Province drafted the strategic plan to develop the scenic resort of the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain and put it as the "fist" product into the international tourism market, and to build Lijiang into an important tourism base of Yunnan Province. When taking his investigation tour in Lijiang on October 9, 1995, Vice Premier Zhu Rongji instructed that "If Lijiang is to become well-off, energetic efforts must be made in developing tourism and relevant industries apart from taking agriculture as the key link." All those have not only clearly set the strategic targets for the development of Lijiang that tourism must be taken as the pioneering industry, but also strengthened the confidence of Lijiang people to go all out in developing tourism and take it as the backbone industry so as to promote the all-round social and economic development. 
        
Based on its rich resources and guided by the market-oriented economy, the Party Committee and Government of Lijiang County has drafted principles for economic development of the area by fully utilizing its resource advantages while putting equal emphasis on development and protection and integrating the economic, social and environmental benefits. By quickening up the pace of development and construction, it is aimed at building Lijiang into one of Yunnan's window of tourism development. By 2000, Lijiang will be hosting 1 million domestic and foreign tourists while expected tourism-generated revenue would exceed RMB 200 million. By that time, Lijiang would join the national and southeast Asian tourism market and become the tourist destination which not only shows ethnic nationality characteristics but also reaches the standards of the contemporary world.
        
Lijiang of today is no longer the "forgotten realm". The warm-hearted and hospitable Lijiang people of different ethnic nationalities cordially welcome friends from both home and abroad, and the magnificent and mysterious Jade Dragon Snow Mountain is opening its arms to the world.