Ancient City of Lijiang: Haven of peace for urban people

The ancient city of Lijiang in southwest China's Yunnan Province, listed by the UNESCO in 1997 as a world cultural heritage site, is a dreaming garden for people longing for a haven of peace different from today's modern cities.

"Lijiang City is the right place for you to enjoy a peaceful life, where the ordinary scene of high buildings, noisy cars and foul atmosphere in most cities under industrialization is seldom seen," said Tang Xingsheng, a painter from Guilin, a city of South China's Guangxi, famous for its beautiful mountains and rivers.

"Children are playing on flagging without worrying about rushing cars and motorcycles, and old people basking in the sunshine on road side are dozing off. In Lijiang city, you may find life can be lived in a completely different way," said Tang who has painted a large amount of works on the ancient city.

With a history of 800 years, the ancient city of Lijiang was elected with all the votes as a World Cultural Heritage site of United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

For its civilian residential housing is unique as most of the cultural heritage sites at that time are palaces or former residence of celebrities, said Li Xi, curator of Lijiang Dongba cultural museum who had participated in the application work.

Covering an area of 3.8 square kilometers and with an elevation of 2,416 meters, the ancient city of Lijiang was a city established by the Naxi ethnic group. And now there are over 4,000 families of the Naxi ethnic group inhabiting in the city.

There goes a legend that the headman of the Naxi ethnic group is surnamed Mu. In the Chinese font, if the character Mu is framed with a square, it will become Kun, meaning be trapped. For this reason, the ancient city of Lijiang was constructed without a city wall.

Water is the soul of the city. The whole city is like a net woven with rivers. The flaggings were designed depending on the flowing of water and over 300 bridges made of stone or wood connecting each site of the city. Nearly every house in the city has stream flowing around it, in front of it, behind it or even through it.

The flaggings are said to be paved with five-color stones mined from the Yulong Xueshan Mountain nearby the city. Used for years, the flaggings are glazed but walking on it you won't worry about sliding and falling with the antiskid grooves on the flaggings.

Those flaggings meander through the city, with the largest width not more than three to five meters and the narrow one is only one or two meters.

Residential houses in the city are mostly of one or two stories. Made of wooden and enclosed with an earthen wall, those houses usually has a yard, where the Naxi ethnic people are used to planting flowers or trees. The first floor of those houses is usually commodious corridor. Cool in summer and warm in winter, those corridors are the major leisure place of the family.

The Sifang Street is the center of the ancient city. In the Lijiang city, you need not worry about being lost as all streets or lanes lead to the Sifang Street. So, you can always reach the center of the city no matter which street you choose.

In the past, the citizens had established dykes at the Sifang Street. Each night when the bazaar is dismissed, people will put off the dykes to rinse the Sifang Street.

As early as in 1958, the newly established Lijiang County government has brought forward the proposal of conserving the ancient city and building a new city.

At the end of 1986, the ancient city of Lijiang was listed as the state historical and cultural city by the State Council.

Source: Xinhua