31: 丽江，云南 / Lijiang, Yunnan

I’ll admit, when I got to Lijiang, I knew pretty much nothing. All Laurence told me was that it was a stop on the way to hike Tiger Leaping Gorge, and that it was a Naxi ethnicity village. I was too tired from a sleeper bus ride to care about the rest. Once we had checked into our hostel and showered, we set out to explore the city. Laurence told me that Lijiang was famous for being one of the few old cities in China without a city wall (the chieftain of the village was named 木, or wood, and if you box that character, it becomes 困, which means difficulty. So, being superstitious, he opted out of building a wall. This is extremely rare in China), so I warmed up to the idea of visiting the old town.

Lijiang does not have many sights. It is a wandering city, one where the alleyways are organic and don’t scream socialist modernism. A river flowed underneath the city, dammed and canalled for the benefit of the town. It popped up occasionally through the stone paths. We tried our best to take in the town without getting lost, following the flow of the river.

After wandering around for a couple of hours, two things were apparent: the Han Chinese had all but replaced the Naxi people, and they were out to make a profit on it. Stores sold kitschy ‘ethnic’ products as shopkeepers attempted to herd in people by shouting loudly in their face. After we explored the main strip and some back alleys, Laurence and I decided it was time to explore the new city, where all the Naxi had moved into high rises after selling their old homes to the Han. We explored a public square with an enormous Mao Zedong statue (of course), a tacky mall, and then had dinner in a back alley (they don’t call these alleys hutongs in South China. They call them 巷, xiang). After that, we returned to our hostel for an early night.

The irony of Lijiang was that even with an old town that attracted visitors from around the world, the new city was much more alive and interesting. I hated that the old town had lost all of its charms and turned into just another touristy site. I also realized that it was inevitable: the Naxi people realized that they could just rent out their own homes and property to the profit-hungry Han Chinese. They all left for fancy new high-rises in the new city or Kunming. It revealed an important consideration for me: at what point does it stop being historical and cultural? Is it ever okay to tear down this sort of history, even if it has been changed beyond its original image?

Thinking back, despite the fact that this city had evolved to another one of those kitsch villages, I was glad I got to see an original Naxi village. Had this village been razed to make way for more high-rises, Lijiang would have merely been a stop on the way to Tiger Leaping Gorge, and we would have made our way to Kunming without caring a bit about Lijiang.