Old Town of Lijiang
The number of Wikipedia languages with an article is our measure of how widely known a site is. How many people have stood at a site or want to go will be shown once enough people use the app.
Seals, your want-to-go list and the year you stood here are kept in the iPhone app.
How it came to be
The Old Town of Lijiang, originally called Dayan, grew up in north-western Yunnan as the political, economic and cultural centre of the Naxi people. In the 13th century, late in the Southern Song, the ancestors of the ruling Mu family moved their seat from Baisha to the foot of the Shizi hills and began building a town enclosed by a wall and moat. After Azong Aliang submitted to the Yuan emperor Kublai in the 1250s, it became an administrative centre.
When the region came under Ming rule in 1382, the Lijiang prefecture was created and its prefect, Ajia Ade, was given the surname Mu and made hereditary prefect. In 1723 the Qing court changed course, and the next year Yang Bi arrived as the first prefect sent from the centre. Water from the Black Dragon Pool is split into Eastern, Central and Western streams that reach every house through a network of channels crossed by 354 bridges.
The town has been hit by many earthquakes, including a severe one on 3 February 1996. In 1997 it was inscribed as a World Heritage site together with the villages of Baisha and Shuhe to the north. Tourism grew sharply after inscription, and many Naxi residents rented out their houses and moved to the new town.
Data: Wikidata (CC0). Photos: Wikimedia Commons, under each photo’s license. Prototype; may contain errors. We measure usage anonymously to improve the app (PostHog, EU).