Welcome to Lijiang, this beautiful place.It’s my honor to be your guide.Today I will bring you to the Lijiang Dayan Town.Maybe you are more familiar with the name” the ancient town of Lijiang”.
We will get there in a few minutes.So now I will give you a brief introduction of 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.
Lijiang Prefecture is the major developing tourist area of Yunnan Province.It contains beautiful natural scense, 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 金沙 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.Soyou see Lijiang, with its rich resources in plants and animals, the natural beauties and the amazing minority folk customs, attracts 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: 大研、白沙、束河.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”.
Ok, everyone, this is the entrance of the Dayan town.Maybe you have already notice the couple of the mill wheels over there.Besides it is the Chinese Characters written by Jiang Zeming.And there is a eye-catching pillar, we call it the “水龙”, which means the water dragon and indicates the wish to avoid the fire in the town.
Let’s get inside and see.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 玉泉 river winds in many streams acro 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 acro it here and there.As a saying has it : A house beside a stream with a small briage acro it makes a wonderful scene which you can only find here.” That’s why we regard Dayan town to be the “Oriental Venice”.
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 busine 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 dreed 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.Dayan Town is quite different from the other ancient towns in China, no town walls around it.Do you know why? That has something to do with the name of the governor of the town at the ancient time, before I tell you the reason, let’s visit the governor’s place first, later you will know why there is no wall here.
