China Tours

B:Breakfast  L:Lunch  D:Dinner

Day 1: Kunming (D)
On arrival you will be met and transferred to the hotel.
Accommodation: 4* Kunming hotel (Or the same class)

Day 2: Kunming (B+L+D)
Morning visit to the Stone Forest, with its unique Karats formation. This afternoon transfer to the airport for your flight to Dali, on arrival you will be met and transferred to the hotel.

Day 3: Dali (B+L+D)
Today enjoy Erhai boat, watch singing and dancing performances of Bai, experience Bai customers-- tasting tea 3 times (one-bitterness, two-sweet, three-aftertaste), after that visit Butterfly spring Park, Chong Three Holy Mosques.
Accommodation: 3* Landscape Hotel  (Or the same class)

Day 4: Dali/Shaxi (3hr) (B+L+D)
Today car drive to Shaxi, Shibao Mountain contains so much of artistic stone treasure from a temple in a cliff, to a dozen of grotto that reveals of misty history of Yunnan between 8 centuries A.D. to 13 centuries A.D. The relief of grotto was listed into Cultural Relics under National Protection in 1956 as early as Dunhuang Grotto’s.

(A hiking trail starts from parking lot of Stone Bell Grotto. you can step down the mountain to its foot. Then go across farmland and villages to Shaxi town in the basin beside Shibao Mountain.)
Shaxi old town was a prosperous trading center once upon a time upon tea and salt. Esoteric Buddhism Temple of Xingjiao, theatre, city wall and caravan inn witnessed its change in history of tea and horse trade between Yunnan and Tibet.

Accommodation: Laoma Hotel  (Or the same class)

Day 5: Shaxi/Shigu/Lijiang (2.5hr) (B+L+D)
Half way between Lijiang and Shaxi, Stone Drum Town stands at the First Bend of Yangtze, some 70 kilometers west of Lijiang. The approach to Stone Drum offers a dramatic view of the Yangtse's near-270-degree turn, where the wide, swift waters perform a miraculous about-face. For nearly 20 kilometers the river, first flowing south, then north, runs parallel to itself. And stories recalls three times of big history linking to Kublai Khan’s conquer on 1253, Naxi kingdom’s expansion on 1552, and Red Army’s Long March on 1936.

Few people know Zhiyun temple is the first lamasery temple among five main Tibetan Buddhism monasteries situating in Lijiang. As well as few commercial air blows into this lake side corner enclosed by pear trees and sacred relics. According to strong influence from Kamaba sect of Tibet in the past, majestic hall and indoor settings give you a surprise despite of peaceful surroundings decorated in multi-ethnic structure.

Away from Lijiang by 12km, Lashi Lake lives beside high way to First Bend of Yangtze, Tiger Leaping Gorge and Shangrila Zhongdian, a section of scenic line on amazing colors from decedeous trees in the fall. 16k㎡ contains not only water resource for lower Lijiang basin, but also tranquil sceneries combining farmland, orchard, shore meadow and wetland in backgroud of clearly blue sky. It could be 157 sorts of migrant bird flying from Tibet to here for a warmer winter every year. And it’s always a pleasant trip by boat or by horse along the lakeside.

Lijiang, a quiet corner crowned as “The Ancient Naxi Kingdom in South-west China” by Dr Joseph F. Rock in 1940s, is “maybe the most beautiful place in China”, highly praised by this Austrian-born bachelor else. The core of Lijiang value concentrates in Lijiang Old City (Dayan Town called locally according to its shape in an official ink stone), which is the sole opening city without city wall among all China’s chess-plate cities. Vivid water was led along Jade River to city mouth, where is was divided into three streams flowing & winding across poetic block complex, ancient residential courtyard, and even beneath house kitchen. It was formed between 13 and 14 century aiming to Yunnan-Tibetan trade at Sifang-jie Market Square primarily. All crowded or quiet lanes and bridges portrait so many poetic corners to update it to a preserved city in list of World Cultural Heritage, on Dec. 2, 1997.
Accommodation: 4* Jiannanchun Hotel  (Or the same class)

Day 6: Lijiang (B+L+D)
Black Dragon Pool is a series of headwater ponds of Old City streams, which covers more than 60,000㎡ of land  for a classical horticulture garden with old pavilions, decorative towers, archly bridge, weeping willow and oak trunk dotted. The Pond provides an opportunity to take great pictures of the crystal clear pond with a backdrop of distant snowy mountain Jade Dragon.

North to Black Dragon Pool, Dongba Museum is the largest center in the world on preserving and demonstrating the last surviving pictographic scripture, Naxi ethnic Dongba character. This character and related legends of Naxi tribal ancestry, ancient scroll, art & calligraphy constitutes all sides of living fossil of Dongba primitive religion for your touch in inches.

Shuhe Old Town, another name Dragon Spring Village, the second part of cultural heritage Lijiang, shows rural type of both residence and outlook as you can touch water, garden and the nature in such a depth. Compared to Lijiang Old City, it turns up the memory of tranquility decades ago to stroll in this town (or by carriage). At the center of the town is a square, believed to be the prototype of Sifang-jie in the Old City. Pure springs in front of a Tao temple provide crystal water to cool beer in the stream in front of bars.

Baisha Murals includes Liulidian Temple and Daobaoji Temple at Baisha village, housing 558 mural paintings on 12 walls that date back to the Ming Dynasty in 1385. Buddhism, Taoism and Lamaism are manifest, integrated into the styles of the Han Chinese, the Tibetan, the Bai and the Naxi people in the murals, testimony to political, economic, cultural and religious exchanges between the heartland and the frontiers of China . They are now rated as key cultural relics and under national protection.

Yuhu (Jade Lake) Village was highly praised as the most beautiful Naxi village by Joseph Rock in his exploring time from 1920’s to 1940’s. Here left an Old House of Dr Rock exhibiting substances of him. Another cultural relic in state level, Baisha Mural, locates its position for mixed religious art of 500 years ago.

At night time 20:00-21:40, the ancient Naxi Classical Music takes you back to thousand years ago to pick up the celestial melodies from the golden leave tree of Chinese Taoism music, which had fallen from temple into folk soil played with this world famous age bands.
Accommodation: 4* Jiannanchun Hotel  (Or the same class)

Day 7: Lijiang/Qiaotou (hiking from Gate to Half Way Inn) (B+L+D)
Half driving time between 4 hours highway from Lijiang to Shangrila, Tiger Leaping Gorge is the Yangtze's best-known gorge after the Three Gorges in Sichuan and Hubei . Wedged tightly between titanic cliffs, the river is so narrow here, as legend tells us, that a hunted tiger made its escape to the other side in a single bound. Here, the Jade Dragon Snow Mountains and the Haba Snow Mountains lean close to each other, a swift torrent moving between them, cutting deeper and deeper into the gorge. In some places there is a drop of 3900 meters to the water, as told as the 2nd deepest canyon in the world.

Today is a full hiking day from admission gate of the gorge to Half Way Inn in weast of Haba Snow Mountain. It takes 7 hours along mountain trail, across fields, villages, woods, way bends, and so on. The higher and further view to gorge and Yulong Snow Mountain on the other side gives you a nearest feeling to the great nature with deep breathing step by step on.
Accommodation:  (Or the same class)

Day 8: Tina’s House/Zhongdian (B+L+D)
Walk down for 2 hours to Tina’s House, which locates to the middle rapid of the gorge. An access to Tiger Leaping Rock will be completed by hiking down along a winding trail. But those two vertical stairs will be individual option according to its risk.

Take a van to Qiaotou town and transfer to Zhongdian by our tour bus.

At 3,160 meters above sea level, Zhongdian ( or Gyalthang in Tibetan), renamed by the State Council in December 2001 Shangri-la County, lies in a landscape of rolling hills, snow-capped peaks, virgin forests of spruce, pine and meadow dotted with wild rhododendrons and tranquil lakes. The old town, built entirely in Sino-Tibetan multi-culture style, is poetically named as Moon Light City (Dukhetson in Tibetan). When will you make your imagination on this town into recognition?

(Remark: Shangrila Country, as one part of Yunnan provincial Tibetan area, has been always the most peaceful, the most gentle and the most diversified region in Greater Tibet according to its mixing history and mild geo-conditions. Tibetan minority makes up one third of the total population 112,000. Provincial authority acclaimed it’s the most probable place by sceneries of which James Hilton gave the word “Shangri-la” to the world, in his novel “The Lost Horizon” in 1922.
Accommodation: 4* Shili Hotel  (Or the same class)
 
Day 9: Zhongdian (B+L+D)
Sontsam Monastery, Founded in the 17th century during the reign of the Great Fifth Dalai Lama and nicknamed as Lesser Potala Palace by the locals, is the first one of the thirteen Tibetan monasteries in the Khampa Region, where Tibet , Yunnan and Sichuan meet. Housing about 700 monks and one living Buddha.
Accommodation: 4* Shili Hotel  (Or the same class)

Day10: departure Zhongdian (B)
Today you will be met and transfer to airport for your next destination.