Central Yunnan

Central Yunnan is in China.

Regions

• Dali Prefecture
• Chuxiong Prefecture

Cities

• 1 Chuxiong — home of the "Ancient Town of the Yi Nationality", built in the early 21st century
• 2 Dali — popular with Chinese tourists on their way to visit the beautiful Tiger Leaping Gorge
• 3 Lufeng — a city renowned for its dinosaur fossil sites, the largest of which is now a major tourist attraction. Has a dinosaur museum.
• 4 Shaxi — a base for visiting Shibao Shan (石宝山; Stone Treasure Mountain), a fantastic nature reserve and religious site in Jianchuan County.
• 5 Weishan — a nice city with laid-back atmosphere and lovely old pedestrian street
• 6 Yuanmou — near the Yuanmou Earth Forest, which showcases the world's geological wonders

Other destinations

The Yunnan tourist trail passes through this area.

Tiger Leaping Gorge is a popular trekking area within the region. Three parallel rivers is nearby and often reached via the region.

Understand

The western part of this area was once part of the Tibetan province of Kham. That province no longer exists and the area has been administered by Yunnan for over 300 years, but there are still many Tibetans in the region.

The area also has several other minority ethnic groups; Dali was the capital of both Yi and Bai kingdoms at different times, and Lijiang (a bit north of this region) capital of a Naxi kingdom.

Get in

There are buses to all these towns and trains to some, and a few also have airports; see the "Get in" sections of town articles. The Yunnan tourist trail passes through this region, and that article also has information on reaching the area.

Dali airport (DLU ^IATA).

Get around

Most travel within the region is by bus.

Do

For trekking, 1 Tiger Leaping Gorge and the 2 Three parallel rivers region are nearby.

Go next

Dali is on the Yunnan tourist trail. One might follow that route north to Lijiang and Shangrila or south to Kunming.

One might also head west, approximately along the old Burma Road, toward Ruili on the border of Myanmar (Burma). It has a lot of Burmese goods, notably jade.