Yunnan Essential Tour

Welcome to Kunming, the capital city of Yunnan Province! Your nice 6-day tour in China will start here. After your plane arrives, you will feel easy and relieved to find our guide holding your name sign who has waited for you in advance at the airport. Our guide will also remind you of taking all your belongings well and checking them carefully again. If you have any questions, we will do whatever we can to give you a hand. Our guide will then send you to the hotel so that you can take a rest and prepare for the next exciting day!

We will drive about three hours and forty minutes (304 KM) to Yuanyang first. Although being a county, Yuanyang is attractive to a number of shutterbugs who are very interested in Yuanyang Rice Terrace which includes many famous scenic spots to be explored. There are four features of Yuanyang Rice Terrace. It boasts a large area with 113 million square meters around and a steep terrain within a slope from 15° to 75°. Apart from that, not only it possesses plenty of steps that there are even 3,001 steps on one slope, but has a high altitude with the terrace extending from the river valley to the mountain at an altitude of more than 2,000 meters. During the First International Symposium on Hani Culture in 1993, more than 100 representatives from more than 10 countries, including the Netherlands, Japan, the United States, Britain, and Thailand, came to visit here.

You will finish your lunch during the journey prepared by our guide. When reaching Yuanyang, you will explore Longshuba Rice Terrace. You will need to climb a mountain and pass a very narrow field, which sounds a little uneasy but deserves a good try! Along the way, you can feel free to talk to other visitors who are always kind. You may be surprised at the red color of the water. Isn’t amazing? Do you wonder the reason? Tell you the truth: red duckweed grows in the water. That’s how a lot of photographers come through a long distance merely to take photos. When the sun shines in the morning or the evening, it seems to be a red light sparkling and the blue sky is printed in the water, what beautiful scenery! Besides, the red duckweed will serve as a natural fertilizer. How time flies! Our guide will accompany you to a local hotel later. Just looking forward to tomorrow’s trip!

Longshuba Rice Terrace

Longshuba Rice Terrace

After breakfast, let’s go to Duoyishu Rice Terrace. It is located on a mountain so that the beautiful scene of the sea of clouds appeals to lots of people. Embraced by mountains on three sides and a valley on one side, it looks like a big bay. Standing on the top of the mountain, you can see nearly uneven terraced fields scattered in thousands of valleys and mountains, seemingly ten thousand horses galloping or a snake dancing. The Duoyishu Rice Terrace is like an engraving, varied in color and spectacular in beauty. Before sunrise, you can take pictures like ink paintings. At sunrise, the most beautiful scenery is constantly changing colors on the water in front of you, making you dizzying to be in the fairyland. Even if you cannot see the sunrise, the morning mist is a dynamic landscape painting of the utmost beauty. All of that is a gift presented by the sun and the land together.

After that, we will head for Tiger Mouth Pass. Interested in the name origin? The saying goes that the winding mountain road cut through the cliffside forms a gaping hole in the curved cliff, which looks like the opening mouth of a tiger. So, we are going to stand in the mouth of a tiger to enjoy the nice sights! Standing on the viewing platform of the pass to watch the sunset from the vantage point is magnificent! Unlike Duoyishu Rice Terrace, Tiger Mouth Pass is known to all for its noted sunset. At sunset, you will see the sun falling from the top of the mountain emitting a golden, warm, and soft light, and when the sunlight is reflected in the water, you cannot imagine how splendid it is unless you come here to see in person. Surprisingly, visitors attracted by the view will often get here earlier bending over the railing and photographers will have placed their cameras in a perfect position, solemnly waiting for the arrival of that sunset moment.

Later, after lunch, Qingkou Hani Ethnic Village (a minor nationality village) is waiting for you. In thousands of years of development and cultivation, a benign circular agricultural ecosystem characterized by “forest-river-terrace-village” has been built here, which implies the harmony between man and nature. It is a masterpiece of human terrace culture and a miracle in the history of world agriculture, thus being praised as a world-class brand by UNESCO. In 2010, it was rated as an agricultural heritage protection unit by FAO.

Walking along the flagstone road in the village, you can enjoy not only the wonderful terraced fields but also living facilities such as Hani Mushroom House and ditches and so on. With regard to the Mushroom House made mainly of clay, bamboo, and thatch, you are certain to have much interest in searching more about it. Taking a close look, you will marvel at the wisdom of the Hani people. The house is made up of three floors owning different functions. The bottom floor acts as a place to feed cattle and horses and pile up farm tools; the top floor is used for storing grain, firewood, and so on; while the middle floor is the place to live in, where people can cook, rest, and receive guests. The middle one is composed of three rooms from left to right, of which the central room is featured by a square fireplace that keeps burning all year round. Whenever a guest comes, the host and the guest will sit together by the fireplace to enjoy tea and wine, or sing happily. More details deserve your visit!

If you are confused about some information about the village or want to stroll more, it is always fine to tell the guide who will be with you to the hotel later.

Tips:

When going to see the sunrise at Duoyishu Rice Terrace, please keep in mind to take a coat in case of the cold temperature.

Duoyishu Rice Terrace

Qingkou Hani Ethnic Village

It will take us two hours within 125 KM to Jianshui County. First, you will visit the Chaoyang Tower, which was built in 1389 in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), with a history of 632 years, and 28 years older than Tian’anmen Square in Beijing. It is also a symbol of an ancient military town on the border of China. The tower, through many wars and earthquakes, still stands firm having three floors, 24.5 meters in height, and 414 square meters in area. The tower gate is enough to allow two cars to pass, and standing here to overlook, you can view the old city of Jianshui in a panoramic way. In addition, there are always swallows circling the tower. At dusk, a group of swallows fly back to the nest like a storm, some singing, some flying higher, and some seeming to say “Hello, let’s go shopping!”, which is very spectacular!

In the afternoon, you will arrive at Jianshui Ancient Town then. After 12 centuries of construction, it has preserved more than 50 ancient buildings, known as the “Museum of Ancient Buildings” and “Museum of Folk Buildings” domestically. The ancient town is not big, mainly based on the Lin’an Road as the center of a few old streets. In fact, the best way to visit here is to walk along the street, appreciating the antique buildings, feeling its history and culture, while searching for various snacks. Among them, the most famous and the most distinctive snack here is baked tofu. People joke that one fails to arrive in Jianshui without eating baked tofu. Furthermore, it is known that the ancient town is a good place to live for some time. In special, you can find small restaurants that will light a fire and burn charcoal every morning. In the evening, you can go to watch a dance show or see an outdoor movie under the memorial archway.

The third spot today comes to Confucius Temple. Founded in 1285 of the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), it has a history of more than 700 years. It is the third-largest Confucian temple only next to that in Qufu, Shandong Province, and that in Beijing in terms of its existing scale, architectural level, and preservation. Entering the temple, the first thing you see is a bronze statue of Confucius, which is more than 3 meters high and weighs 675 kilograms. 

But more attractive is that it has “five strange legends” here. The first one is that everyone worships Confucius because the ancient Jianshui town was related to poetry, book, rite, and music, and it has become a custom to respect and worship Confucius. Every year during the Spring Festival, people of all ages would go to the Confucian Temple to worship Confucius. The second one: a small pool equals a sea. In ancient times, it was said that building a pool in front of the teaching site would promote education development. So the pool takes the meaning of “learning is boundless”, just as a vast sea. The third one describes that the exposed pillar heads will never be eroded. There are four wooden pillars through the roof ridge to the sky with a meter being exposed outside the roof. Hundreds of years of wind and rain never rot them. Fourthly, there are mosquito-proof beads and dust-proof beads in one palace here, so people have never found spider webs and mosquitoes. Lastly, a banyan tree and a cypress tree fall in love. It is just that the two trees embrace each other seemingly they share the same root.

Finally, you will get to Zhu Family Garden. It was built in the late Qing Dynasty (1636-1912) and lasted 30 years. Here are 42 courtyards and 214 houses, covering an area of more than 20,000 square meters. Actually, it is a private garden or a folk house with the characteristics of the south of the Yangtze River. The garden is a symbol of China’s orderly political system, with houses built according to rank and status. It was said that there was also a well in the courtyard that was different from the others. Not only did the water in the well never dry up, but the water level was always higher than the ground level, therefore one could fetch the water easily. So the non-dried well represented money pouring in from all sides.

After the trip, the guide will send you to the hotel.

Jianshui Ancient Town

Zhu Family Garden

You will spend 2.5 hours (238 KM) from Jianshui to Stone Forest in the morning. The perfect magical and charming natural scenery attracts thousands of Chinese and foreign tourists. On May 1, 1999, Jiang Zemin, general secretary of CPC, visited it and praised “It’s amazing. It lives up to its reputation.” It is also an ideal place for scholars and scientists to conduct research and investigation. Since the 1940s, more than one thousand famous scholars have made investigations here, involving history, ethnology, geography, botany, ecology, tourism, and other disciplines. Additionally, there is a story of the lake in Stone Forest. The lake was built at the suggestion of Premier Zhou Enlai. In April 1955, Premier Zhou Enlai visited the Stone Forest, and he saw that there was only a little water in the depression. Then he looked at the landscape of Stone Forest and said, “It will be better to have water here now that there have had mountains.” After listening to that, people locally managed to build the lake that we see today.

You will then be transferred to the hotel after lunch.

Stone Forest

Stone Forest

Time has been so fast! Are you satisfied with the China travel over the past five days? We are so honored and happy to be given the chance to serve you, and we sincerely hope you to give us any advice so that we can do better. The guide will take you to the airport according to your flight. Hoping to see you again! Wish you a good journey!

Author: Tingting Li