Upon completing the stunning trek of Tiger Leaping Gorge, many travelers simply turn around and return to Lijiang by roughly the same route along which they came—going back southwest to Qiaotou and then arranging transportation to Lijiang.

This approach has a few pitfalls. First, it requires that one see the same scenery twice, which is bad for people on short vacations who want to fit in as much sightseeing as possible.

Additionally, the paved road through the gorge has been impassable during much of the last year due to rockslides and dynamiting, which can make it a challenge to get back to Qiaotou at all.

The alternate route back to Lijiang through the town of Daju (大具) is a great way for travelers to get back without retracing their routes or getting snarled in blockages on the Tiger Leaping Gorge public road.

Daju is situated past Walnut Grove at the northeast end of Tiger Leaping Gorge, on a large flat shelf of land on the opposite side of the Jinsha River from the Tiger Leaping Gorge trails.

To get to Daju from Tiger Leaping Gorge you will have to hike for a few hours or hire a minivan to get to one of two ferries (new and old) across the Jinsha that, for tourists, range from 20 to 30 yuan per passenger. The final ferry of the day typically runs around 5pm. Your guesthouse in Tiger Leaping Gorge can help you organize the passage.

Daju is composed of a large central town with several satellite villages. These settlements are in turn surrounded by lush fields of grain and vegetables, which are fed by springs and rivers gushing out of the surrounding ring of mountains.

The locals are very friendly, and there are plenty of opportunities for wandering around the fields and seeing village life in action. Also, there are some small, steep paths leading into the mountains to the north of the town, which make for good hiking and offer great vistas of Daju and the entrance to Tiger Leaping Gorge.

Once travelers are ready to move on, they can hop one of the daily public buses back to Lijiang at 7:30am or 1:00pm, for about 20 yuan. It is recommended that you reserve a seat as far in advance as possible through your guesthouse.

This road back to Lijiang goes around the east side of the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain range and on clear days will offer passengers views of the glaciers creeping down the faces of those mountains. Going to Lijiang via Daju also avoids the 160 yuan entrance fee to the Jade Dragon tourist area, although be advised that if you try to get to Daju coming from Lijiang you will likely be charged the fee.

Guesthouses in Daju are concentrated in the satellite village of Xiaomidi, near the edge of the river. Two good options are the Daju Inn and the Xiaomidi Inn.

Beginning this coming January 1, direct rail service between Kunming and Lijiang will be available, connecting Yunnan's capital and most populous city with its most popular tourist destination.

Direct rail access from Kunming to Lijiang not only offers a new and relatively hassle-free way to get to Lijiang's old town, it also provides increased access to other popular destinations including Shuhe, Yulong Snow Mountain, Tiger Leaping Gorge and Lugu Lake.

The new train line will operate twice daily, with the day train leaving for Kunming at 8:20 am and arriving at Lijiang East Station at 7:30 pm for a total of more than 11 and a half hours plus a faster night train that leaves Kunming at 10:00 pm and arrives just under nine hours later at 6:55 am.

Ticket prices for the train will range from 130 yuan to 614 yuan.

Construction on the rail line connecting Dali with Lijiang has been completed and will be running in time for the National Day holiday during the first week of October, according to a YunnanNet report. Construction on the rail line began in 2004.

The 164 kilometer rail line passes through some serious mountain country, with more than half of the trip made up of bridges or tunnels. Bridges account for 22 kilometers of the journey, with 78 kilometers passing through tunnels.

The Dali-Lijiang (大丽) line will begin at Dali East Station, traveling along the eastern shore of Erhai Lake with stops at Shangguan (上关), Xiyi (西邑) and Heqing (鹤庆) before arriving in Lijiang. At present, information about departure times and trip duration is unavailable.

Lijiang is one of China's most popular tourist destinations – in the first half of this year it was visited by 3.44 million tourists. The opening of a new rail connection with Dali and Kunming should translate to even more travelers visiting the city, which features attractions including its old town (a UNESCO World Heritage site), Jade Dragon Snow Mountain and the nearby Tiger Leaping Gorge.

The extension of the Kunming-Dali rail line to Lijiang brings a proposed Kunming-Lhasa rail line one step closer to reality. The line will next be extended to Shangri-la and then to Lhasa.

The Kunming-Lhasa rail link would make Yunnan's capital the third provincial capital in western China with a direct rail link to Tibet after Xining in Qinghai and Chengdu in Sichuan, which will begin construction on a Chengdu-Lhasa rail line this month.

The glaciers of Yulong Snow Mountain (玉龙雪山), one of Lijiang's top tourist attractions and a major source of water for the region, are disappearing quickly due to global warming, according to information released by the Frigid and Arid Zone Environment and Engineering Institute of the China Academy of Sciences.

Between 1982 and 2002, Yulong Snow Mountain's largest glacier, Baishui Number One Glacier, receded 250 meters. The glacier and other glaciers on the mountain also became thinner and have been accumulating less snow, the institute said. The above photos compare the mountain several years ago (top) with how it appeared this past Sunday.

Yulong Snow Mountain is a mountain massif, or small mountain range, which is seated 25 kilometers north of Lijiang's old town and forms the southern side of Tiger Leaping Gorge, one of the world's deepest gorges. It spans 13 kilometers from east to west and is home to 19 glaciers covering a total area of 11.6 square kilometers.

Yulong's glaciers are crucial to the surrounding area's ecology and they are also a major tourist draw for Lijiang, one of China's most popular travel destinations. The photos below compare how one of Yulong's peaks looked in November 2004 (top) and last Saturday.

From June 22 to 30 in Seville, Spain, UNESCO's World Heritage Committee will review a list of hundreds of candidate sites proposed by countries around the world as part of the World Heritage Site selection process. In the end, only 20 or so sites will make the cut and be named World Heritage Sites, putting them firmly on global tourism's radar.

Each country submitting candidate sites must maintain a 'tentative' list of sites from which it can submit two candidates to the selection committee. This year, China's tentative list features 52 different sites, including three in Yunnan. China currently has 37 World Heritage Sites.

The Yunnan sites on China's tentative list include Dali Cangshan Mountain and Erhai Lake Scenic Spot, the Hani Terraces of Yuanyang and the lesser-known Chengjiang fossil lagerstätte at Maotian Mountain. While Dali, Yuanyang and Chengjiang are by no means unknown to travelers, being selected a World Heritage Site would bring new tourist revenue – and new developmental issues.

Yunnan is currently home to three World Heritage Sites: Old Town of Lijiang, Three Parallel Rivers of Yunnan Protected Areas and South China Karst. Here's a quick look at the sites that could be selected in June:

Dali
Set between the towering Cangshan Mountains and the expansive waters of Erhai Lake, Dali has been a mainstay on the China backpacker circuit for more than a decade.

The agricultural know-how of the ethnic Bai people native to the area made Dali an important rice production base in dynastic times. This wealth fuelled the rise of the Nanzhao Kingdom, which was centered in Dali and at its height stretched from northern Laos, Thailand and Myanmar up into Chengdu and the Sichuan Basin before incurring the wrath of the Tang Dynasty.

Today Dali's old town is the most popular destination for travelers, but small guesthouses have also been popping up around Erhai Lake at Xizhou and Shuanglang. At the end of this year a new train line will link Dali and Lijiang.

Should Dali become a World Heritage Site, it would likely face many of the same development-versus-preservation problems that Lijiang has dealt with.

Yuanyang
Yuanyang and its rice terraces have long been an 'off the beaten track' option for travelers to Yunnan wishing for something different from the Dali-Lijiang-Tiger Leaping Gorge route. With just a fraction of Dali's tourism, Yuanyang offers a much more "local" experience for travelers – there is very little tourism infrastructure, roads around the terraces are often quite rough, and dining options are rather limited.

In terms of scenery, the more than 13,000 hectares of rice terraces around Yuanyang offer some of the most stunning natural images to be found in China, especially at the beginning of the year when the terraces are filled with water creating a striking mirror effect.

For relatively poor Yuanyang, World Heritage Site status would be tantamount to winning the lottery. The main question would be how much of the incoming tourist revenue would make its way into the pockets of locals.

Chengjiang fossil lagerstätte
The least-known of the three Yunnan sites on the tentative list, Chengjiang's Lagerstätte – a sedimentary deposit rich in fossils – is centered around Maotian Shan, located just north of the city of Chengjiang and picturesque Fuxian Lake, one of China's deepest and cleanest lakes.

While it is ignored by travel guidebooks, Chengjiang and its Lagerstätte is quite famous among paleontologists for the fossilized sea life it contains, collectively referred to as 'Chengjiang Fauna'. Chengjiang Fauna is considered one of the 'Three faunas of the evolution of early life forms' along with Burgess Shale Fauna in western Canada and the Ediacaran Fauna of South Australia.

The Chengjiang Lagerstätte recently made news around the world when Yunnan and UK scientists announced that they had found the earliest example of collective behavior there in the form of 525 million-year-old crustacean fossils linked together.

Already a popular weekend getaway for wealthy Kunmingers, Chengjiang would likely experience a rapid increase in international travelers as well as Chinese from other parts of the country were it to be named a heritage site.

Chengjiang fossil image: Nature.com

Kunming resident Colin Flahive (pictured above, right) is on his motorcycle traveling across northwestern Yunnan and southwestern Sichuan, sending occasional dispatches to GoKunming from the road. In today's post, Flahive searches for a road less traveled between Lijiang and Lugu Lake on the Yunnan-Sichuan border.

The number of road projects that the Yunnan government has successfully undertaken over the past ten years is enough to make any motorcycle enthusiast want to bungee a tent to the back of their bike, saddle up, shift out of neutral and throttle straight out of town.

These days, one can buy a road map in just about any decent book store, pick out the smallest roads in any part of the country that piques one's interest, and chances are they're primed for riding.

For our current journey, we wanted to find an alternate route from Lijiang to Lugu Lake as far from the buses and trucks as possible. From there we hoped to pass along the Litang River in western Sichuan to Litang (理塘), the highest town in China at 4,014 meters - 400 meters higher than Lhasa.

We started out from Lijiang by skirting the foothills of the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain towards the eastern passage of Tiger Leaping Gorge. We then worked our way eastward with hopes of finding a bridge that could take us across the Jinsha River (金沙江), better known as the upper reaches of the Yangtze River.

Stopping often to ask locals about the roads and the bridge, our inquiries were always met with "That road doesn't exist" or "There's no bridge there, you have to go back to Lijiang."

With road construction moving at such a swift pace in Yunnan, locals can be forgiven for not knowing their own neighborhoods. And truth be told, the advantage of riding an off-road motorcycle is that even when there is no road, you can make your own.

For a few hours, we were blessed with beautiful tarmac surfaces, but as the road began to break up into gravel and dirt, our hopes for a bridge and getting to Lugu began to dim. Then, a massive construction site appeared over the top of the next pass.

Under the haze of dust and heavy machinery was the Jinsha River; though hardly reminiscent of the magnificent Jinsha I'd seen on trips past. It was bruised, bulldozed and the color of pea soup. Dam construction was well under way along this stretch of the Jinsha. It was hardly a pleasant sight, but the construction zone had provided a temporary bridge that we were able to cross and continue our journey.

With that behind us, we were free to cruise along the stunning high-mountain roads through golden rice terraces and smiling Yi minority villages. These are the kind of places and people that remind you why you fell in love with China in the first place.

We eventually climbed up a high mountain pass that descended upon Lugu Lake. The full moon rising over its rippling waters accentuated the natural beauty of the place. The Old Tree Cafe on the western shore of the lake – run by a friendly young woman from Lanzhou – welcomed us and fed us pasta and drinks as we pondered the next leg of our journey into western Sichuan.

GoKunming thanks Colin Flahive for his contribution - if you have a story you'd like to share with GoKunming readers, please contact us via our contact form.

Economic stimulus package pushing southwest China dam projects forward
Professor Jiang Gaoming (蒋高明) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Botany recently visited several hydropower project sites around Yunnan and found that Beijing's recently announced infrastructure development-focused economic stimulus package has sped up the rate of dam construction in Yunnan and Sichuan.

The mandatory environmental impact assessments (EIAs) for dam projects are not being taken very seriously by companies or officials. After visiting dam projects in different stages of completion, Jiang noted that:


Jiang's use of the term 'cost of doing business' is reminiscent of the way Chinese media described the way Yunnan Chengjiang Jinye Industrial and Trade Co viewed the small fines it had to pay for neglecting to conform to local environmental laws. The end result? Yangzonghai Lake is now suffering from heavy arsenic pollution.

Jiang also noted that while the plan to dam Tiger Leaping Gorge has been officially shelved, the project – which originally called for eight dams – has been relaunched upstream under the new name Longpan Dam Project. The new project would displace 100,000 people along the Jinsha River. Exploratory drilling and infrastructure construction for the project are reportedly underway.

Tengchong airport ready to go
The Yunnan Daily is reporting that the new airport in Tengchong (腾冲) in southwest Yunnan has received regulatory approval from the Civil Aviation Administration of China's southwest regional bureau to commence operations. The airport – located in the village of Tuofeng 12 kilometers from Tengchong will be named 'The Hump Airport' (驼峰机场) to commemorate the flight routes over the Himalayas flown during World War II.

Tengchong's main tourist attractions include hot springs and the rustic old town of Heshun. China Eastern Airlines' Yunnan subsidiary has been granted rights to operate flights connecting Tengchong with Kunming, Lijiang and Jinghong/Xishuangbanna.

Price of fireworks in up 10 percent
Kunming Daily is reporting that prices of fireworks in Kunming this year are roughly 10 percent higher than before Chinese New Year in 2008. Although government statistics claim that open sales of illegal fireworks are down 80 percent from last year, Kunming safety officials are advising purchasers of fireworks to make sure that they buy only from vendors displaying government licenses.

The end of the year is a special time in which editors and writers around the world recycle content from the previous twelve months and repackage it as new content. We at GoKunming are not above this practice, so here's our look at the people and events that shaped 2008 in Kunming and Yunnan.

January
The year began with the Yunnan government shelving its plans to dam Tiger Leaping Gorge, while not necessarily sparing the Jinsha River – the headwaters of the Yangtze – from several new hydropower projects. Kunming banned the use of car horns and the city seemed to be getting a little less horn-heavy for about two weeks. A few days later the city – which is adding an average of 560 automobiles per day to its streets – issued its 900,000th license plate.

Pretty much all of southern China except for Kunming was at the mercy of a winter storm that paralyzed domestic travel and left thousands of travelers stranded in Kunming. Shangri-la (Zhongdian) was hit by heavy snowfalls that destroyed much of the area's livestock and crops plus telecommunications and power networks.

February
Yunnan was hit by a rash of sulfuric acid spills in late January and mid-February with more than 70 tons of the toxic chemical spilling near rivers and most likely entering local water supplies.

Kunming Municipal Party Secretary Qiu He was making waves a few months into his new post, ordering local newspapers to publish the names, titles, responsibilities and phone numbers of local officials in early February and firing a Chenggong investment official who fell asleep during a meeting.

Hong Kong director Stanley Tong signed an agreement with Dianchi National Tourist Resort to build a 3 billion yuan (US$418 million) television and film base that would become 'China's Hollywood'.

Yunnan's first international highway opened, connecting it with Vietnam's Lao Cai province.

March
Construction of the 'turtleback' flyover at Xiao Ximen commenced, throwing Kunming traffic into chaos. Work on the flyover – which is mockingly referred to as 'the newly added slope' (新加坡), or 'Singapore' in Chinese - was finished four months later.

Tens of thousands of bottles of counterfeit beer were found in Kunming's Majie area. The beers are expected to be the tip of the iceberg in terms of the amount of fake booze being sold around the city.

China played Australia's Socceroos in a World Cup qualifying match in Kunming that ended in a 0:0 draw. The match looked like a sure victory for China when it was awarded a late penalty kick, only for kicker Shao Jiayi to kick a slow roller into Oz goalie Mark Schwarzer's waiting hands. Team China went on to fail to qualify for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

April
The old standby F visa option disappeared for foreigners living in China as visa restrictions tightened in the runup to the Beijing Olympics, while protestors vented nationalist anger at Kunming's Carrefour outlets.

May
The International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences World Congress, originally scheduled to be held in Kunming in July, was canceled - apparently due to Olympic-related security concerns.

On May 12, an earthquake measuring 8.0 in magnitude centered in Wenchuan devastated much of Sichuan province and killed at least 69,000 people. Yunnan did what it could to help its neighbor to the north by treating victims from the disaster zone, taking children into its schools and raising money for the relief effort.

The Yunnan white-handed gibbon was declared extinct.

June
Free plastic bags at retail outlets were banned in China.

The Olympic torch passed through Kunming. The torch was originally scheduled to pass through areas including Beijing Lu, Wenlin Jie and Yuantong Jie, but its route was altered at the last minute, keeping it out of the view of most Kunming residents. The torch continued through Yunnan to the cities of Lijiang and Shangri-la before heading to earthquake-battered Sichuan.

The third hydropower station on the Lancang River – as the upper reaches of the Mekong River in Yunnan are known – went online.

July
Yunnan announced a total ban on the production, sale and use of plastic bags across the province, beginning on January 1, 2009.

Jackie Chan announced that he would open a 'Jackie Chan Peace Garden' outside Kunming in the city of Anning. Meanwhile, Kunming was in the middle of planting 800,000 trees throughout the city.

Two people were killed and 14 injured in double bus bombings that took place on public buses on Renmin Xi Lu. A militant Islamic group took credit for the bombings, a claim which was refuted by local police. The bombings were not declared solved until the suspected bomber blew himself up while trying to plant a bomb in Salvador's Coffee House almost half a year later.

August
After an unprecedented buildup, China hosted the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and several other cities, winning 51 gold medals, more than second-place US (36) and third-place Russian Federation (23).

Kunming unveiled its 12-year development plan, detailing how the city intends to handle a major influx in residents and an increasingly important role in regional trade and transport.

September
It was announced that Yangzonghai Lake, one of the largest lakes in Yunnan, was suffering from heavy arsenic pollution, with the bulk of the blame placed upon Yunnan Chengjiang Jinye Industrial and Trade Company, which allegedly found it easier to pay the relatively low fines for not treating wastewater than to purchase and install the equipment necessary for cleaning wastewater. Shortly afterward, Yunnan established a special court for handling crimes against the environment.

October
A government study of HIV/AIDS infections in Yunnan revealed that that women and gay men had emerged as the fastest-growing demographics for new infections, replacing intravenous drug users. It was also noted that new infections were moving away from ethnic minorities in rural areas to Han Chinese in urban centers throughout the province.

A group of fossilized crustaceans from 525 million years ago found near Chengjiang were said to display the first example of collective behavior among animals.

Citing difficulties with the local business environment, Hong Kong-listed property giant Shui On Land pulled out of its Yunnan development projects.

November
Starbucks announced that it would market Yunnan coffee via its hundreds of mainland outlets.

Kunming Airlines announced that it would launch operations in January 2009, the first step in its quest to become a dominant regional airline.

A delegation of Yunnan officials and businesspeople visiting India asked the Indian government to establish a consulate in Kunming to facilitate the visa application process for Yunnan residents wishing to take advantage of the direct flights between Kunming and the eastern Indian city of Kolkata.

The famed Shaolin Temple announced that it would take over management of four Kunming temples for 20 years, during which time it would receive all of the temples' revenue. Shaolin Temple's abbot was accused of being a 'CEO monk'.

December
A man stabbed three women and took a nurse hostage at the Carrefour on Longquan Lu, before being lured to a door where some rice noodles had been placed for him and getting shot in the head by a police sniper, ending the five-hour standoff.

Ground was broken on the 'South Asian Gate', a 72-story, 316-meter tall building that will be completed in four to five years and will be the tallest man-made structure in Yunnan province. It is expected to serve as a hub for business between China, Southeast Asia and South Asia.

A bomb exploded in popular foreign-owned cafe and restaurant Salvador's Coffee House, killing the man who was wearing a backpack with an ammonium nitrate bomb in it near the rear bathroom. Nobody else was hurt. Police concluded that the man, 30-year-old Li Yan of Xuanwei, had also been behind the unsolved bombing of two buses in Kunming in July.

Direct flights opened between Kunming and Taipei.

The GoKunming team thanks everyone who visited the site in 2008 and wishes all of its readers a happy, healthy and prosperous 2009.