Lijiang Brief

Nature the Great Creator showed extreme affection in his ancient piece of land. Apart from its abundant land, biological and mineral resources, Lijiang has huge reserve of tourism and hydropower resources. In Lijiang, there is the contemporary glacier which is the southernmost one on the north hemisphere.

The ancient Dayan Town of Lijiang has a history of over 800 years. The Town is well-known to the world because "each of the household is built by the stream and surrounded by willow trees". Therefore, Dayan Town is praised as the "Oriental Venice" and "Suzhou on the Plateau". Dongba sculptures of Lijiang were written in pictographs which are the only living written language of its kind in the world.

Lijiang has extremely rich hydropower reserves. Meandering for 447 kilometer within Lijiang, the Jinsha River has a volume of annual flow of 49.12 billion cubic meters, enough for running 5 large hydropower stations, each having an installed capacity of 3 million kilowatts. Within the territory of Lijiang County, there are rich biological resources, and the County is known as the "Kingdom of Highland Plants". The County is dotted with more than 20 well-preserved virgin forests in which there flourish over 800 kinds of rare and precious medicinal herbs and over 3,000 species of seed plants. Apart from all these, Lijiang has abundant mineral and land resources, and the County shows remarkable perspectives of economic development.

In October 1994, the Party Committee and People's Government of Yunnan Province drafted the strategic plan to develop the scenic resort of the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain and put it as the "fist" product into the international tourism market, and to build Lijiang into an important tourism base of Yunnan Province. When taking his investigation tour in Lijiang on October 9, 1995, Vice Premier Zhu Rongji instructed that "If Lijiang is to become well-off, energetic efforts must be made in developing tourism and relevant industries apart from taking agriculture as the key link." All those have not only clearly set the strategic targets for the development of Lijiang that tourism must be taken as the pioneering industry, but also strengthened the confidence of Lijiang people to go all out in developing tourism and take it as the backbone industry so as to promote the all-round social and economic development. 

Lijiang of today is no longer the "forgotten realm". The warm-hearted and hospitable Lijiang people of different ethnic nationalities cordially welcome friends from both home and abroad, and the magnificent and mysterious Jade Dragon Snow Mountain is opening its arms to the world.