Lijiang

Lijiang was invisible to the outside world until an earthquake made it famous. The Naxi people settled this Yunnan highland valley over a thousand years ago, building a town at 2,400 metres where trade routes between Tibet, Sichuan, and Southeast Asia converged. The Old Town—Dayan—was constructed without walls, an unusual choice that reflected the Naxi's trading culture: a city designed for openness rather than defence. The Naxi developed their own pictographic writing system (Dongba script), one of the last living hieroglyphic scripts on Earth, used by priests for rituals and record-keeping.

The 1996 earthquake that killed 300 people and destroyed much of the region also destroyed Lijiang's anonymity. International aid poured in, and the reconstruction drew attention to the Old Town's architectural uniqueness. UNESCO listed it as a World Heritage Site in 1997. Chinese domestic tourism exploded in the 2000s, and Lijiang became the archetype of China's heritage tourism boom—a model replicated across hundreds of 'ancient towns' nationwide. Annual tourist visits exceeded 55 million before the pandemic. The economy pivoted from subsistence agriculture and small trade to hospitality, restaurants, souvenir shops, and boutique hotels.

The transformation has been total—and contested. Critics argue that Lijiang has become a theme park version of itself: the Old Town's residents have been displaced by tourism businesses, Naxi culture has been commodified into performances and handicrafts for visitors, and the 'ancient town' is now largely reconstructed. The Dongba script appears on tourist souvenirs but is read by fewer than 100 living practitioners. Property prices in the Old Town area have risen beyond local purchasing power.

Lijiang illustrates the paradox of heritage tourism: the economic value of cultural preservation incentivizes the destruction of the culture being preserved. The earthquake revealed the town to the world; the world's attention is slowly erasing what the earthquake failed to destroy.