Physical description

The town consists of the historic town, which, together with two surrounding historic villages, constitutes the World Heritage Site. About one-third of the old town, the central area, is the first-level protected zone, with the remainder being second-level protected according to Chinese regulations. Architecturally, the two zones closely resemble each other, but land-use is very different. We estimate that almost all of the first-level protected area and some of the second level area are now primarily a tourist area, where buildings are primarily either entirely for commercial purposes (with some mixed commercial-residential use). The predominantly touristic area may include between 35% and 50% of the total old city area. According to government regulations, in the first-level protected zone (i.e. the tourist zone) all commerce must be connected to tourism, which means there are no local convenience or grocery stores.

Scenically, old Lijiang is a place of great beauty. The historic grain of the old town has been kept, so that there are two- to three-storey traditional houses with tiled roofs lining winding alleyways interspersed by canals, rivers and bridges. The alleyways are paved with natural stone, and infrastructure (electricity, sewage, water) is hidden underneath. The streets are kept immaculately clean, and there are abundant garbage receptacles and incredibly sophisticated public toilets (which serve locals for 5 fen, ca.  0.6 US cent; and tourists for 50 fen, ca. 6 cent).

All buildings in the centre have traditional features, even if many are recent conversions into restaurants or shops, and many, particularly along the Li river, are recently erected and sometimes are out of scale.

Innovations

The streets are kept immaculately clean

Clean and sophisticated public toilets

Some Observations

However, it appears that few locals live in the central area around the Si-fang Square and along the river. Investigation on one typical shop street in the old town yielded the information that only 1 or 2 locals operate shops there, most were ethnic Chinese migrants. This is despite government encouragement for locals to remain the center. However, the encouragement mainly consists of a monthly subsidy of 10 Yuan (1.3 US$). One local shopkeeper (d) said that most Naxi people (locals) prefer to collect money from rent paid by outsiders for their houses and live elsewhere. Two of the local interview partners said that it was difficult to get help from the government to keep up their homes (b,g). Some of the people interviewed also said that tourism was getting out of hand, and that it now was too troublesome to live in the old town (a,b). The government's decision to relocate the local market and to ban local grocery and convenience stores from the area (only tourist items may be sold there).

Generally, we found two somewhat conflicting views.
Some people thought that everything was better before Lijiang became a famous tourist sites 10 years ago, because it made everybody money-minded, and made it difficult and expensive to live in the town (a,b).

Others said that their live had improved compared to 20 years ago, and that many people would prefer to live off the rents of their ancient houses (d).

Cars are banned from streets and only authorised tricycle carts can carry goods to shops. It gives the town a human scale and pedestrians a comfortable experience.

More on Lijiang HERE

II Our Assessment on:

People's Participation
How the poor are affected
The Impact of Tourism
Finance & Heritage
The Image of the City
The Conservationists