11 Days Yunnan Classic Tour with Chuxiong Yi Ethnic Minority Torch Festival Tour

Highlights: The Torch Festival or Fire Festival is one of the main holidays of the Yi people of southwest China, and is also celebrated by other ethnic groups of the region.It is celebrated on the 24th or 25th day of the sixth month of the Yi calendar, corresponding to August in the Gregorian calendar.It commemorates the legendary wrestler Atilaba, who drove away a plague of locusts using torches made from pine trees. Since 1993, the government of the Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan has sponsored a modernised celebration of the festival, featuring wrestling, horse racing, dance shows, and a beauty contest. Different groups set the festival at different time.

Day1 – Arrive in Kunming

Our tour guide and driver will pick you up from Kunming Changshui Airport. Then transfer to your hotel.

Stay overnight in Kunming downtown.

Day2 – Kunming-Jiuxiang-Shilin

After breakfast,you will drive 1.5 hours to Shilin County to enjoy different kinds of activities will be held there.

Gui Mountain National Forest Park, located in southeastern Yunnan Province.

The Torch Festival or Fire Festival (Chinese: 火把节; pinyin: Huǒbǎ Jié) is one of the main holidays of the Yi people of southwest China, and is also celebrated by other ethnic groups of the region.It is celebrated on the 24th or 25th day of the sixth month of the Yi calendar, corresponding to August in the Gregorian calendar. It commemorates the legendary wrestler Atilaba, who drove away a plague of locusts using torches made from pine trees.Since 1993, the government of the Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan has sponsored a modernised celebration of the festival, featuring wrestling, horse racing, dance shows, and a beauty contest. Different groups set the festival at different time.

You could choose the preferable activity and time to enjoy today.

Activities as follow:

9:00-10:00 Torch-light Ceremony by Bimo at Gui Mountain National Park
13:00-22:18:30 Bull Fighting Match at the bull-flighting village of Yi people.
13:00-18:30  Asia Traditional Bull Fighting at Gui Mounrain Hai Yi Asia bullring
14:00-18:30 Carnival Activity of Chang Hu A Shi Ma’s Culture at Changhu Scenic Spot
14:00-17:00 Folk Customs Show at Danuohei Viilage of Gui Mountain Town.
14:00-17:00 Miao’s Flower Festival at Dake Town

Day3 – Shilin-Kunming-Chuxiong

After breakfast,you will head for Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture.

Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture is the largest Yi’s settlements inYunnan area. The annual Torch Festival is as grand as the Chinese New Year. People will celebrate this Torch Festival Carnival together from all over the world.

Yis Ancient Town began to be constructed in 2005, covering a total area of 245 Mu (Chinese acre). The ancient town takes the style and the sentiment of Yi Minority as principal factors, adopting features of other minorities of Yunnan and the gardens of Jiangnan (China’s south part of Yangtze River). Visitors could enjoy the Yi’s primitive customs, delicious food, songs and dances and the torch festival, etc. The courtyard inns would also be great experience of Yi’s living style.

Day4 – Chuxiong

After breakfast,drive to join in the Torch Festival with local residents and visitors who from home and abroad.

Activities in Chuxiong Torch Festival:  horse racing, bullfighting, sheep fighting; dongjing concert; Yi ethnic sheep soup pot; Yi ethnic long street banquet; ethnic instrumental music, song and dance performances, Yi original ecology dance, bonfire party, sacrificial fire ceremony, Yi dance costumes performances, folk songs, ect.
Celebrating places:Chuxiong Ethnic Group Town,Peach Garden Lake.Re

Day5 – Chuxiong-Yunnanyi-Dali

Relax yourselves in Chuxiong until 10am,then you will head for Dali.

Yunnanyi is located in Xiangyun County of Dali Prefecture, about four hours’ drive from Kunming. As the earliest place named Yunnan(the place to the south of the colorful cloud), Yunnanyi is the former site of Yunnan County of West Han Dynasty and Yunnan Prefecture of Wei and Jin Dynasties; in the Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, Yizhan (remount or post stations) were set here, so it is named Yunnan Yi. Due to its significant geographic location, Yunnan Yi used to be a must-take position since it can connect Dali, Chengdu, Kunming, South and West Yunnan; a time-honored ancient passage stretches through the small village with well conserved folk residences of Bai.

The ancient city of Dali is one of Yunnan’s most popular tourist destinations. It has historic sites, ancient buildings and temples, nearby beautiful Cangshan Mountain and Erhai Lake, local crafts, and the “Foreigners’ Street” with Western-style restaurants and bars and English-speaking business owners. The street is popular with both foreigners and Chinese. It is known as a backpackers’ haven. Cangshan Mountain is a great, scenic hiking area and a natural reserve. Erhai Lake is to the east and Cangshan Mountain is to the west. Tourists visiting the area can see temples and architecture 1000 years old, buy beautiful souvenirs and objects of art, learn about the history of the area and of the native peoples, and go on excursions to the nearby lake and mountain.
The town has a long history. About the year 738 AD, it became the seat of the Kingdom of Nanzhou. The Nanzhou Kingdom had control of important trade routes to Southeast and South Asia. Its location enabled Dali to prosper as merchandise from China was carried southwards, and as goods from as far as India was carried northwards. It was a major trading center. The rulers of the Nanzhou became Buddhists, and Bali became a center for the spread of Buddhism from Southeast and South Asia to the rest of China and East Asia. After two hundred years, The Nanzhou Kingdom was conquered by the Duan Clan. Two hundred years after this, in 1253, the Mongols conquered the city and ended the Dali Kingdom. Under Mongolian Emperor Kublai Khan, Dali became an important military outpost for the Mongolians. The Mongolians in turn were defeated, and the Ming dynasty was established.
In the 1940s, the Yunnan-Myanmar Road, the Hump Flight, and Sino-Indian Petrel Pipe converged with the Ancient Tea-Horse Road, making Yunnan Yi a place of great interest. In Yunnan Yi, one could choose to visit two special museums, namely the Horse Caravan Museum and the Museum for Transportation in the World War Two; the retired aircrafts of the Flying Tigers, and the aircrafts shelter in the farmers’ land are also special.

Day6 – Dali

After hotel breakfast,you visit the Three Pagodas in Chongshen Monastery which has a history of over 1,800 years located at the foot of Cangshan Mountain facing to the Erhai Lake. Three Pagodas are made of three ancient independent pagodas forming a symmetrical triangle.
After lunch, you’ll cruise in Erhai Lake by the small boat to the Jinsuo Islet in the east Erhai Lake. There are 200 Bai ethnic families around 1000 people in Jinsuo Island.In Erhai Lake cruise, you will enjoy the green Cangshan Mountain and the Three Pagodas from a far as well as lots of birds and seagulls flying over the lake.
After landing, you will head for Xizhou Town to fully appreciate Bai-style traditional architectural courtyards, taste their fragrant Three-Course Tea and explore their distinctive culture. Visit Zhoucheng Village and the Bai people’s Tie-dying cloth workshop where you can take some special souvenir with the Bai ethnic style.

Day7 – Dali-Shaxi-Tiger Leaping Gorge

In the morning ,drive from Dali to Shibaoshan mountain .The most prominent sight at ShibaoShan is the Stone Bell Temple with its 139, well preserved stone carvings. These magnificent stone carvings date as far back as 1300 years to the once powerful Nanzhao Kingdom during the Tang Dynasty (618-907).Explore the ancient temple complex including Baoxiang Temple, Haiyun Temple, Shizhong Temple and the Ancient Grottoes. If you are lucky enough, you also can see a lot of wild monkey group around Baoxiang Temple.

After lunch walk around Shaxi Old Town.Shaxi is the last remaining ancient market town of its kind on the Tea & Horse Caravan Trail. This trail is a trading route that connected Tibet, Sichuan, and Yunnan to countries in southeast Asia, also called the Southern Silk Road.The World Monuments Fund (WMF) has listed Shaxi as one of the 100 most endangered sites in the world in 2001.

Transfer to Tiger Leaping Gorge in the late afternoon.

— Tiger Leaping Gorge is on the Jinsha River of the upper reaches of the Yangtze, located 105 kilometers south of Shangrila County. The gorge is 17 kilometers long with a drop of 213 meters. Tiger Leaping Gorge is divided into three sections: Upper, Middle and Lower Hutiao. At the narrowest spot the river is only 30 meters wide. The mouth of the gorge is 1,800 meters above sea level. The river is flanked by Yulong and Haba snow mountains, with a height difference of 3,900 meters. It is one of the deepest gorges in the world.

Day8 – Tiger Leaping Gorge-Shangrila

Trekking down the botom of Middle Tiger Leaping Gorge around 3-4 hours. Then you will transfer to Shangri-la.

Visit the Ganden Sumtseling Monastery, the largest Tibetan monastery in Yunnan. Songzanlin Monastery has another alias – ‘the little Potala Palace ‘, so named because the whole monastery is in the traditional style with mysterious atmosphere.

In the late afternoon,walking  around Dukezong Ancient Town, an important town of the Ancient Tea-horse Trade Caravan from Yunnan to Tibet and India. Walk up to the top of Guishan Hill or tortoise Hill, you will see the largest Prayer Wheel of the world and have a panoramic view of shangrila county and Dukezong Ancient Town.

Day9 – Shangrila-Lijiang

After breakfast,you’ll visit the tranquil Bita Lake & Shudu Lake in Pudacuo National Park Pudacuo National Park is located in one of the most biologically-diverse regions of the world. While the region comprises only 0.7 percent of China’s land area, it contains more than 20 percent of the country’s plant species, about one-third of its mammal and bird species and almost 100 endangered species.

Drive to Lijiang after lunch.You will be relaxed around Lijiang Old Town, a well-preserved old city of ethnic minorities with brilliant culture, is a central town of the Lijiang Autonomous County of the Naxi Ethnic Minority in Yunnan Province. Located on the plateau which is 2,400 meters above the sea level and embraced by the tree-covered Lion Mountain in the west, Elephant and Golden Row Mountains in the north, vast fertile fields in the southeast and crystal clear water running through, the old town looks like a big jade ink slab, therefore got the alias the Town of Big Ink Slab (Dayanzhen).

Day10 – Lijiang

Enjoy the sunrise of the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain and Lijiang Ancient Town in the morning, drive about 30KM to Ganhaizi Meadow(3100M), you will take the sightseeig bus for a short visiting through the Baishuihe River, take the chairlift up to visit Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. The cableway will be arranged according to the condition of the mountain. You will hike around1 hours in the original forest in Spruce Meadow (3200M).
After lunch, you you’ll visit Yuhu Village and the Former Residence of Joseph Rock who was an Austria-American botanist and explorer, lived in Yuhu village and other places in that region from 1922 to 1949. He was also a naturalist and Photographer, and the first foreign scholar to introduce Lijiang ethnic culture to the western world.
Stroll through Baisha Old Town, which is an enchanting traditional Naxi style old town.  Visit the Baisha Mural about 600 years old, which is one part of the World Cultural Heritage by the UNESCO 1997.
–Jade Dragon Snow Mountain stretches a length of 35 kilometers (22 miles) and a width of 20 kilometers (13 miles). Looking from Lijiang Old Town in the south which is 15 kilometers (nine miles) away, the snow-covered and fog-enlaced mountain resembles a jade dragon lying in the clouds, hence, the name Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. The highest peak named Fan Peak (Shanzidou in Chinese) which is about 5596 meters above sea level. There are three cablecars in the mountain, the fist to the Glacier Park(4500M),the second to Spruce Meadow(3200M),the third to Yak Meadow(3700M).

Day11 – Departure from Lijiang

After breakfast,you will be dropped off to Lijiang Sanyi Airport. You will take the domestic flight to Kunming Airprt,then transfer the international flight by yourselves.

Service ends.