Jianshui Ancient City

Historic Confucian Town Of Southern Yunnan, Home To The Second Largest Confucian Temple In China · Jianshui, Yunnan

A scholarly old town in the warm hills of southern Yunnan, founded in the Tang dynasty and long the cultural capital of the region, where Confucian learning took root so deeply that the county sent an unusual number of candidates to the imperial examinations. Its Confucian Temple, laid out around a broad lake in 1285, is the second largest in China after the one at Qufu, a place of ancient cypresses, stone archways and halls hung with imperial plaques. The old streets run out from the Chaoyang Tower, a gate tower of 1389 that looks like a smaller cousin of Tiananmen, past well-heads worn by centuries of rope and the Zhu Family Garden, a sprawling nineteenth-century mansion of forty-two courtyards built by a family of tin merchants. Outside town stand the graceful seventeen-arch Twin Dragon Bridge and, further on, the earthen village of Tuanshan, whose Ming and Qing courtyard houses survive largely untouched. Linking them is one of the town's pleasures: a narrow-gauge tourist train, descendant of the French-built Yunnan railway, which rattles out through fields to the bridge and the village a few times a day.

Jianshui Ancient City, Jianshui County, Honghe Hani and Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Jianshui, Yunnan, China

Old town streets open at all hours; ticketed sights roughly 8:00-18:00 (check). The tourist train runs a few departures a day, about 8:00, 12:00 and 16:00.

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