The Jinsha River winds through Lijiang, and the skyscraping Yulong Snow Mountain majestically stands in north Lijiang. The land between the mountain and the valley fostered the unique multi-ethnic Naxi culture, and the Old Town of Lijiang is a wordless epic of the Naxi people.

When the Naxi people migrated south, they developed the belief that the north represents their ancestors, and the south, their posterity; and developed the conception of the universe with eight directions represented by the Bage diagram under the influence of the Dongba religion; and they, living on the Lijiang plain, offered sacrifices in external spaces and lived in internal spaces. All physical elements of the Old Town of Lijiang reflect the Naxi people’s deep understanding of life.