The Forbidden Love Story That Haunts China's Most Beautiful Mountain Town | Lijiang, Yunnan

Guilin answered some questions but it also opened new ones. We fly northwest to Lijiang about two hours in the air and somewhere between takeoff and landing the China we've been learning to read shifts again. A mountain at nearly 5,000 meters where they sell oxygen cans at the entrance. A gorge so deep the river sounds like thunder from the top. The best ancient town we've seen in all of China and somewhere in the middle of all of it dozens of brides on a snow-capped plateau and a story about love on this mountain that nobody puts in the brochure. That's what Lijiang gave us and we didn't see any of it coming. We are two curious retirees. Traveling and making videos is our hobby. For us retirement isn't slowing down, it's speeding up. We fund every trip ourselves so what you see is the world exactly as we see it. We owe nobody a rosy picture. No filters, no agendas, just two of us busy traveling around the world. To satisfy our curiosity about China we booked a 22-day private custom-built tour with local guides and drivers in every city. The team that made it happen was Chinatours.com. They seem to be the China experts. They do different types of tours, small groups and private. We were able to customize the tour to our liking. As you can see from our China videos, they made our travel experience totally unique. If you're planning a trip to China or anywhere in the Indochina region, check them out. The link is in the description and also in the comment section below. We arrive as the sky is turning dark and there is already something pulling at us. Rain falls softly on cobblestones that have been walked on for 800 years. Our hotel sits right inside the ancient town. Traditional wooden architecture, curved roof lines, lanterns glowing amber in the wet evening air. Lijiang sits at 2,400 meters above sea level, nearly 8,000 feet in China's Yunnan province. This is the heartland of the Naxian Bai people, two ethnic minorities whose culture has survived here longer than most European nations have existed. Within minutes of dropping our bags, we are back out on the street. If you're hoping for Western food, you will not find it. Lijiang is hot pot country, not the gentle simmering kind. The serious kind, red broth with what our guide delicately calls strong flavor and what Zarco calls something that cannot be repeated on camera. This is where we learn two of the most useful phrases of our entire China trip. Bu la, not spicy, and Yi dian la, just a little spicy. We repeat them like a mantra at every meal for the next three days. Sometimes it works. The rain makes this town feel like something from another century. Walking through stone alleyways with the smell of charcoal and pepper and wet cobblestone all around you, this is not tourism. This is something older than tourism. The next morning, we are up early. We are heading for Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, 40 kilometers outside of Lijiang. It rises to 5,596 meters, 13 separate peaks. The ridgeline, seen from a distance with snow across it, looks like a dragon coiling through the sky. That is where the name comes from. Before we even reach the cable car, our guide mentions that most visitors buy oxygen cans to cope with the altitude. All right, so we didn't pack coats because it was too darn, too much stuff to pack. It was like one day you're gonna need a coat. Believe it or not, the guide pulled off and they're renting coats. And so we rented coats and also we got an oxygen bottle. So we're all set to go and you don't have to worry if you don't, if you didn't pack a coat, you can rent one. Small aerosol canisters you point at your mouth and breathe from. They sell them everywhere up here, alongside thermal jacket rentals. Cover mouth and nose together. Okay. Breath here and breathe. We rent jackets. We buy one can, shared between the two of us. Some groups we pass are carrying entire bags of them, five, six canisters each. We still haven't decided if that's excessive or if we were simply underprepared. As we rise, the air is getting thinner. The cable car lifts us to the Spruce Plateau, a meadow sitting at around 4,500 meters, ringed by ancient spruce forest. The snow-capped peaks rising directly behind it. The air is cold and crystalline. The silence when no one is speaking is absolute. We take the electric cart through the meadow because this is China. And even here, at high altitude, in a mountain wilderness, the infrastructure is impeccable. Paved paths, quiet electric vehicles, not a piece of litter anywhere. What catches our eye everywhere are the prayer messages. Thousands of small strips of fabric and paper, red, yellow, white, hanging from branches, from railings, from every surface that will hold them. Each one carries a wish or a blessing, left by someone who stood in this exact place. Buddhist tradition, our guide tells us, a way of sending a thought upward, toward the mountain, and then the mountain itself, appearing and disappearing as clouds move across the peaks. For several minutes, it is entirely hidden. Then the cloud lifts, just slightly, and the White Ridge appears again, massive and silent. But it is not only the mountain that holds our attention, and there are brides everywhere, not a few. Dozens, young women in elaborate flowing white gowns, grooms in suits, and surrounding every single couple, a professional crew, not just a photographer. A crew, lighting reflectors, suitcases of outfit changes, assistance on standby. We watch this for a while, it makes us smile. But then our guide shares something that changes the feeling entirely. For generations, the Naxi people here lived under a strict social system, where families, not individuals, decided who could marry whom. If you fell in love with someone your family disapproved of, you had almost no recourse, no elopement, no defiance, no future. And so, some couples chose a different way out. They would come here, to the foot of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, the Sacred Mountain, the Dragon of the Sky, and end their lives together, believing they would be joined in the afterlife, in a way they were forbidden to be in this one. We think about that, as we watch these young couples laughing, adjusting veils, checking the camera. They chose each other freely. They have the money and the time to spend an entire day on photographs. And yet, they come to the same mountain, the same light, the same water. China has changed fast. But some places hold their history, even as they move into the future. All those brides got us asking questions, and the answers surprised us. Getting married in China is a serious financial undertaking, one that falls almost entirely on the groom's family. There is a tradition called kaili, the bride price, a payment from the groom's family to the bride's parents. Traditionally, compensation for raising her, since she would be leaving their household to join his. The national average today sits around $10,000, but that number tells only part of the story. In many rural areas, the real cost runs far higher, and that is before the wedding itself. But the bride price is just the beginning. A man in China is often expected to own an apartment and a car outright, not mortgaged, before he is even considered a viable suitor. In a country where city property prices have become staggering, that is an enormous pressure on young men and their families. There is also a social concept called sheng niu, which translates bluntly as leftover women. If a woman in China is unmarried past the age of 27, that is the label society gives her. Not quietly. Officially, the term was formally adopted by government agencies in 2007, and has been used in state media ever since. That it falls heaviest on exactly the women least likely to accept it. Educated, independent, professionally successful women who will not settle for a partner below their level. A woman with a graduate degree, a good salary, and her own apartment. And according to this label, she is the problem. Meanwhile, millions of rural men cannot find a wife at all, because they cannot afford the bride price or the apartment. More and more Chinese women are pushing back. Women now contribute significantly to China's economy. One of the highest rates of female economic participation in the world. They are choosing career, independence, and a high-quality single life over a marriage. Then, there is what researchers call the 4-2-1 problem. Because of China's one-child policy, which lasted nearly 40 years, many couples today are both only children. Together, they may be responsible for four parents between them. And in many cases, four grandparents as well. That is a lot of people depending on two sets of shoulders. And yet, despite all of this pressure, all of this cost, fewer Chinese people are choosing marriage at all. In 2024, the number of marriages registered across the entire country was less than half of what it was just 10 years ago. China's divorce rate climbed steadily for years. And even as it levels off now, the mandatory 30-day waiting period the government introduced to slow the trend didn't have the effect they hoped. The generation that followed the rules is watching the next generation quietly rewrite them. We think about that too. Standing on a mountain plateau, watching a bride laugh at something her groom just said, a camera crew repositioning for the fifth time. Coming down from the mountain, our itinerary includes the famous Impression Li Jiang show, an outdoor performance staged by Zhang Yimou, the same director who created the show we saw in Yangshuo, and who directed the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Thousands of performers. The snow-capped peaks as the backdrop. We are told it is extraordinary. We are also told we have a three-and-a-half hour wait before the next performance. We look at each other. We make a decision. We skip the show. We need to talk about how we travel. Over the years, we've graduated from big bus tours to small groups and now fully private. And we are not going back. We've done the big bus tour, the kind that comes with the cruise stopover, a flag on a stick, and 45 minutes at the Great Wall before they load you back on. Never again. Private travel means you go where you want, stay as long as you want, and get into places a busload of people simply cannot go. Chinatours.com made that happen for us. Private guides in every city, from the airport pickup to the train station drop-off. Someone who actually knew what we wanted to see. Twelve euros more per person per day than a premium group tour. We didn't hesitate. Planning a trip to China. The link is in the description. We find our way to Baisha, White Sand Village, a small traditional settlement a short drive away. A coffee shop on an upper floor catches our attention. Young people have arranged themselves on the balcony with the old village rooftops spreading out behind them. Phones extended, composing. We understand by now that this is not unusual. We find a table, order properly made cappuccinos, and spend a quiet hour watching China try to capture the perfect image of itself. It is genuinely a better afternoon. We have visited several ancient towns on this trip. Every Chinese city, it seems, has built a version of one. Restored old quarters with souvenir shops and restaurants dressed in traditional style. Some are fine, some feel hollow. Lijiang's old town is different. It is genuinely enormous. Not a small preserved block, but a sprawling living quarter with hundreds of alleyways branching off in every direction. Stone streets, canals threading through everything. Fed, as we will later learn, by a single spring on the edge of town. Tourists mixed in with local people simply going about their evening. In the evening, we walk toward the open-air market and step into something else entirely. Fruit vendors, food stalls, local families out after work. The smell of whatever was grilling on the cart you passed 30 seconds ago. You stop looking and start absorbing. You let the river of people carry you. We get completely lost. This is when we find out, the hard way, that Google Maps does not work in China. Not imprecisely, incorrectly, it sends us the wrong direction twice. Before we head back to the hotel, Zarko stops to pick up a shirt he ordered the day before. Finding clothes in China that fit a large European man is an adventure. Nothing ready-made came close, but one shop owner offered to have something made overnight. Fabric chosen, measurements taken, done by morning. Zarko picks it up, tries it on in the shop, and likes what he sees. He walks the rest of evening through the ancient town wearing it. Immediately at home in it, that is very much him. On our third day, we drive a hundred kilometers into the mountains toward one of the most dramatic natural sights in China, Tiger Leaping Gorge. The drive earns its keep. Away from reconstructed old towns and tourist complexes, the road takes us through the real countryside, small towns, farmland, roads that follow mountain ridges. China at a different scale. On the drive, our guide mentioned something neither of us had ever heard of, the ancient Tea Horse Road. You've likely heard of the Silk Road, but China also had the Tea Road, a network of mountain caravan routes where merchants carried compressed tea bricks from Yunnan all the way to Tibet and beyond into Central Asia by horse and by foot for centuries. The zigzag paths of those routes are still visible on the mountainsides here, carved by centuries of hooves and footsteps. Tiger Leaping Gorge arrives as a surprise, not just the gorge itself, but the four covered escalators China has built to carry you down to it. Four of them, one after another, each dropping you to a small platform for photographs before the next one takes you deeper. At the bottom, you understand immediately why people come. The gorge is carved by the Yangtze River, the longest river in Asia. Here, in its upper reaches, the Chinese call it the Jinsha River, the River of Golden Sand. It squeezes between two enormous mountain ranges, Jade Dragon Snow Mountain on one side, Haba Snow Mountain on the other, and at its narrowest point, this mighty river is compressed to just 25 meters across. From the peaks of those surrounding mountains down to where we are standing, the drop is nearly 3,800 meters. The gorge takes its name from a legend, a tiger, chased by hunters, leaped across at the narrowest point using a rock in the middle of the river as a stepping stone. Driving back toward Lijiang, we stop at the first bend of the Yangtze River. The Yangtze is the longest river in Asia and the third longest on earth, and here, in its upper reaches, it does something extraordinary. Flowing south from the Tibetan Plateau, it hits a wall of mountains and makes what is nearly a complete U-turn, reversing direction to head northeast, almost 180 degrees. On the way back, we stop at a temple that most visitors to this region miss entirely, Jiryun Temple, a name that translates as pointing at the clouds. The legend says that a Tibetan Buddhist master visiting the region could not decide where to build. He saw a luminous, colorful cloud hanging over one specific spot. He pointed his staff at it and declared, here, the temple has stood on that spot since 1727. What makes Jiryun extraordinary is what it is. A hybrid. The architecture blends Tibetan Buddhist character with Han, Naxi, and Bai traditions, layered into a single compound. You can see it in the roof lines, the upturned eaves of Han design, the heavy, deliberate pillars of Tibetan Buddhism. One building, four cultures. The monks here belong to the Karma Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism, and they still live here. This is not a museum. This is a working monastery. We are guests passing through someone's home. In the courtyard stand five ancient trees, ginkgo, cherry, plum, mulberry, and scholar's tree, each one more than 200 years old. We turn the prayer wheels along the outer walls, large brass cylinders on pivots, each one inscribed with mantras, each turn sending the prayer out into the world. Visitors have been doing this here for nearly three centuries. Driving back through the countryside, we pass through a village, straight through its main street, slow enough to look. Behind the open gates, we can see into family compounds, multiple buildings arranged around shared courtyards, where several generations live side-by-side. Grandparents in one wing, the young family in another, relatives in a third. The homes are larger than we expected. The vehicles parked outside are new. Whatever assumptions might travel with you about rural China, the evidence through this car window tells a different story. At least here, in this valley, on this road, people are not struggling. They are building. On our last morning in Lijiang, before we head toward Dali, our guide takes us to Black Dragon Pool Park. We are here early. This is deliberate, because in the early morning, before the crowds arrive, the water is completely still. It is one of those views that stops you, the kind where you don't immediately reach for your phone. You just look first. What most visitors don't realize is that this pool has been feeding the entire canal system of Lijiang Old Town for hundreds of years. The city was designed so that water from this specific spring gravity feeds the whole town. We truly had a great time in Lijiang. David, our Chinatours.com guide, showed us a part of China we didn't know ever existed. He just bought some tickets for us. He's taking really good care of us, watching out over us, making sure we're not stressing ourselves. And then we leave Lijiang. In the next video, we leave Lijiang and head to Dali, a city with its own ancient rhythms, its own minority culture, its own surprises. We visit a bi-ethnic village, an extraordinary ancient family mansion, and then board the high-speed train south to Kunming, where a stone forest unlike anything in the world is waiting for us. We'll see you there.