Slideshows Yunnan
Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture 大理白族自治州

The Dragon King Temple 龙王庙 on the shore of Cibi Lake hosts the largest temple fair in Eryuan county every year at the beginning of autumn.

The Benzhu is the protective spirit of Bai villages and in the Dali area every village has at least one Benzhu shrine. In Heyijiang, south of Xizhou, the Benzhu has its special day on the full-moon day in lunar June.

Guanyin is the most important figure in the Bai pantheon and on the 19th day of the second lunar month her birthday is celebrated at the biggest Bai temple in Dali.

One of the mysterious Yi ceremonies that have only recently received some attention: masked men creating mischief at night in the village of Gaiwasa 盖瓦洒 in Nanjian county.

Donglianhua 东莲花 is a delightfully well-preserved Muslim village in the Weishan valley, only about a kilometer from Yongjian. Many Muslims made their money in the caravan-trade and often carry the surname Ma. The village, built around one of the largest mosques in Yunnan, has many impressive court-yard houses, decorated with images and mementos from far-away lands.

The Yaba Festival 哑巴节, which has been declared part of China's intangible heritage, is slowly developing into a carnival.

Chama gudao 茶马古道, the old Tea Horse Road: an ancient trading route, a modern tourism romanticism - and still a way of life. Here a Hui family from Weishan 巍山 county is selling their horses at Dali's Third Month's Fair 三月街.

Bare-back riding to exhaustion, dead-sheep polo and professional jockeys: what would Dali's Third Month's Fair be without the races? More exciting than Ascot and you do not even have to be an aristocrat to get in!

Running a thousand years and still going strong: Dali's Third Month's Fair is the biggest market in Yunnan, drawing traders and shoppers from all provinces particularly to buy Tibetan and Chinese medicine.

Nanjian's temple, on a hillside on the eastern side of the town, has on its doors some of the nicest carvings you can find in Yunnan province. While the temple was badly damaged during the Cultural Revolution the carvings seem to have survived the tide of times.

Not far from Dali, the market at Dacang in Weishan County regularly boasts a good number of Yi.

Zhoucheng in Binchuan County is another town that history forgot: stripped of it status as county town in the 1950s (its name means 'old town'), nothing much happened here since: Mao still adorns the walls of the ancient tower, the temple is rotting away and a dog is still waiting for its turn at the dog butcher.