This is a topic already raised but after some years returning to Lijiang is like returning to a cheesy theme park. Bus loads of Chinese tourists with a few token Naxi walking around or picking up rubbish. Most homes are now guesthouses, and Chinese tourists walk around with Indian dresses air-freighted in from Bangalore.

The sound of self-made Han banshee's playing untuned guitars and a smoke filled wine bar doesn't quite fit my memories of the beautiful singing and musical performances of the Naxi people in the old town 12 years ago.

It is sad to say but if you are thinking of travelling to Lijiang I would choose to bypass on the way to Tiger leaping gorge or Zhongdian. I also found Dali a more interesting place even after many trips over 12 years, and it has alot of Bai culture and friendly people.

Rat race lovers and die hard crowd goers and endless tacky shops, then Lijiang is your Shangrala.

Sorry if I disappointed all you over priced guest-house renters in Lijiang but tacky ain't culture.

@Chicha78 Totally agree with all above. Naxi appear to have sold up and gone. What was once a natural and beautiful retreat is now catering for domestic tourists who bring in the cash. But are there quiet periods, perhaps following national holidays?

I agree. First trip to Lijiang, years ago, was cool. Second trip was so so but fewer Naxi. Last time it was like nearly 100% hanified. By this I mean it was hard to actually find Naxi folks in spite of the costumes worn.

More and more, I see minority cultures evolving into what the majority Han perceive and expect them to be. I spent a couple of weeks in Kasghar before the old town was 2/3 bulldozed. I can just imagine Han folks dressed as Uyghurs in the bazaar playing cards and mahjong sans knives of course.

I don't like Lijiang either. Most of old Lijiang's centre is owned by business people from Jiangsu and Taiwan now, or so I was told. But if you get out of the town centre, much of the old town if still populated by locals.
Try Shuhe, about 3km down the road. It is a bit hanified, as much of the real estate is new, but it is in the heritage park (entrance fee was 70rmb/3days). There are no cars in Shuhe. From here you can walk down the old tracks to the Naxi village, with its Naxi museum, all run by Naxi people.

Maybe due to the "fast and furious" group tour nature that most Chinese tourists take it seems that a few steps away from the overly busy tourist areas are almost always devoid of people

I read somewhere, a few years back, that Lijiang was getting 60 000 coach tourists per day. How does the song go?

"You don't know what you've got till it's gone
They paved paradise to put up a parking lot"

12 years ago? Take a decade off that time, and places in China are bound to not just change but become unrecognizable. Sure in Europe and the USA nothing might change in twelve years, but in China, expecting things to stay the same for even twelve MONTHS is naive or unrealistic. Plus, who in the last five years goes to Lijiang expecting it to be a quiet Naxi village? Maybe thats whats still written in the Lonely Planet cause they just reprint old info?

Even Zhongdian has changed. If you're looking for authenticity, try Guizhou, but even there you better move fast, cause tourists and new roads are creeping in to the minority villages. Biasha, Guizhou is already tourified but Lonely Planet just reprints old charming crap about it.

Furthermore, you're welcome to decry that Lijiang is now a tour park rather than Naxi village, but if the locals have left, it's for their own reasons. Riding in the countryside with Westerners, they always decry how farmers upgrade their traditional wood, straw, or mud homes to some concrete shell. I tell them as a rural farmer, that's the first thing I would do to keep rats and bugs away from my family and from freezing less in the winter. In the USA, plenty of native Hawaiians sold their home or land and CHOSE to move to Las Vegas.

@AlexKMG Lijiang has World Heritage status and therefore has a duty to avoid excessive commercialisation. This is a far cry from asking people to live in unsanitary and freezing conditions and any similar arguments are facile. If UNESCO had any guts Lijiang would would have lost this status years ago when the KTV and plastic bucket shops moved in.

Lijiang's World Heritage status hasn't stopped it from changing over time to what it is now. So strip it of the status if it's just more than preserving the architecture that's required.

However, just because you have World Heritage status doesn't mean you can force the local Naxi to stick around for Westerners to admire. If they have decided to sell their homes and shops and move elsewhere, that's their choice and I find it quite reasonable.

Finally, there is an amazing hidden cave in Lava Beds National Park in the USA. It's truly an amazing native American cave site with stone tool embedding and wall paintings from the stone age. I asked the head ranger who gave the limited special tours to this cave how I thought it should be listed as a World Heritage Site. I saw the look on his face and instantly understood why he is glad it isn't. I reviewed in my head what happens to all the places that do make that list, many of which I have personally visited. They become swarmed with tourists and change forever. Maybe if Lijiang never got that status, we could still see Naxi living their day to day lives there.

Didn't a lot of the Naxi go to Argentina? ...oh, sorry that's Nazi