Shaxi Ancient Village and Hiking Shibaoshan

Sideng Square in Shaxi Ancient Village

Shaxi is often called an "ancient village", and they're not kidding - it was originally founded as a trading post for tea and horses in the Tang Dynasty (618-907). It's located in a really stunning, picturesque valley of farms, tiny villages, and rolling mountains on the horizons. Although Shaxi has been developed for tourism, we didn't encounter the same noisy crowds you often run into in Chinese tourist hot spots. Instead, we were able to enjoy the quiet of the countryside and explore the winding streets of the village in peace. 

Shaxi is located in Yunnan Province, in between the cities of Lijiang and Dali. On our travels last summer, we left the little Tibetan town of Daocheng in Sichuan Province and returned via an extremely long bus journey to Lijiang (with a bus transfer in Shangri-la). We had one more day in Lijiang and then decided to visit Shaxi en route to Dali.

The village is mainly populated by the Bai people, one of the ethnic minorities of Yunnan. You can see a lot of people in traditional clothing around town, and many of the hotels in the village are run by local families, some of which are Bai. As always, it's great to stay at a smaller, locally owned hotel where your money will go into the community you're visiting. We did just that, however we may have made a mistake by booking ahead of time - when we arrived, we had a hard time finding the hotel as its exact location wouldn't appear on our maps. We found it eventually, but there are many hotels and most of them will have vacancies for reasonable prices, so don't worry about just showing up without a reservation.

Bai women taking home their shopping from the marketplace

At the Shaxi marketplace

An extremely sweet fruit drink I bought, that reminded me of Chilean Mote con Huesillos

I love this stuff - kind of like a granola bar, with nuts, seeds, honey, etc. So good!

The village itself is really fun to walk around, with a historic town square, an old temple, a lively marketplace (especially on Fridays when you may get to see some horse-trading), and plenty of good food. We discovered a little coffee shop with great coffee and amazing home-made desserts, and made friends with the owners. They are a young couple who decided working 9-5 in an office wasn't for them, and escaped to Yunnan where they now run their own business and one of them also leads small hiking tours. We all ended up going out for hot pot together and had a great evening.

Anna got pretty excited about the Matcha cheesecake

At our favorite coffee shop in Shaxi

Hot pot dinner with the coffee shop owners

One of the best things to do in the area is hiking around Shibaoshan (or Shibao Mountain). From the village, you can easily walk down the road in the same direction you came from on the bus into the village. Eventually you will take a left on a small road that leads up to a hiking trail. We followed this trail past an old temple built into the side of a cliff, and through a forest to the mountain top. The hike was not especially difficult, even though there are some stairs and climbing involved. We bought a ticket to visit the temple at the top, which was definitely worth it. The temple has a collection of ancient Buddhist carvings into the cliffs of the mountain, including one especially unusual one of a fertility symbol.

The first temple along the trail, built into the cliff 

On top of the first mountain, on the way to Shibaoshan

Beautiful weather and views of the valley

At the temple on Shibaoshan

The temple at Shibaoshan - large, colorful Buddha and Kannon/Guanyin

Some Shibaoshan monkeys

From the top of this mountain you can catch a small shuttle bus to the actual Shibaoshan, where you will be greeted by monkeys ready to snag any snacks they can get their paws on. As long as you don't act aggressively toward the monkeys you have nothing to worry about. And watching them play in the trees and try to steal from tourists is half the appeal of visiting Shibaoshan.

After getting off the bus and past the monkeys, you climb some stairs to another temple built into a cliff. It's very colorful but perhaps not as interesting as the older temple on the first mountain. There are a lot of nice walking paths around the temple and surrounding forest to explore as well.

One of the best things about visiting Yunnan is that the weather is amazing. We had sunny, warm weather that was usually a perfect 25 degrees Celsius (77 F) and none of the humidity that plagues our lives in Guangxi. It really made me want to relocate to Yunnan!