Yunnan Hui Village Heritage

The Spring City, at 1,890 m with mild weather almost all year, and the Hui community of Yunnan at its densest. Every regional route in this province starts or ends here.

A walled old town between Erhai lake and the Cangshan range, home of the Bai people and one of the oldest Hui settlements in Yunnan. Slow, sunny and the best base in the province.

The Hani rice terraces of southern Yunnan, a UNESCO-listed landscape carved into a mountainside over thirteen centuries. Villages of earth and thatch, water buffalo, and the best light in China in January.

Karst pinnacles an hour east, a UNESCO-listed landscape with paved paths through the stone. Busy but genuinely strange to walk through.

A Qing-dynasty mosque in the old centre rebuilt along Chinese temple lines, and the anchor of the Hui quarter. Wudhu on site, halal food within a minute.

A full circuit by bike or by car along the lakeshore, through Bai villages, fishing platforms and reed beds. Best in the morning before the wind picks up.

Stone-paved streets inside the Ming walls, with a Hui neighbourhood that was settled centuries ago by Muslim merchants and soldiers.

The classic viewpoint. From December to March the terraces hold water and the sunrise turns them into mirrors.

The steepest and most photographed section, with the drop of several hundred metres to the valley floor.

Yunnan Hui cooking: beef hotpot with a sour papaya broth, hand-pulled noodles, grilled beef skewers, and cross-the-bridge noodles made halal with beef. Kunming has several hundred halal kitchens. Nancheng Mosque is nearby, so you can pray and eat on the same street.

Bai and Hui cooking together: halal grilled beef and cheese, sour fish made with lake fish and halal preparation, hand-pulled noodles and a very good halal hotpot. Dali mosque is nearby, so you can pray and eat on the same street.

Hui-run halal restaurants in the county town, plus Hani dishes made halal: terraced-field fish, red rice and smoked beef. Limited choice, so we pre-book every meal. Yuanyang mosque is nearby, so you can pray and eat on the same street.

Central, historic and very active. Jumuah is easy and the surrounding quarter is full of halal restaurants.

One of the easiest cities in southern China for salah. Central mosque, several others in the Hui districts, and hotels used to Muslim guests.

In the Hui quarter inside the old town, active and easy to reach on foot from most hotels.

A mosque inside the old town means you never plan around a drive. Erhai loop days are scheduled so you are back in town for Maghrib.

In the county town of Nansha, about an hour from the terraces. We plan the dawn shoot and the prayers around the drive.

The sunrise shoot starts before Fajr in winter, so we plan it honestly: you pray at the viewpoint with a mat and a compass, and your guide brings hot tea.

Kunming Changshui (KMG), direct from most Chinese cities and a growing number of Southeast Asian hubs.

Dali (DLU) airport, or high-speed rail from Kunming in about two hours.

Overland only, about six hours south of Kunming. We pair it with a Jianshui or a Yuanyang-Kunming return.

All year. Kunming genuinely earns the Spring City name; December to March is dry and sunny.

March to May and September to November. June to August is the rainy season but still warm.

November to March, when the terraces hold water. April to May is planting green; the rest of the year is rice.