Discover Dali
Butterfly Spring
蝴蝶泉
A clear spring pool under an old acacia at the northern foot of Cangshan, tied to a Bai legend of two lovers and to the butterfly swarms that gather here in late spring. It is small, but it pairs naturally with Zhoucheng and Xizhou on a northbound day.
The story
What makes this place special
Butterfly Spring sits at the foot of Cangshan near Zhoucheng on the western shore. It is a clear spring pool overhung by old trees, and it owes its fame to two things: the Bai Butterfly Festival, held on the fifteenth day of the fourth lunar month, when young Bai men and women traditionally gathered here to sing at each other and which is treated locally as a Bai lovers' day; and the 1959 film Five Golden Flowers, which staged its courtship songs at this pool and made it famous across China. The site was approved as a national 4A scenic area by Yunnan's rating committee in 2018. Local accounts say the mass butterfly gatherings that gave the place its name are now rarely seen because of environmental change.
What you’ll discover
A small, well-kept park on a gentle slope: a walled spring pool of very clear water with a large flowering tree above it, paved paths through woodland, a butterfly museum with mounted specimens, and a live butterfly house where bred butterflies fly around you. The whole site is walkable in under an hour. In spring there are butterflies around the pool, but nothing like the clouds of insects in the old descriptions.
A little local insight
Good to know before you go
- Manage the expectation set by the name. Visitor reviews split sharply between people who enjoyed a quiet wooded park and people who saw no butterflies at all and felt cheated. If butterflies are the point of the trip, this is not a reliable place to see them in the wild; the enclosed butterfly house is where they are.
- The one time the site lives up to its reputation is around the fourth lunar month, roughly late April to mid-May, which is both the traditional festival date and the best of the natural butterfly season.
- It is a 10-minute drive from Zhoucheng and 15 from Xizhou. Treat it as a 40-minute stop inside a western-shore day rather than a destination, and skip it if your time is short; Xizhou and Zhoucheng are better uses of the same hour.
- Public transport is poor and the site is well off the old town bus routes. Combine it with a car or scooter day on the western shore.
- The internal buggy is charged separately and is not needed; the site is small enough to walk.
When to come
Late April to mid-May, for the traditional butterfly season and the Bai festival on the fifteenth of the fourth lunar month. Mornings are quietest. Winter has nothing flying.
Getting around
One of the easier sites on the western shore. Paths are paved and gently graded with only a few steps, and a wheelchair can reach the spring pool and the butterfly house. A bad knee will have no trouble. Distances are short throughout.
Worth knowing before you go
The actual butterflies appear for a few weeks around April and May; outside that window this is a pleasant garden rather than a spectacle, so skip it if your time is short.
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