Discover Dali
Shaxi Old Town and Sideng Street
沙溪古镇（寺登街）
The last intact market town on the Tea Horse Road, restored with Swiss help after being listed as an endangered world monument. Sideng Street's theatre stage, caravanserai and Xingjiao Temple face a cobbled square that still holds a Friday market — this is what Lijiang looked like before mass tourism.
The story
What makes this place special
Shaxi is a market town in Jianchuan County, roughly halfway between Dali and Lijiang, which grew as a trading point for tea and horses from the Tang dynasty and was at its most prosperous under the Ming and Qing. It is regarded as probably the most intact caravan town left on the tea-and-horse route towards Burma and Tibet. Sideng market square was named in the World Monuments Watch list of 100 most endangered sites in 2001, and its restoration has been carried out by Jianchuan County in cooperation with ETH Zurich. The square's Ming-era Xingjiao Temple is a Bai Buddhist temple, and Shibaoshan nearby has rock-cut carvings and temples more than 1,300 years old, including Guanyin images. The population is mainly Bai and Yi.
What you’ll discover
One cobbled market square with a theatre stage on one side, the Xingjiao Temple hall on another, and an old tree in the middle, and a handful of lanes of mud-brick and timber courtyard houses leading off it to the East Gate and the stone bridge over the Heihui River. The scale is small, the restoration is unusually restrained, and the buildings are the original Bai vernacular rather than new construction in old style. Outside the town are farmland, poplars and the Shibaoshan grottoes an hour away by road.
A little local insight
Good to know before you go
- This is the honest answer to anyone who finds Dali and Lijiang over-commercialised. Same architecture, same Bai culture, a fraction of the visitors, and the restoration was done to conservation standards rather than for retail. Stay a night; the day-trip version misses the point.
- The Friday morning market on and around Sideng Square is a genuine regional market for villagers from the surrounding valleys, not a tourist one. Time the visit for it if you can.
- Shibaoshan, with its Tang and Nanzhao-period rock carvings, is the serious cultural sight in the area and most Shaxi visitors never go. It needs a half day and a car or a hired driver.
- Transport is the friction. Shaxi is reached via Jianchuan on the Dali-Lijiang road, with a change to a local minibus, and the last connection is early in the afternoon. Confirm the return before you commit, or hire a car.
- Accommodation is limited and the good courtyard guesthouses fill in October and at Chinese New Year. Book ahead rather than arriving and looking.
- At around 2,100m the nights are cold from October to April and many old houses have no heating beyond an electric blanket. Ask.
When to come
Friday morning for the market. March to May and September to November for dry weather and field colour; winter nights are cold and the rains make the lanes muddy.
Getting around
The square and the main lanes are flat but surfaced in rough, uneven cobble and stone slabs, so a wheelchair is possible only with a strong companion and a short route. Temple and courtyard entrances have raised sills and steps. A bad knee can manage the town, which is small and level, but should expect poor footing. Shibaoshan involves a steep stepped climb and is not accessible.
Worth knowing before you go
The Friday market is the day to be there, and Shaxi is roughly halfway between Dali and Lijiang — breaking the journey here costs you nothing in backtracking.
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