5 Days in Chuxiong

The prefecture museum sets out Yi history and bronze drums; the solar calendar park marks the traditional ten-month year of 36-day months; Yiren Ancient Town, built in the mid-2000s, fills with food stalls and dance in the evening — the Torch Festival falls on the 24th day of the sixth lunar month.

1. chuxiong museum
2. chuxiong solar calendar park
3. chuxiong yiren ancient town

An hour east at Lufeng, the park opened in 2008 around an in-situ hall where Early Jurassic skeletons some 180 million years old still lie in the rock; the walkways and museum wing take most of a day.

1. chuxiong world dinosaur valley

Two hours north to Yuanmou County, where two fossil teeth found in 1965 at Shangnabang defined Yuanmou Man, dated to about 1.7 million years; sleep in Yuanmou town ahead of the earth forest.

1. chuxiong yuanmou man site
2. chuxiong yuanmou museum

Clay towers eroded into castles and columns at the Wumao and Langbapu forest sites, an hour's drive apart; late light gives them their colour, and the drive back to Chuxiong takes about two hours.

1. chuxiong yuanmou tulin

Twenty kilometres northwest of town, Zixi's pine forest sits around 2,500 m with old camellia trees and hillside temple courts; a half-day loop, then the afternoon train.

1. chuxiong zixi mountain