Things to do in Lincang

No. 1 of Best Things to Do in Lincang

Wengding Village

Wengding Wa is a primitive collective village located in Mengjiao Township, Cangyuan Wa Autonomous County, Lincang City. The natural scenery around the village is beautiful. Because it is basically undeveloped, it still retains the original ethnic architectural style and simple customs of the Wa people. It is a relatively well-preserved primitive group village so far. Walking into the village, it is an open singing venue. Usually, collective activities unique to the Wa ethnic group such as bullying and pulling wooden drums in the stockade are held here. The entire stockade is a bamboo and wooden house with dry columns, facing the sun and mountains, and it is scattered. The log is the skeleton that supports the house. Bamboo boards are used as the floor, wooden walls, and thatched roofs. The indigenous Wa people are hospitable and live a simple life of self-sufficiency. Whenever tourists come here, they will beat wooden drums and sing "Jia Le Jia Le Si~" to welcome them.

No. 2 of Best Things to Do in Lincang

Tiankeng

Deep in the mountains of Cangyuan Wa Autonomous County, the Gengcang Highway winds like a ribbon through pristine monsoon rainforests. The Tiankeng resembles a green vortex carved by meteorites, preserving the secrets of crustal movements within its vertical cliffs spanning over 100 meters in diameter. This is a "living geological museum" with a vertical depth exceeding 100 meters, where tropical rainforests and underground rivers have engaged in a million-year dialogue. The main pit preserves a complete primitive ecosystem at its base, where visitors can descend along zigzagging boardwalks to observe the three-dimensional vegetation belt formed by tree ferns and staghorn ferns on the pit walls. At the underground river outlet on the pit floor, transparent blind shrimp create silver trails in shallow waters across the travertine-formed "stone coral beach." Visiting during rainy season afternoons reveals sunlight piercing through mist, refracting into shifting rainbows across moss-covered cliffs. Beyond geological exploration, you can participate in the traditional Wa mountain folk's scientific research methods: marking rare plants with hemp rope knots and learning to identify underground river directions through canopy gaps. The stargazing platform on the eastern side of the pit offers a "cave star map" experience at night—matching the Tiankeng's outline with corresponding constellation positions. Local Wa village seniors occasionally bring their homemade rice wine to share mysterious connections between the Tiankeng and the "Sigangli" creation epic. We recommend visiting the pit floor during the dry season at dawn, where orchid mantises and dead leaf butterflies perform their mimicry drama among poison arrow trees amidst the morning mist. While there are no Instagram-worthy installations here, geology enthusiasts will find pristine geological records to decipher Earth's folds—each fossilized arrow bamboo serving as a key to understanding crustal movements.

No. 3 of Best Things to Do in Lincang

Cangyuan Rock Paintings

Lincang Cliff Painting Valley is located in Menglai Township, north of Cangyuan County, Lincang Region. It is famous for ancient cliff paintings with a history of more than 3,500 years. There are 11 cliff paintings discovered so far, which vividly show the activities of the ancestors of the Wa ethnic group, such as hunting, grazing, dancing, sacrifice, etc. The content is rich, the structure is concise, and it is unique. Since 1965, archaeologists have successively discovered 11 cliff paintings in Menglai, Dinglai, Manchuan, Heping, Mangyang, and Meng Province in the central and northern parts of Cangyuan County. Most of these cliff paintings are located 2-10 meters above the ground. On the vertical cliffs with a height of one meter, the painting area ranges from 1 to 30 meters in length. The graphics include figures, animals, houses, roads, various ideographic symbols, trees, boats, sun, clouds, mountains, and the earth. "Dyeam", which means painting on the rock. The cliff painting uses ochre red pigment to flower on the gray limestone, and the characters are varied and lifelike, vividly reproducing the life scenes of ancient human beings. The color of the Cangyuan cliff painting will change constantly with factors such as sunshine, cloudy and sunny.

No. 1 of Night Attractions in Lincang

Lushi Ancient Town

Lushi Ancient Town, originally known as Alusi, has a long history and deep cultural heritage. It is a famous historical town and one of the important post stations on the Ancient Tea Horse Road in western Yunnan, located in Fengqing County, Lincang City. It boasts one of the best-preserved ancient architectural complexes in western Yunnan. Because the town is situated on a key route of the Ancient Tea Horse Road, people traveling from the north and south settled here to do business, and the scale of the streets gradually expanded, eventually forming a unique layout of "three streets, seven lanes, and one square" that incorporates the strengths of various styles. The ancient town is centered around Sifang Street and is distributed in a circular pattern. Residential buildings mainly imitate the style of northern siheyuan (courtyard houses) and the sanheyuan (three-sided courtyard houses) of the Jiangnan region, featuring a two-story, three-bay, three-gable architectural style, complete with tiled roofs and firewalls. The siheyuan have gardens, while the sanheyuan have flower terraces. The walls and buildings are adorned with murals, poems, and couplets, reflecting the locals' pursuit of square, well-balanced homes that gather good fortune and prosperity. At the same time, the residential architecture is also influenced by the Dali Bai culture, incorporating Nanzhao architectural styles.

One Kilometer Landscape Painting Gallery

The Thousand-Kilometer Cliff Mural Corridor got its name because it looks like a dark and colorful Chinese landscape painting from a distance. The murals are steeply formed into cliffs, and some of the cliff faces form cliffs, some are uneven, and the honeycomb-shaped dissolved pores are densely covered, some are smooth and smooth like a knife and axe, and some are like terraces. And the embellishment of epiphytic climbing plants becomes colorful, like a giant mural, depicting the vicissitudes of the ancient land.

No. 2 of Night Attractions in Lincang

Hulu Town

Hulu Town is a lively town on the western Yunnan border. Not only is it filled with flowers and greenery, but the walls of its houses, which retain the unique architectural features of Wa dwellings, are also covered in murals rich with Wa cultural flair. The murals are diverse, featuring patterns of ancient Wa ancestors' lives, rituals, and villages, as well as modern Wa people farming, falling in love, and crafting wooden drums. The imagery is vivid and brightly colored.

Bingdao Old Village

Bingdao Old Village is located in Shuangjiang Lahu, Wa, Blang and Dai Autonomous County, with an altitude of about 1,700 meters. It is mainly rich in Bingdao large-leaf tea.

Yonghe Port, China

Yonghe Port is located near the Yonghe Line in Cangyuan Wa Autonomous County, Lincang City, and is a national Class II open port. It faces the Shaopa District of Mengmao County, Special Region 2 of Shan State, Myanmar, across a bridge. The China-Myanmar Boundary Marker No. 167 is split in two, with each half belonging to a different country, forming a tourist attraction characterized by "one bridge, two countries," "one village, two countries," "one marker, two countries," "one bridge, two gates," and "one mountain, two countries."

Yulong Lake Park

Lancang River Grand Canyon Viewing Platform