Elite Traveler September-October 2016

INSPIRE CHINA

which I discover after a two-hour flight the next day. An earthquake in 1996 meant that much of the area had to be rebuilt, but it has been carried out in a sensitive way that is utterly charming. Red lanterns hang from rows of little shops – selling Buddha beaded bracelets, rose flower cakes and colorful cotton scarves – along cobbled streets filled with bridges. And since last year, there’s also LUX Lijiang, the first in a planned string of eight to 10 hotels from the LUX Resorts & Hotels group to line the Tea Horse Road by 2021 (the second property, LUX Benzilan opened in December). Tucked away on the quieter south side of the Old Town, the LUX Lijiang’s 10 rooms each have pine floors and furniture. On the walls hang black-and-white images related to the Tea Horse Road by photographer Michael Freeman (who has produced a book on the subject, Tea Horse Road:

Once the longest trade route in the ancient world, the Tea Horse Road stretches across 2,485 miles of mountain trails in China’s south-west province of Yunnan. The trails were used to transport the coveted Pu-erh tea, which is only grown here, and which, in its rarest form, once fetched $1.7m for four-and-a-half pounds in a 2013 auction. Carried by mules from the trading post town of Lijiang to Lhasa, the tea was exchanged for Tibetan medicine, spices, salt and leather. It was an arduous journey for the ethnic Naxi people, who led their squat, robust mules for several months over rough, dangerous mountain terrain, winding through tiny towns, such as Benzilan and Adong, towards Tibet. My own considerably shorter journey to learn more about the Tea Horse Road begins in Chengdu, the capital of the Sichuan province and home to 14 million people. The traffic-jammed streets and designer fashion stores of the Taikoo Li district make it hard to imagine that one strand of the trail once ran through

here. The district is partly owned by Swire Hotels which last year opened its third outpost, Temple House, that cleverly combines restored Qing dynasty buildings with slick contemporary interiors. It also has an excellent Mi Xun teahouse and spa, and the Jing bar, which is packed with locals sipping tongue-tingling Sichuan Mule cocktails at night. I wander through Wide Alley and Narrow Alley, formerly home to high-ranking military officers from the Chinese army, which are now two criss-crossing pedestrian shopping streets, where food stalls sell snacks, such as pineapple rice and rabbit heads. On one side of the alley, a man lies back in a dentist’s chair to have his ears waxed for 60 RMB (about $9). It has a similar vibe to Lijiang’s Old Town (a designated Unesco World Heritage site),

China's Ancient Trade Road to Tibet ). The marble bathrooms, which come with a round copper sink, are stocked with roseroot scented Tibetan bath products. There’s a tea table in the lobby, where a welcoming cup of tea is poured for new guests, a small library upstairs and a few outside tables that are the perfect spot for a bowl of breakfast noodles. Over the next couple of days, I visit the nearby Baisha village, another original Naxi settlement that’s now part of the Lijiang, where 94-year-old Dr Ho (whose claims to fame include appearing on Michael Palin’s British TV travelog Himalaya ) has run a clinic offering free traditional herbal medicine since 1985. Armed with a canister of oxygen, I take the cable car up Jade Dragon Snow Mountain to an altitude of 14,783ft where a bride in a red dress braves the snow for a pre-wedding photo shoot. Finally, I watch the Impressions of Lijiang performance