Lijiang Old Town
Cobbled lanes and canal-side timber houses rebuilt by hand after a devastating earthquake.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Lijiang Old Town starts on the evening of February 3, 1996, when a magnitude-6.6 earthquake tore through the city and brought down roughly a third of the timber houses standing here. It follows the Naxi carpenters who answered with no blueprint, raising whole timber frames from memory, beam slotted into beam without a single nail. You'll hear why that flexible joinery held while newer concrete buildings elsewhere gave way, and what it took to bring the carved window lattices back to their old patterns. Look up at the woodwork above the shopfronts as you walk through.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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