Wuyi Street Exit/Entrance

This guide to the Wuyi Street entrance in Lijiang's old town follows three thin channels splitting off a single stream, an unwritten rule the Naxi families here kept for centuries without ever posting a sign. It traces how snowmelt off Jade Dragon Mountain was divided into three linked pools: the first for drinking and cooking, the second for rinsing vegetables, the third, furthest from the spring, for washing clothes and pots. You'll hear how that discipline sat closer to superstition than manners, treated as a debt owed to the mountain, alongside the carved water-dragon columns raised elsewhere in these lanes as guards against fire in a town built almost entirely of timber. Look down at the water beside Wuyi Street before you walk on.