Yu Wu Village
Glacier-fed lakes and stone-built alpine hamlet where a lone botanist based himself for decades.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Yu Wu Village near Lijiang follows the Austrian-American botanist Joseph Rock, who arrived below Jade Dragon Snow Mountain in May 1922 to collect plants for National Geographic and kept returning for twenty-seven years. It traces the glacier-fed lakes that pulled him back: Longnu, fed straight off the ice, a second lake dug generations earlier by the local Mu family, and the trout-filled Jade Pillars pools nearby. You'll stand at the plain two-story wooden house he shared with his Naxi assistant, among stone walls built from the mountain's own limestone. Horses and sheep still wander loose between the houses, much as they did when he lived here.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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