木府

This guide to the Mu Family Mansion in Lijiang starts with an odd fact about the old town around it: there is no city wall anywhere, not one stone. It traces that absence back to the hereditary Mu chieftains who ruled here for twenty-two generations, and to a piece of wordplay built into their own surname that shaped how they built their capital. Along the way it follows the exhausted traveling geographer Xu Xiake, who arrived at this palace in the early 1600s and struck up a debt of friendship with the chieftain who took him in. Walk through the courtyards freely, the way visitors always have here.