I spent as little time in Lijiang as I could. I have called it to my mom a Chinese version of Niagara-On-The-Lake. The town has completely been rebuilt to look like it did hundreds of years ago. There are thousands of tourists walking along the streets, so much so, you can barely move. It is an important city since it is the biggest city in North Western part of Yunnan and all the busses and trains come from here.
The look of the city is nice with the old style buildings and the various types of local food such as dried yack. It has a huge live music scene with tones of little places where you can listen to music and hit a drum to the rytham of the songs. Finally there are tones of bars and night clubs which is why i call it “Party City.” The bars are filled with Chinese and at night they are drunk as heck. I stayed at the hostel and was kept up till 2 am because of the drunken people.
I liked the city but hated how busy it was.