The Lijiang Bank of Tiger Leaping Gorge

At Shigu, the Jinsha River makes its celebrated turn and then runs east between Yulong Snow Mountain and Haba Snow Mountain. The gorge is a long formation in the river’s course, not a walled attraction with one universal entrance. A provincial feature published in January 2025 describes it as about 23 kilometres long and divided into upper, middle and lower sections. It locates the Lijiang scenic area in the upper gorge, at Longpan Township in Yulong Naxi Autonomous County.

That geography gives the Lijiang bank a specific frame. The same report places the scenic area on the southern side, facing Haba across the river, and identifies the county’s Longpan and Daju townships at the gorge’s two ends. The mountains and the narrow watercourse draw the eye across to the opposite slope, while administrative names attach the separately managed visitor landscape to Lijiang. Reading the place through both scales avoids shrinking a 23-kilometre gorge to one viewing platform or mistaking one scenic area for the whole river corridor.

The Lijiang scenic area began construction in 1998 and opened in November 2001, according to the 2025 report. It closed in 2016 in connection with a national major project. In the years that followed, its operator planned and carried out an upgrade; the report describes widened internal roads, a visitor centre, tunnels along the walkway and a more than 700-metre cantilevered glass walkway. These details show how an exceptional river landscape became a designed route, with infrastructure shaping where visitors stop and how they see the water.

The account also records an effort to place local cultural displays within this visitor setting. It names Naxi and Lisu clothing, handicrafts and customs among the subjects presented in a cultural-experience area. Those displays belong to the scenic-area interpretation described by its operator and do not stand in for the many lives and histories of communities across the gorge. The Lijiang bank is therefore best understood as a meeting of river topography, county geography and a managed public landscape—one side of a much larger canyon shared with Diqing.