Yunlong County Culture

Nuodeng Bai’s village, which is 7 km away from the Yunlong County and 174 km northwest of Dali city, is located in the valley to the north of Yunlong County. It’s regarded as one of oldest traditional villages in Yunnan. Spectacular hamlet of ancient Ming and Qing dynasty houses and flagstone streets is unique.

Nuodeng village was called the “Nuodeng well”. The “well” here means “salt well”, developed since the Han Dynasty, which now has a history of two thousand years. It was once an important stopover on the salt route, but those glory days have long passed, and only a few salt wells at the entrance to the village are a sign of times gone by. Today, Nuodeng’s residents, members of the Bai ethnic group, earn their livelihoods tilling the fields on the steep slopes of the surrounding hills.

Numerous ancient buildings and cultural heritage still exist today, which combine the culture of the Central Plains and the local culture of Bai ethnic group; its humanistic remnants still vividly reflect the integrate of the three Chinese civil ideologies of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism, especially the Confucian culture. The well preserved ancient village scenery and Ming and Qing style buildings which are over a hundred years old in Nuodeng village are fairly intact in their original look and status, which are rare in Yunnan province, even in the whole country.

There are a lot of temple buildings in the village such as Yuhuangge Pavilion, Wen Temple, Wu Temple, Dragon Temple, Squared Gate built in Ming and Qin Dynasties. The sites of salt well, salt bureau, salt institution can easily be seen.