The Most Beautiful Places in Yunnan
8 places ยท updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Yunnan are Tiger Leaping Gorge, Jade Dragon Snow Mountain and Three Pagodas of Chongsheng Temple. The list covers 8 places. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Yunnan lies where the Tibetan Plateau breaks down toward Southeast Asia, and few regions on earth pack so much relief into one province. In the northwest, the great rivers of Asia, among them the Yangtze, Mekong and Salween, run side by side through parallel gorges between snow peaks; in the south and east the land softens into karst and subtropical hills. It is also home to more ethnic groups than any other Chinese province, from the Tibetans of the north to the Bai of Dali and the Hani of the southern mountains.
In the north, the Yangtze squeezes between Jade Dragon Snow Mountain and Haba Snow Mountain in Tiger Leaping Gorge, one of the deepest river canyons in the world. Further toward Tibet, the Meili Snow Mountains rise to Kawagarbo, a peak sacred to Tibetan Buddhists and never climbed. Near Shangri-La, the Ganden Sumtseling Monastery spreads its golden roofs across a hillside, and Baishuitai builds white travertine terraces from mineral springs.
The south offers different forms. At Dali, the Three Pagodas of Chongsheng Temple stand before the Cangshan range, the tallest of them dating from the Nanzhao kingdom. In the Ailao Mountains, the Honghe Hani Rice Terraces climb thousands of steps up the slopes, shaped by more than a millennium of farming, and near Kunming the Shilin Stone Forest is a maze of grey limestone pillars.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tiger Leaping Gorge | Canyon | โ |
| 2 | Jade Dragon Snow Mountain | Mountain | |
| 3 | Three Pagodas of Chongsheng Temple | Pagoda | |
| 4 | Honghe Hani Rice Terraces | Terraced fields | |
| 5 | Shilin Stone Forest | Rock formation | โ |
| 6 | Baishuitai | Hot spring | |
| 7 | Meili Snow Mountains | Mountain | |
| 8 | Ganden Sumtseling Monastery | Monastery |
01 Tiger Leaping Gorge
People's Republic of China27.230ยฐ N 100.140ยฐ E
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Image by Charlottees from Pixabay The Jinsha River โ the upper Yangtze, before it earns that name downstream โ has cut a 15-kilometer gorge between the Yulong and Haba snow-capped ranges so deep that the drop from the highest peaks to the river below runs to nearly 3,800 meters, making it one of the deepest canyons on the planet, whatever the exactโฆ
Did you know? The river through the gorge is an administrative border, with Yulong Naxi Autonomous County on one bank and Shangri-La on the other.
02 Jade Dragon Snow Mountain
People's Republic of China ยท 34.3 km from Lijiang27.098ยฐ N 100.175ยฐ E
Image by vic1108 from Pixabay Jade Dragon Snow Mountain rises straight out of the high plateau of north-western Yunnan, a jagged crest that holds snow all year above the old town of Lijiang. Its highest summit, Shanzidou, reaches 5,596 metres, and the massif's prominence of over 3,200 metres ranks it among the ultra-prominent peaks of the world.
Did you know? In the Tang era the Nanzhao king Yimouxun proclaimed the mountain the sacred "Northern Peak", and a Northern Peak temple still stands at Baisha.
03 Three Pagodas of Chongsheng Temple
People's Republic of China ยท 16.5 km from Dali25.708ยฐ N 100.146ยฐ E
Image by ๅคๅฐผ็ๆฃไป็ณ from Pixabay Three white towers stand in a triangle at the foot of the Cangshan range, looking out over Erhai Lake, just north of the old town of Dali in Yunnan: the Three Pagodas of Chongsheng Temple, the emblem of the region since the days of the Nanzhao and Dali kingdoms.
Did you know? The two smaller pagodas each stand 70 metres from the central tower and 97.5 metres from each other.
04 Honghe Hani Rice Terraces
People's Republic of China23.117ยฐ N 102.738ยฐ E
Jialiang Gao , www.peace-on-earth.org ยท CC BY-SA 3.0 On the southern flank of the Ailao Mountains, above the Red River in southern Yunnan, whole mountainsides have been reshaped into staircases of rice paddies.
Did you know? Hani communities appoint ditch keepers to manage irrigation and settle disputes, and households pay them in 'ditch rice' for their upkeep work.
05 Shilin Stone Forest
People's Republic of China24.818ยฐ N 103.325ยฐ E
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
- UNESCO Global Geopark
CEphoto, Uwe Aranas ยท CC BY-SA 3.0 The Stone Forest โ Shilin in Chinese โ is a karst landscape in eastern Yunnan where grey limestone has been dissolved and cut into thousands of blades, pillars and narrow fins standing so close together that from a viewpoint they really do read as a petrified wood.
Did you know? Shilin became a national scenic area in 1982 and was named a Global Geopark in 2004.
06 Baishuitai
People's Republic of China27.502ยฐ N 100.032ยฐ E
Chensiyuan ยท CC BY-SA 4.0 On a shelf of hillside above the village of Baidi, spring water spreads across a broad white apron of stone and settles into tier after tier of shallow, scalloped pools.
Did you know? In the Naxi language the site's name is usually translated as 'gradually growing flowers', a fitting image for terraces that build themselves up layer by layer.
07 Meili Snow Mountains
People's Republic of China28.438ยฐ N 98.683ยฐ E
Image by arthur___li from Pixabay The Meili Snow Mountains form a single chain of ice-covered summits on the border between north-west Yunnan and Tibet, and seen across the deep gorge of the Mekong they look like a wall of white raised over a dark valley.
Did you know? Kawagarbo stands about 2,232 metres above the lowest point separating it from any higher summit, which places it among the world's ultra-prominent peaks.
08 Ganden Sumtseling Monastery
People's Republic of China27.864ยฐ N 99.704ยฐ E
็ไธฝๆฑ็ๆฒณๆฐด ยท CC BY-SA 4.0 Tier upon tier of whitewashed monks' houses climb a hillside above the high plateau of north-west Yunnan, rising towards assembly halls crowned with gilded copper roofs that catch the sun from far across the valley.
Did you know? Among the monastery's treasures are Buddhist scriptures written on palm leaves.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented โ the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful places in Yunnan?
- On our list, Tiger Leaping Gorge ranks first, followed by Jade Dragon Snow Mountain and Three Pagodas of Chongsheng Temple.
- Why is it called Tiger Leaping Gorge?
- According to legend, a tiger escaping a hunter leapt across the river at the narrowest point of the gorge, using a rock in the middle of the stream. That rock is still known as Tiger Leaping Stone.
- Has Kawagarbo in the Meili Snow Mountains been climbed?
- No. Kawagarbo, the highest peak of the Meili range, is sacred to Tibetan Buddhists, and after a 1991 expedition ended in the deaths of seventeen climbers, climbing on the mountain was banned.
- How old are the Honghe Hani Rice Terraces?
- The Hani people have been building and farming these terraces for around 1,300 years. The landscape was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2013.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Yunnan?
- In our collection, the places in Yunnan are most often mountains (2), canyons and gorges (1), rock formations (1) and hot springs (1).
- How many places are on this list in Yunnan?
- The list covers 8 places.