Jade Dragon Snow Mountain
— — a white range thirteen peaks long, north of the old town.
Not only on a wall.
“A limestone range north of Lijiang, thirteen peaks long, white above the Naxi villages on the plain. The Naxi call it the home of Saddo, the protector god, and walk to its foothills on certain days of the lunar calendar. The highest of the thirteen, Shanzidou, has never been climbed. Glacier ice still tops the ridge, though it has thinned every decade. — from the studio
Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Yulong Xueshan, Jade Dragon Snow Mountain in English, is a 35-kilometre limestone massif in northwestern Yunnan, rising directly north of Lijiang Old Town. Thirteen named peaks run along its crest; the highest, Shanzidou, reaches 5,596 metres and has never been successfully climbed. The range sits inside Yulong Nature Reserve and protects one of China's southernmost glaciers, Baishui Glacier No. 1. The mountain is sacred to the Naxi people, who hold it as the home of the protector deity Saddo and a site of Dongba ritual.
The crest is most often free of cloud in the first hour after sunrise, then clouds climb up the eastern flank through midmorning. From Black Dragon Pool in the south of Lijiang, at 2,400 metres, the thirteen peaks read as a long white ridge above the pool's stone bridges. Photographers wait at the pool from before first light through about 8:30 to catch the alpenglow on the upper face. By midafternoon the mountain has usually drawn its own weather and is rarely seen clean from the town.
Yulong Nature Reserve charges around 100 RMB entry, with a separate 120 RMB charge for the Big Cable Car that climbs from 3,356 metres at Ganhaizi Meadow to 4,506 metres on the Glacier Park ridge. From the upper station, wooden boardwalks rise toward 4,680 metres at the highest visitor point. Most travellers carry a canister of bottled oxygen sold at the lower station. The reserve sits about 35 kilometres north of Lijiang Old Town, an hour by road, and is busiest from May through October.