Rania Zheng
Yunnan has two winters. In the far south, Xishuangbanna sits at about 24°C in December, with night markets and tea forests. In the northwest, mornings start near freezing and Jade Dragon Snow Mountain catches the first light. Both ends share the dry season, which runs from roughly November to April, so the skies are clearest exactly when the rest of China is grey.
We plan custom journeys in Yunnan, and the two routes below are the ones we keep coming back to. Each takes ten days from Kunming, the provincial capital and the airport almost everyone flies into. You can do either independently; the trains and drives are listed stop by stop. At the end we explain what we add when we plan one for you.
Why winter is the season for Yunnan
Most of the province gets its rain between May and October. From November the air dries out, the haze lifts and the light goes hard and clear. In the south that means warm, dry days; in the northwest it means cold nights and the kind of mornings when a snow peak turns gold for ten or twenty minutes after sunrise, if the sky allows. December is also the quietest month before the Chinese New Year crowds, which arrive in late January or February depending on the year. For other December ideas across the country, see our guide to the best places to travel in China in December.
Route one: the south, for warmth and tea
Kunming 2 nights → Xishuangbanna 3 nights → Jingmai Mountain 2 nights → Pu'er 2 nights. Fly home from Xishuangbanna.
Days 1–2 · Kunming
Kunming sits at about 1,900 metres and is mild all winter. Use the first full day for the Stone Forest, about an hour and a half east of the city, a landscape of grey limestone pinnacles with narrow paths running between them. Back in town, find the local market to experience the variety of fruits and food in the region. Green Lake and Dianchi Lake fill with wintering gulls from November to March; locals feed them by hand.
Days 3–5 · Xishuangbanna
Take the train south. The China–Laos railway runs from Kunming to Xishuangbanna station in roughly three and a half hours, with many departures a day, and it is the easiest long leg in the province. Tickets are real-name and sell through China Railway's own site, 12306, or the usual booking apps. Jinghong, the main town, is on the Mekong. Give it three nights: the Tropical Botanical Garden, a night market of Dai food along the river, and Wild Elephant Valley, where a cable car runs over the canopy of a reserve where wild Asian elephants live.
Days 6–7 · Jingmai Mountain
A three-hour drive southwest, with stops worth making on the way: an old tea garden kept by the Aini people, a workshop where you can press your own disc of Pu'er tea, a papermaking village. Jingmai itself is the point of the whole route. Tea has grown under the forest canopy here for about a thousand years, tended by Blang and Dai villages, and in 2023 UNESCO listed the landscape as a World Heritage site, the first anywhere devoted to tea. Stay in one of the villages rather than driving in for the day; the mornings, with mist in the forest, are the reason you came.
Days 8–9 · Pu'er
Another three hours by road, north, to the town that gave the tea its name. Pu'er also grows coffee: Yunnan produces almost all of China's, and more of it comes from the hills around here than from anywhere else. A morning at a coffee estate outside town, cupping what the slopes produce, is a good way to see the other crop. The second day can be a forest park or simply the town. From Pu'er, the train back to Xishuangbanna for your flight takes about forty minutes.
Route two: the northwest, for the market and the mountain
Kunming 2 nights → Dali 2 nights → Shaxi 2 nights → Lijiang 3 nights. Fly home from Lijiang.
Days 1–2 · Kunming
The same start: the Stone Forest on one day, the lakes on the other.
Days 3–4 · Dali
The train from Kunming to Dali takes about two and a half hours. Spend the afternoon on the Erhai lakeside corridor, by bicycle or boat, with the Cangshan range on one side and the water on the other. On the second day drive an hour south to Weishan, an old walled town where two crafts are still made by hand: jiama (folk woodblock prints, inked and pressed on thin paper) and wamao, the clay roof-cats that guard houses across Yunnan. Our Dali guide has more on the town itself.
Days 5–6 · Shaxi
Shaxi has no station. It is about two hours by road from Dali, or forty-five minutes by minibus from Jianchuan, the county town. Try to arrive on a Friday: it is market day, and people from the villages around the valley come into town with produce, herbs and livestock, as they have for centuries on the Tea Horse Road. The next morning, mist sits in the valley. Bai makers in the town still dye with indigo; you tie the cloth, lower it into the vat and watch it come out green and turn blue in the air. Our own Shaxi Maker Retreat runs here several times a year.
Days 7–9 · Lijiang
An hour and a half by road, or back via Jianchuan. Lijiang is at about 2,400 metres, so expect cold nights. Three nights lets you spread out the mountain: the cable car to Yunshanping, the spruce meadow at about 3,200 metres under the peak; Baisha, the old Naxi town below it, with its centuries-old temple murals; and Yuhu, a stone village at the foot of the mountain where a Naxi family will show you Dongba pictographs and paper made the traditional way. Choose a room that faces the mountain if you can (see where to stay in Lijiang); on clear winter mornings the summit turns gold around half past seven.
How to choose
South if you want warmth, forest and tea, and a route most visitors to China have never heard of. Northwest if you want old towns, a living market and a mountain outside the window. Both are ten days, both are dry and mostly clear, and both end with a direct flight to Guangzhou or Shenzhen for onward connections. If you have more time, they join: the Kunming–Dali train is the hinge.
What Puyu Add
Everything above you can book yourself. What you cannot easily book is the part that makes the days: the local guide you through the local market and show you what they prefer., the workshop where you press your own tea cake, the Bai makers who let you work the indigo vat, the Naxi family in Yuhu, the jiama printer in Weishan, the coffee estate that will run a cupping.
A custom journey with us starts with you: your dates, your pace, what you want to make or learn or simply sit with. We then design the activities along whichever route fits, and handle the real-name park bookings, the train tickets and a driver who stays with you between towns.
If one of these routes sounds like your winter, tell us about yourselves and we will plan it around you.