Located at the southern end of the Three Parallel Rivers World Heritage Site, cozy Nuodeng Village is nestled at the banks of Bijiang River, which is known for it's beautiful winding bends here. Nuodeng is one of the earliest economic centers of the local Bai minority and means Mountainside with Tigers in Bai language.
The village was also called The Nuodeng Well due to its large salt occurence, which made it very famous during the Tang Dynasty (618-907), as in Heijing. It was also the salt and the salt business, turning Nuodeng into a very important commercial center in Yunnan's west.
The beautiful area around Nuodeng Village is dominated by steep mountains between 1900 and 2300 meters, with many of the local houses built along the mountain slopes. During peak times of salt production though, a lot of trees were cut down in the area for cooking the salt, leaving many mountains deforested.
The peaceful village almost gives visitors a lonely and almost forgotten impression with its mostly elder residents.
Today, the salt business itself is rather of low importance to the area but it is still used to preserve the famous Nuodeng Ham. Especially after the locally famous TV show A Bite Of China made an episode of the Nuodeng Ham, the area got more awareness again. An impression of ham preserving can be watched here (both links in Chinese only).
Nuodeng, some 170 km to the west from Dali Old Town is easily reachable during a one or two day tour. For further travel information for Nuodeng and around, please feel free to contact us.
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