Preserving the soul and waterways that keep history alive

Eight centuries after it first took shape beside mountain streams, the Old Town of Lijiang remains a thriving community where customs are woven into the everyday. Citizens trace back their ancestry as they recall stories and memories of their families in a place where heritage continues, report Yang Feiyue and Li Yingqing in Lijiang, Yunnan.

Mu Li usually wakes to the sound of running water. "When I was a child, we fetched drinking water from the river before six. After that, the river was for washing vegetables and clothes," recalls Mu, who was born and raised in the Old Town of Lijiang, Southwest China's Yunnan province.

"The elders always told us: never throw anything into the river, or your mouth would rot."

For generations, such unwritten rules had governed daily life in the old town, where waterways have long been both a lifeline and a guardian.