Jianshui

Although Lin'an's city wall has been demolished, its four surviving gates remain important space markers of the urban street network. The eastern gate (Chaoyang Gate) is the most important one.

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At the old train station, there is an excellent store selling crossing-the-bridge-noodles. Be sure to check them out.

This town specializes in pottery. It is called "Zi Tao Pottery" or purple pottery. The pottery is nice and of very good quality. Make sure you get a handmade one. Get it from one of the masters in town or at a cheaper rate from some of the shops around.

Jianshui is served by the new standard-gauge railway connecting Kunming with Mengzi and Hekou on the Vietnamese border. As of 2016, about half a dozen trains in each direction stop at the Jianshui station every day; one train continues beyond Kunming to Dali.

• The historic narrow-gauge railway has its station (Lin'an Station; see Do below) just outside of the historic downtown, but it is only used for a local tourist train, and has no regular passenger service.

The historic downtown is walkable; a number of bus routes serve the rest of the city.

Lin'an Town is in the fertile valley of the Lin'an River, which flows across Jianshui County from the west to the east. The rest of the county is on higher, fairly mountainous, terrain, except for the southern edge, where the ground drops precipitously toward the Red River.

Since the Yuan Dynasty, Lin'an has been one of the most important cities of Yunnan, the center of Confucian learning and the veneration of Confucius.

While the ancient city wall that used to surround the city has been demolished in the 20th century (only its four gate towers remain standing), a large number of historic sites remain in and around Lin'an, making it one of the top tourist destinations in the province. A pleasant city overall, Jianshui is an attractive stopping point on a trip between Kunming and the Vietnamese border.