Three Parallel Rivers in Yunnan Province

In the high mountains of southwest China's Yunnan Province, three rivers – the Jinsha, Nujiang and Lancang – all originated from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, run roughly parallel, north to south for some 170 km. As the crow flies, the distance between the Jinsha and Lancang rivers is 66 km while that between the Lancang and Nujiang rivers is less than 19 km.

The Three Parallel Rivers site covers land of some 1.7 million hectares. With it come nine nature reserves and 10 scenic spots variously belonging to Lijiang City, Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture and the Nujiang Lisu Autonomous Prefecture. Located where the three geological regions of East Asia, South Asia and Qinghai-Tibet Plateau meet, it is representative of rare alpine landforms and their evolution, and one of the richest biodiversity areas in the world.

Sanjiang is a veritable museum displaying the geological history of the last 40-50 million years associated with the collision of the Indian and Eurasian Plate and the lifting of the Himalaya Range and Tibetan Plateau.

 Every kind of landscape to be found in the northern Hemisphere other than desert and ocean can be found here including magnificent snow-capped mountains and glaciers, precipitous Danxia cliffs and wonderful Karst formations.

The region has 118 snow-capped mountains over 5,000 meters above sea level, varying widely in form. With them come many hectares of untouched forest and several hundred glacial lakes.