Yanjin: The Narrowest City In The World

Yanjin County, Zhaotong, Yunnan Province, China

This is a fun one!...
Every few months, a photo like this goes viral with a title like “the world’s narrowest city.” I’ve seen one too many not to dig in.

This is Yanjin County, China. Yes, it’s a real place. Yes, it looks like that. And yes, that’s awesome.

Yanjin is a city in Southern China in Yunnan province. The region is extremely mountainous with deep river gorges and steep cliffs. It sits between snowy Tibet and the jungles of Southeast Asia, a mixture of which probably provides the right image.

It’s very difficult to get around here. Modern China’s impressive engineering has made it easier, with supertall bridges and winding tunnels, but for centuries the highways were the rivers.

So it makes sense that towns were built along the river. Unfortunately, there’s just not a lot of space.

By the way, a whole lot of posts call this the Nanxi River. It’s not. It’s called the Heng.

Yanjin was a significant trading hub for resources like salt (I’m told that’s where it gets its name in Chinese – can anyone confirm?). The ancient Bo people lived here – they’re most famous for their precariously hanging coffins, but were unfortunately wiped out in the middle ages.

Over time, Yanjin grew and grew into the city it is today. (I say city, but the Chinese would consider this more of a town. It’s has an estimated population of 400,000 , but for China, whose top 50 cities all have over 2 million, that’s pretty light)

Buildings are built where possible, which is essentially between the river and the mountain, avoiding the one road that exists on either side. So the city expanded in the two ways it could: up and along. Anything close to the river is built on very tall pillars to prevent flooding, though floods and landslides do seem to be a persistent problem.

Yanjin doesn’t get as many visitors as the popularity of its photos might suggest, but if you’re in the area, there is a road in and out, and a train station on a rail route that looks like a trip on its own.

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Thanks for exploring with me! - Map Nerd

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