Dali E-Bike Day Tour: Car-Free Erhai West Shore to Xizhou

Longkan is an old ferry landing on Erhai's west shore, due east of Dali Old Town and one of the first stops along the lakeside path. It is best known for its row of tall dawn redwoods standing right at the water's edge. In late autumn they turn rust-red, and on a calm morning they are mirrored in the shallows. The sun comes up over the hills of the east shore, directly across the lake, so the early light here is soft and flat across the water.

From about November to March, flocks of black-headed gulls that breed in Siberia spend the winter on Erhai, and Longkan is one of the easiest places to watch them skimming low over the pier. The rest of the year you get reeds, calm water and the Cangshan range behind you.

This is where the lakeside path starts to feel like a ride rather than a town street. It is flat, paved and kept free of motor traffic, and from here it runs about 3 km north to Caicun, with farmland and white-walled Bai villages on your left. Service stations with public toilets are spaced along the path.

Near Panxi village, about 10 km north of Dali Old Town, the lakeside path swings out into the water in a tight S-curve: open lake on one side, wetland meadow on the other, and the Cangshan range rising behind. It is the best-known single image of Erhai's west shore, and it is one of the most photographed spots on the lake.

Panxi is in Yinqiao, the same township as our Dali base, so this stretch of shore is home turf for our guides. They know where to stand to get the whole curve in one frame without a crowd in it. The light is best in the morning, when the sun comes from across the lake and lights up the mountains behind the bend. It gets busy at weekends and during Chinese holidays, so an early start pays off.

The path here is flat, smooth and car-free. Stalls, camping and vehicles are not allowed on the corridor, which keeps it calm even when the photo spot itself is full. Take your time. The ride is easy, and the next stretch north runs through open wetland and fields toward Xizhou.

Haishe means "tongue of the lake", and from above that is exactly what it looks like: a long, narrow strip of land pushing about a kilometre out into Erhai, with water on three sides. It was built up over centuries by sand and silt that the Wanhua Stream carries down from the Cangshan range, and it sits by Jinhe village, just east of Xizhou.

At the entrance stand the "Couple Trees", a willow and a poplar more than a hundred years old whose roots and branches have grown together. Beyond them a shady track runs out along the peninsula under tall trees that turn orange and copper in late autumn, with small fishing boats pulled up along the edge and open lawns where you can sit by the water.

The track out to the tip is flat and wide, and the view back from the end, across the water to the Cangshan range, is one of the widest on the west shore. This is also a good place for a longer break before the last short stretch into Xizhou.

Xizhou, about 20 km north of Dali Old Town, is where the ride ends. Between the lake and the mountains, it was one of the richest Bai trading towns on the Tea Horse Road. Its merchant families, the Yan, Yang, Dong and Yin, sent tea, silk and marble as far as Southeast Asia and Tibet. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries they built more than a hundred courtyard houses, many in the classic Bai layout of three wings and a whitewashed screen wall. During the Second World War the American Flying Tigers kept an airstrip and radio station here.

Walk the lanes around the main square and look inside the Yan family compound, now a museum of the town's history and Bai architecture. Look for the Linden Centre too, a 1948 merchant's house restored by an American couple and now a guesthouse. The rice fields in front of it are green in July and gold by September. Don't leave without a Xizhou baba, the town's round flatbread, sold hot around Sifang Square. It comes sweet or savoury, and the savoury spring-onion version is the one to try.