Butterfly Spring Guide

Travel some 27 kilometers south of Dali and you will come to a popular beauty spot known locally as the 'Butterfly Spring'. Situated at the foot of Mount Shenmo, the first of the peaks of Mount Cangshan the spring rises to form a square shaped pool that is shaded by the dense foliage that lines its banks. Covering 50 square meters, the Butterfly Spring of Dali is renowned for its superb scenic beauties, as well as the wonder with thousands of butterflies around the spring. Butterfly Spring is just like a pellucid gem that inlaid in the big shade of lavish greens. In spring, particularly during the Butterfly Festival on every lunar April 15th, all kinds of flourishing flowers are blooming, the silk tree aside the spring gives out quietly elegant fragrance and thousands of colorful butterflies of diverse species and in different sizes are playing around attract admirers from home and abroad.

The beauty of Butterfly Spring had fascinated a great many scholars and literati since ancient times, who left numerous laudatory sentences and prose; among them, the geographer and traveler of Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) Xu Xiake is the best known. In his Travel Notes (an excellent reference book that people still followed today), Xu greatly praised the terrific landscape of Butterfly Spring. The Chinese name of the spring on the park gate was inscribed by the modern litterateur Guo Moruo when he visited the Butterfly Spring in 1961. For most Chinese, the attraction was known because of the film Five Golden Flowers in 1950s, which portrayed a love story that happened in the area; while for local Bai ethnic group, Butterfly Spring is a symbol of loyal love, and on every Butterfly Festival, young people will get together around Butterfly Spring and throw a stone into the water for a good wish and sing songs to know each other for the purpose of finding a lifelong companion.

In recent years, the park of Butterfly Spring has been renovated and expanded, a Butterfly Pavilion, a Hexagon Pavilion, a crescent moon-shape pool, a Butterfly Herbarium and a statue of Xu Xiake are added in.
There are three wonders of Butterfly Spring: spring, butterflies and trees.
Address: at the foot of the Yunnong Peak of Cangshan, Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province

Admission Fee: CNY60
Opening Hours: 08:30-17:00
Contact Hotline: 0872-2431433

• Chongsheng Temple
• Butterfly Spring
• Bai Minority
• the Foreigner Street
• Three Pagodas
• Dali Ancient City
• Erhai lake
• Cangshan Mountain
• Butterfly Spring