Anning Hot Springs 安宁温泉

About Anning Hot Springs

The city government describes the setting as 'three hills and one river': the Fengshan and Bijiashan ranges on the east, the Longshan range on the west, and between them the Tanglang River, the only outflow of Lake Dian. Use of the geothermal water here is traced back to the Han dynasty. It is a bicarbonate calcium-magnesium thermal fresh water that can be drunk as well as bathed in, holding between 42 and 45 degrees Celsius through the year and carrying bicarbonate calcium, chlorine, potassium, sodium, magnesium and silicon; the Ming writer Yang Shen honoured it with the name 'the finest hot spring under heaven'. Two national cultural relic protection units stand in the subdistrict, Caoxi Temple, built in the Dali Kingdom period under the Song, and the group of cliff carvings; nine more monuments are listed at Kunming municipal level and one at Anning municipal level, and the Yunnan Buddhist Academy here brings together the Han, Tibetan and Southern Buddhist traditions. From the 1960s the springs served as a reception place for diplomacy with South and Southeast Asia, and Zhu De, Liu Shaoqi, Dong Biwu and Zhou Enlai all visited, Zhou five times.

The water itself has been a governance problem. Procuratorial Daily reported in 2019 that large-scale exploitation had pushed the groundwater level and temperature down noticeably, and that the Anning procuratorate, after half a year of investigation, issued 20 pre-litigation recommendations to the land, water and finance bureaus and to the subdistrict office. Departments were then combined behind groundwater protection measures, and a spring beside the cliff carvings that had been dry for more than twenty years began to flow again. By the city's 2026 account there are 53 cold and hot wells in the subdistrict, 25 of them in use and all metered and remotely monitored. In 2021 the hot-spring town was named a Yunnan provincial characteristic town and the surrounding area was established as a provincial-level tourist resort.

What to look for

• Caoxi Temple, a national key cultural relic protection unit built in the Dali Kingdom period under the Song
• The group of cliff carvings beside the springs, also a national key protected unit, with the spring next to it that resumed flowing after more than twenty dry years
• The Tanglang River, the only outflow of Lake Dian, running between the Longshan range and the Fengshan and Bijiashan ranges
• The Yunnan Buddhist Academy, which teaches the Han, Tibetan and Southern Buddhist traditions together
• The thermal water itself, a bicarbonate calcium-magnesium spring held between 42 and 45 degrees Celsius through the year

Location & getting there

Getting to Anning Hot Springs

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