Three rivers – the Jinsha, Nujiang and Lancang

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.
The Three Parallel Rivers 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.
For thousands of years, Tibetan people have regarded the Meili as a holy mountain. To this day they respect the need to obtain permission before going on the mountain. The Danxia landforms in the Laojun Mountains in the Lijiang Area, picturesque in their forest setting, are both the biggest and the best-formed examples of this geomorphology in China. The region is inhabited by 16 ethnic groups, one of the few areas in the world where different kinds of people, language, religious belief and customs live in harmony.
On July 2, 2003, the site was inscribed on the World Heritage List.