Mid-Autumn falls on 25 September this year. On Lion Hill, above the tiled roofs of Lijiang, Amandayan is planning three days around the full moon and the last mushrooms of the season.
The hill sits inside the old town. Dayan, the UNESCO-listed core of Lijiang, spreads out beneath it in a lattice of canals and grey-tiled roofs, and Jade Dragon Snow Mountain holds the northern horizon at 5,596 metres. Amandayan opened here in 2015 in a run of timber dwellings built after the Nakhi manner, 35 suites and a two-bedroom villa arranged around courtyards and terraces, with Yunnan pine and Dong Bei elm in the rooms and Nakhi embroidery on the beds. The Tea House stands beside the Wenchang Palace, a Qing temple to the god of literature that the Nakhi kept on the hill long before the hotel arrived.
The festival programme runs from 25 to 27 September. Mornings begin with tai chi on the decks, the practice UNESCO added to its intangible heritage list in 2020. Afternoons are given to mooncakes made by hand in the kitchen. Evenings bring a shared feast, then a fire in the courtyard and dancing under the moon, which is how the Nakhi have always marked the harvest. Departing guests leave with the year's mooncake box, birchwood, five flavours, the lid worked with a five-petalled begonia and a full moon.
Wenhai and Qihe
The better reason to be here in late September is in the forests. Yunnan's mushroom season opens with the June rains and closes as the ground dries in October, and the mountains around Lijiang are among the richest ground in the province. Amandayan runs foraging journeys in two directions: up towards Wenhai, the alpine lake and wetland on the western flank of the snow mountain, and through the pine woods of Qihe to the south. Guides from the villages know which slopes the rain has reached. Guests walk, cross streams, and turn back the pine needles to find what came up overnight.
What is found is eaten. One version ends at a Naxi family house with a hotpot lunch built around the morning's basket. The other ends at a tent on the forest edge, the mushrooms cooked and served on the spot. Back on the hill, Man Yi Xuan has been running a Taste of Wild Mushroom menu through the summer, and the kitchen keeps it going as long as the forests deliver.
Amandayan on Lion Hill, its roofs stepping down towards Dayan Old Town · Courtesy of Aman
Three tables
Man Yi Xuan is the Chinese restaurant, its name meaning something close to lingering peace. It serves lunch and dinner from Yunnan's larder, river fish from the Lijiang valley among them, with four private rooms for the hotpot cooked in black Nixi pottery from the Tibetan borderlands to the north. The Tea House does Western bistro food by day and turns into the bar at night, with live music and cocktails built on tea. The Lounge, off the lobby, takes breakfast behind lattice windows.
Tea is the through line. The afternoon service at the Tea House pairs Yunnan black and aged Pu'er with Nakhi sweets and local fruit. Down a path of old trees stands the Pavilion, a four-pillared open structure that is the best seat on the hill, used for a private breakfast as the sun reaches the roofs below, or a candlelit dinner of suckling pig, yak and river fish. The spa, reached through the gardens, keeps to wooden soaking tubs and the practice of the tai chi masters who teach on the terraces.
The moon does the work at Mid-Autumn. The forests, this year, will do the rest.
The Splendid EditGetting up the hill
Lijiang Sanyi International is 30 kilometres out, with direct flights from Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu and Kunming. The rail line from Kunming takes around three hours. Amandayan collects guests from the airport or the station on arrival, and returns them on stays of two nights or more. Breakfast, in-room refreshments and a daily cultural activity are included; those activities run to Dongba script, paper-making and fan-painting, the crafts of the Nakhi whose pictographic writing is the last of its kind still in use.
Shanghai's shows fall in early October, and Lijiang is under four hours by air from Hongqiao. The week before, while the moon is full and the pines still damp, is the week to come.
Mid-Autumn programme, foraging routes and the mooncake gift box as announced in Aman’s autumn 2026 release, reported by Now Travel Asia on 26 August 2026. Dining, accommodation, inclusions and seasonal menu from aman.com. Suite count as listed by American Express Fine Hotels + Resorts.
Photography courtesy of Aman — © Aman, Amandayan