Given its otherwise remote setting in a very undernourished, infertile countryside seven hours from Emei by train, XICHANG 's friendly bustle and almost prosperous air are surprising. Focus for southwestern China's Yi community - you'll see plenty around town - Xichang is also the site of China's Long March Space Programme , which in the past has launched satellites with varying degrees of success in competition with NASA and Europe's Ariane project. Bigger things are afoot now: come 2000, China is hoping to put its first manned spacecraft (probably using Russian Soyuz capsules purchased in the mid-1990s) into space from here. This would have delighted Mao, who once commented that China "cannot even get a potato into orbit". In town itself, there's also an older quarter just northeast of the centre where you'll find crowded markets, reconstructed stone gateways, adobe and timber homes, and a couple of rickety tea houses on Nan Jie.

 

Xichang is about 3km across, with the train station another few kilometres west - catch a minibus into town for ¥1. The kilometre-long main street, Changan Lu , runs east, crossed part way along by Shengli Lu and running on to a roundabout and the usually dry Dong River . From here, Daxiangkou Jie runs north into the older part of town, while Sanchakou Xi Lu crosses southeast over the river to two branches of the Bank of China - the second for foreigners. The bus station is on the Changan Lu-Shengli Lu junction close to accommodation ; north on Shengli Lu you'll find the cavernous, upmarket Liangshan Binguan (tel 0834/3223007, fax 3221370; ¥200-300), while across the road and east along Changan Lu is the good-value Wumao Binguan (dorm up to ¥30, double with bathroom ¥30-75), whose room price includes a substantial Chinese breakfast. Snack stalls and inexpensive restaurants are everywhere, with tasty fare served up in hole-in-the-wall places near the Wumao. For information , there's a CITS office loaded with souvenir model rockets just up from the bus station on Shengli Lu, and the much better XITS (tel 0834/3223338, or 3223061; ask for English-speaking "Kevin") hidden away in a Chinese-signed block on Xiyanjing Bei Xiang, an alley running east off Shengli Lu, south of the Changan Lu intersection.

Train tickets for onward travel are very hard to obtain yourself - try one of the information offices. Five hours down the Kunming line, Panzhihua (Jinjiang) is where to catch connecting buses west to Lijiang in Yunnan. There's also a very rough, two-day bus trip 180km west from Xichang to Lugu Lake on the Yunnan border; you first target Yanyuan , from where there's further transport to the lake. Don't catch a bus from Xichang to Lugu, a small town 50km away in the wrong direction. Otherwise, buses run out to sights around Xichang, and also north - via some amazing scenery of dry, uplifted valleys ringed by peaks - to Shimian and Chengdu, or south to Panzhihua and Kunming.