Provincial Attraction Guides

A waterfall that straddles two countries: thundering in the rainy season, gentle in the dry, with karst scenery and border villages around it.

Jiangxi's granite forest: pillars and cliffs wrapped in cloud, with boardwalks and cable cars that make the landscape accessible without a long climb.

Iron-rich soil, patchwork crops and rolling hills an hour or two from Kunming: the Red Land is one of China's great photographic landscapes, best in autumn.

Qinghai's summer circuit: rapeseed fields flooding the Menyuan valley in July, with the snow-capped Qilian Mountains and high passes above them.

China's northern Buddhist mountain, where Han and Tibetan traditions share the same slopes and pilgrims walk the circumambulation route past temple towns.

A Ming-Qing town on the Li River's upper reaches: stone lanes worn smooth, bridges over the water, courtyard houses and temples, with room to wander.

One of China's four great grotto complexes: clay sculptures and painted caves stacked up a cliff face in eastern Gansu, an easy stop on the Silk Road line.

Western Hubei's forest plateau: old-growth woodland, meadows, deep gorges and the enduring legend of a wild man, on roads that climb above the clouds.

Jiangxi's cloud-wrapped mountain: a cool plateau of villas, waterfalls and temples above the Yangtze plain, with a UNESCO listing and a summer-resort history.

The quietest of China's four Buddhist mountains: a temple town on the ridge, pilgrimage paths and forest, with far fewer visitors than the other three.

Each April Luoyang fills with peonies, a flower the city has grown for more than a thousand years. How to time a visit, where the gardens are, and what to see between blooms.

Four Buddhist peaks, four Taoist ones, and very different experiences: how China's sacred mountains compare, and which suit a first trip.

Coastal Zhejiang's rhyolite landscape: peaks that shift shape as you walk, caves, and waterfalls in a mountain that Chinese painters have used as a model for centuries.

China's most climbed sacred mountain: stone stairways cut into the ridge, inscriptions from emperors and poets, and a sunrise that has been watched for three thousand years.