City guide · Hebei
The biggest freshwater lake on the North China Plain — and almost none of it can be reached except by boat.
Reviewed by our Beijing team Updated 2026-10-10
The short version
City guide
Photographs from the coast, and what other travellers wrote afterwards.
There is a new Exotic Customs Park with all sorts of strange performances. It costs extra, but the atmosphere inside is something you simply would not believe you were still at Baiyangdian.
Traveller note — 'Lotus in full, free and easy'
The boardwalk was built over a pond and connected the rooms to the restaurant, which was very convenient. Seeing fields of lotus for the first time really was a shock. The two places worth most of your time are the Lotus Grand View Garden and the Culture Park — I loved them both.
Traveller note — 'Shooting my way through Baiyangdian'
Baiyangdian is not one lake but a water maze: roughly a hundred and forty shallow basins, thousands of channels cut through reed beds taller than a person, and villages standing on islands and peninsulas in between. Everything you came to see is somewhere out in the middle of it, behind a wharf, at the end of a twenty-minute run in a flat-bottomed boat.
It is the kind of landscape that hides things well, and history used it accordingly. During the war against Japan the local Wild Goose Squadron — the Yanling Dui — ran a guerrilla navy out of these channels, appearing between the reeds and vanishing again; their memorial hall and the rows of old punt-guns are here now. The writer Sun Li turned the same reed beds into a literary school, the Lotus Lake school, and the television serial about the boy soldier Zhang Ga was filmed on this water.
Today the boats carry visitors instead of irregulars. In July and August the lake surface disappears under lotus, families pole between stands selling fresh lotus seed heads, and the dockside kitchens steam crab and stew one-inch wild fish with cornbread. Out of season the flowers go, the price of everything falls, the light gets stark, and the migrating birds move into the reeds.
Baiyangdian
Seven things that are worth rearranging a day for.
Highlights
Some 300 varieties are planted across over two thousand mu of water at the Grand View Garden, and the lake sells fresh green lotus seed heads straight off the boats from May onward. Pick even green pods with a sheen; they keep badly, so buy only what you will eat today.
The soundtrack of the lake: a rower working a pole behind you, water slapping the hull, boards clacking underfoot on the bridges that link ponds to rooms and cookhouses. This is the thing you will remember longer than any single sight.
Sit on a wooden pier off the water-village railings with water on every side. Photographers who want sunrise should sleep inside the lake district the night before — the light over flat water at dawn is the whole reason they come.
Where there are reeds there are reed craftsmen, and their work — woven pictures, mats, screens — ships to Europe and North America from here. Buy one from an actual stall and you can hear the reed bed move in it, which is a more poetic thought than it sounds.
Every one of these channels was a supply route once. The Wild Goose Squadron memorial hall holds the photos and the artefacts — including the flat-bottomed pai-zi boats, rifles and hand-written notes — and yes, this really is where the Zhang Ga serial was filmed.
Free-range duck eggs here are large, green-shelled, with a red-orange yolk and whites that are not aggressively salty, and they go for about ¥2 each. They are also the single most counterfeited item in the region — see the tips block.
Suggested itineraries
The lake dictates the schedule: you are on someone else's boat, working to six or eight hired hours, with daylight as the hard limit.
Slow down enough to see the villagers working, eat twice properly, and float lotus lanterns after dark.
Arrive in Anxin, board your boat and head out to the Shaoche Lake area for open water and reed rather than attractions — sit for a while and watch farmers working the shallows.
Come ashore at a water village for the night. Eat coarse, honest farmhouse cooking, then release a lotus lantern on the water. Sleep with the windows open.
Stops: Anxin wharfShaoche LakeFarmhouse lodging
Start early for the Lotus Grand View Garden and the Culture Park — this is the sightseeing day, and going early means soft light and no queuing for the bridges.
Finish at the local market on dry land: fresh and cooked water caltrop, lotus seed heads and salted duck eggs are cheap here and you are going home anyway.
Stops: Lotus Grand View GardenCulture ParkLocal market
Leave at seven, be off the water by four — enough for the headline garden and nothing else.
Leave Beijing around 07:00 and be at the lake about two hours later. Hire your boat first, agree the return time, then run out to the Lotus Grand View Garden — the acknowledged best single sight on the lake, with world varieties and finished natural views.
Stops: Anxin wharfLotus Grand View Garden
Lunch at a folk village on the water for the local snacks, then take a rowed wooden boat rather than a speedboat for the run back to the wharf. End around 16:00.
If you still have daylight left, spend it on the market before you leave rather than cramming in a second attraction — this is the kind of place where two hurried sights are worth less than one slow one.
Stops: Wangjiazhai folk villageAnxin wharf
Pair the lake guerrillas with the mountain martyrs — the same war, two completely different landscapes.
Settle in, get out on the water at leisure, then eat a farmhouse dinner. Afterwards wander the neighbouring households and buy along the shore — salted duck eggs and a small glass of something, then sleep.
Stops: AnxinBaiyangdian scenic areaFarmhouse
Book your coach in advance: two hours from Baoding to the foot of Langya Mountain, a hundred kilometres, from ¥14 a head, departing Baoding coach centre at 08:55 or 14:50. Carry water and food.
Climb the long stairways, squeeze through the narrow rock passages, drink from the spring, then take the cable car down tired. Buy the yam crisp candy they make at the foot of the mountain — book a whole roast lamb at a farmhouse there if you have the appetite.
Stops: Langya MountainCable carBaoding
Sights
Six themed scenic areas make up the lake. You will not see all of them in a day, and nobody expects you to — pick two or three and give them time.
The headline park · Best in July
Over two thousand mu of water planted with more than three hundred lotus varieties, arranged rather than accidental. The plan is five zones, four gardens, three harbours, two beaches and a hill — in practice it means reception and dining zones, a lotus-picking area and viewing area, a boutique lotus garden, a quiet garden, a fishing pond and a folk garden, plus berths for looking at fish or doing nothing. Threading it all: six miles of circular road, acres of lotus pond, a flower-viewing bridge thousands of feet long and kilometres of boat channel.
Tip Come at opening time. By mid-morning the flower bridge is a slow-moving queue of selfie sticks, and the light has flattened out. There is a swimming beach if the day gets hot.
History · Best of the two big ones for context
Eight hundred thousand square metres of combined story: the Wild Goose Squadron memorial hall, which puts the wartime guerrilla navy back into its reed beds with photographs and artefacts; the Kangxi water-hunt travelling palace and the imperially commissioned Pei'en Temple, which cover the older, imperial relationship with this water; and the Reed Flower Water Village, whose antique-style dwellings stage folk activity. It finishes with the two poetic views — West Lake lotus in the wind and East Bank willows in smoke.
Tip Do this one first if you have come outside lotus season. The memorial hall and the palace carry the trip on their own when there is nothing flowering.
Legend · Included in one ticket
A resort island built entirely around a love story, marketed as China's mandarin-duck island, with the local tale of the fisher couple Diansheng and Shuilian behind it — she killed the bully who had had him beaten to death and then drowned herself, and a pair of mandarin ducks flew out of the rainbow that followed. The ¥20 ticket also covers the Window on Baiyangdian, a converted exhibition complex laid out as six halls and a garden: orientation, local history, folk customs, natural resources, an epic-of-heroes hall, fisher household customs and a water-village garden.
Tip Do not skip the six halls — the historical photographs and the artefacts in them are better than almost anything else on the lake, and they cost you nothing extra once you have paid.
Shows · Weird, and children love it
A purpose-built attraction inside the national 5A scenic area, built at a cost of some thirty-six million yuan, combining managed lotus displays, water-village folk material and a bill of imported and high-octane acts. The programme runs to Russian song-and-dance and fashion shows, tiger taming, dog fighting, horse racing, turtle shows, cormorant fishing displays, motorcycle stunt riding and Wa minority dance. It is either the most fun you will have at the lake or the strangest — reviewers tend to report disbelief.
Tip Check the running order at the gate and plan around it — the whole attraction is the shows. If stunt animals are not your thing, spend the ¥40 somewhere else.
Cheapest ticket · Film location
Folk villages that stay alive because people live in them: courtyards, boat sheds, fish traps and drying racks, with the small museums and performance areas of the film built alongside. Wangjiazhai is the cheapest ticket on the lake at ¥15; the Gazi Impression area, built around the boy-soldier story that really was shot on this water, is ¥40.
Tip This is the cheapest lunch stop on the lake and one of the few places where you can see how people actually live out here, rather than how they performed for tourists in the nineteenth century.
Pick one · Not two
Three of the six themed areas, each around ¥20–40: an island built for sitting down and doing very little, a stretch set up for fishing and messing about in shallow water, and the Exotic Customs Park with imported performances. Honestly they overlap, and most people are content with one of the three.
Tip If your time is short, skip all three and rent a rowed boat for an extra hour instead. Drifting through reed channels with nobody performing for you is the better memory.
Tickets and boats
Boats are hired whole and shared between whoever is aboard: the more people you put in one, the less everyone pays. Rowed boats come with a sun awning and are limited to eight hired hours; motorboats to six.
| Lake entry fee | ¥30 · children ¥15 |
|---|---|
| Lotus Grand View Garden | ¥50 |
| Baiyangdian Culture Park | ¥50 |
| Baodao Water Park | ¥40 |
| Leisure Island / Exotic Customs Park | ¥40 each |
| Gazi Impression | ¥40 |
| Yuanyang Island incl. Window on Baiyangdian | ¥20 |
| Yuanfei Lotus Garden / Fisherman's Paradise | ¥20 each |
| Wangjiazhai Folk Village | ¥15 |
| Rowed wooden boat | ¥140 (6) · ¥190 (8) · ¥270 (14) — 8-hour limit |
| Speedboat | ¥220 (7) · ¥320 (11) — 6-hour limit |
| Water insurance | ¥2 per person |
| Parking | ¥10 for the day, ¥20 overnight, at manned lots |
Eating and buying
The cooking here has made a virtue of the ingredients it had: river fish, six flours including water-caltrop and lotus-root starch, and whatever green things grow at the edge. Tastes run salty-fresh, in the Hebei way.
The broad term covers shrimp, crab and anything else pulled from the lake, served in set patterns of four cold and four hot, six and six, or eight and eight. Egg-skin fish rolls, quick-fried fish slices and crisp fried fish pieces all appear. About ¥30–50 a head — and honestly almost nobody can identify all the species they have eaten afterwards.
Also called One-Pot Fresh, and the dish worth travelling for: an inch-long wild fish and cakes made from six local flours including water-caltrop and lotus-root starch, simmered together over low heat for a full hour until the fish are falling apart and the cakes smell nutty. About ¥20–40 a head, and it is cheap, filling and genuinely nutritious.
Baiyangdian lotus root is famous across Hebei and the neighbouring provinces for being fine-textured, crisp-sweet and leaving no fibre in the mouth. Cut across, one large hole ringed by six small ones, and it will not discolour even left out for a day. About ¥25 a plate; in spring you may find lotus-root shoots, which are rarer and better.
Missed the spring? August and September put it right — nearly half a year of growth in fresh water leaves these crabs big, fine-meated and thick with juice. Priced daily rather than fixed. Eating crab by moonlight while boats work the reeds outside is the whole autumn proposition here.
Sold from stalls along the street in several styles, with an unmistakable river smell — if there were none, it would not be freshwater fish. Cheap and excellent with beer, but go easy: the salt content is serious.
From ducks that forage the shallows: large, blue-green shells, deep orange yolks, whites that are not punishingly salty. Around ¥2 each, reliably good with rice or drink. Also the item most often faked on this lake — see the tips block.
Sold green off the boats across the scenic area. Pick pods that are evenly green with a bright, glossy surface, and bargain — but buy only what you will eat in a day, because fresh lotus seeds do not keep. White lotus gives white kernels, red lotus gives a dark red flesh after the black skin comes off; both are worth drying and carrying home.
Picture panels, mats and screens made from wild reed through something like a dozen hand processes: natural, undyed, and supposedly neither warping nor fading. It carries well, keeps forever, and sells all over Europe and North America from this same lake.
Where to eat
Neither takes cards and neither is cheap by local standards. Book for lunch on summer weekends, and be sceptical of restaurants recommended by your boatman — he is usually on commission.
Village farmhouse · About ¥50 a head
North of the big decorated arch in Guolikou village, inside the lake itself, and known for one thing above all: fish stewed over a wood fire the old way. The menu that regulars order — water-village fish slices, small fish with pickled greens, cornbread buns, cornmeal cakes stuck to the pot wall, and braised wild duck — is short and honest. The rooms upstairs are clean enough to sleep in too.
By the wharf car park · About ¥50 a head
Handy because it is at the wharf, so it is where you end up before or after a boat. It does two versions of the stewed-fish-and-cakes dish — a plain one with four fish and the cakes, and a deluxe version with considerably more in it — plus slow-braised wild duck with no gaminess at all. Reviewers call it expensive for what it is, and cash-only.
The real option · Cheapest
The villages inside the lake are not museums, and plenty of households feed visitors at a table on their veranda. This is where the cooking is least adapted to outside tastes and the bill is smallest. Ask at your lodging rather than accepting your boatman's suggestion, and agree a price for the fish before it goes in the pot.
Sleeping
Where you sleep changes what you pay and what you can reach: inside the lake, at its edge, or in Anxin county town. Bring your ID — everyone checking in here has to show it.
Best value · About ¥50–400
The obvious choice for most people. Rooms are usually triples with air conditioning, television, shared bathrooms and hot water around the clock, and the door opens onto the wharf, which makes early boats painless. Book three or four days ahead in high season.
In the lake · About ¥100–300
Fifty rooms including purpose-built wooden cabins standing over the water, inside the national 5A area in Nilizhuang village — quiet, green, and genuinely away from town. Each room has its own bathroom, air conditioning, satellite television and hot water at all hours.
Its own island · About ¥160–500
A wooden complex in traditional style on an island of its own, encircled by water, built to look like fishing-village architecture while keeping everything modern behind it. The most atmospheric place to stay on the lake and accordingly priced.
In town · About ¥300–1000
The three-star doyen of Baiyangdian tourism and its first foreign-facing hotel, north of Tourism Road in Anxin county town, less than a kilometre from the wharf, with a large car park. Choose it if you want a proper hotel rather than an experience — it also has hot springs.
Getting around
Baoding is the practical railhead. From the wharf onwards, everything runs on hired boats and agreed return times.
Baoding sits on the Beijing–Guangzhou main line with frequent intercity services: about 1h 30m to both Beijing and Shijiazhuang, and no need to book ahead for those. There are also direct trains to Taiyuan, Guangzhou, Xi'an, Zhengzhou, Wuhan and Shenzhen. From near Baoding railway station, take bus 1 to the coach centre and buy a ticket onward to Anxin.
Baoding–Anxin runs every 20 minutes from the long-distance station, with unlicensed shared cars leaving every five minutes from Laochenggen if you want to go now rather than in twenty minutes. From Beijing, Muxiyuan coach station sends buses to Anxin and Xiongxian all day; Beijing–Xiongxian costs ¥27, takes about two hours, and runs 06:00–18:00 every 40 minutes with a last departure at 18:20.
Driving is straightforward and popular. From Beijing take the Beijing–Shenzhen expressway east at Xushui and leave at Rongcheng for the spur straight to Anxin, 162 km; or take the Beijing–Guangzhou highway to Baoding, then east on the Baojing provincial road, 190 km. From Tianjin, the Tianjin–Baoding expressway to Rongcheng and then the spur is 160 km. From Shijiazhuang via Xushui and Rongcheng it is 197 km.
The only way into most of the lake. There are three official wharves — Anxin, Zaolinzhuang and the Xiongxian hot-spring-town wharf — and the closer a wharf sits to the sights, the lower the price. Rowed boats have awnings and Boatmen row them; motorboat and rowed-boat hires are limited to six and eight hours respectively. Fix a return time and swap phone numbers before departure, because boats get busy.
Practical
Area code 0312. There are no banks or ATMs inside the scenic area and most village transactions are cash — this is genuinely the one place where forgetting money ruins the day.
| Emergency (police / ambulance / fire) | 110 · 120 · 119 |
|---|---|
| Anxin County Hospital | West Ring Road, Anxin county · 0312-5322604 |
| Anxin Maternal and Child Health Hospital | East Street, Anxin county · 0312-5203120 |
| Nearest cash machines | Self-service branches of the major banks on Yanling West Road in Anxin county town |
| Clinics inside the scenic area | None — bring your own medicine for motion sickness, colds and scrapes |
| Season for the lotus | May–September; June onward sees the first flowers, September the last |
| Lotus Festival themes | July Charming Lotus · August fragrance for a hundred li · September moonlight on the lotus pond |
| Picking plants in the scenic area | Prohibited — the fine is ¥200 |
| Check-in requirement | Every guest must present photo ID, whether hotel, resort or farmhouse |
Tips
The lake has plenty of legitimate wharves and hotels, so there is no reason to panic about getting a boat. Accepting a tout's invitation because you fear being stranded is exactly how people get taken, and the cheapest offer is rarely the best one.
There is no such thing as a wild goose egg here. Eggs are dyed and sold as duck eggs; duck eggs are sold as goose eggs; anything 'wild' out of a cage is one household's domestic flock. Buy at established stalls only.
Rooms and boats here are built for numbers, and pricing rewards them: the more people sharing one boat or one farmhouse, the steeper the effective discount. This is one lake where a crowd is cheaper than a couple.
There is no bank or ATM in the scenic area, several hotels and restaurants cannot take cards at all, and reaching a machine in Anxin town means hiring a car. Carry more cash than you think you need, plus medicines, water and a layer.
Recommendations from boatmen are normally commission arrangements, and the restaurants they favour are expensive for what they serve. Pick your own, or agree a price for the fish before it goes near a pan.
The lake sits out in the countryside and the channels are unlit. Set off early, agree your return time with the boatman and take his number, and remember that picking any plant in the scenic area carries a ¥200 fine.
Background
Imperial China came here to hunt water and escape the heat. Several emperors kept travelling lodges on the lake, leaving four ruined palaces and a thicket of legends behind them — one inlet is still called Drag-the-King Lake, after the place where the Qianlong emperor is said to have fallen in and been hauled out by fishermen. The Kangxi water-hunt palace now standing in the Culture Park is the rebuilt version of one of those visits.
The twentieth century used the same geography for opposing ends. In the war against Japan the people of Baiyangdian formed the Wild Goose Squadron, a guerrilla force that used the channels, reed mazes and lotus beds to ambush, disappear and reappear, wrecking Japanese columns repeatedly. That war also produced the literature: Sun Li and the Lotus Lake school of writing came out of these villages, and decades later the television serial of the boy soldier Zhang Ga was filmed on the same water. For its part the lake keeps its own quieter distinction — it holds four species of China's first-class protected birds, among them the great bustard, the Siberian crane, the red-crowned crane and the oriental stork.
Baiyangdian lies in the belly of the Beijing–Tianjin–Shijiazhuang triangle, mostly within Anxin county under Baoding, and is the largest freshwater lake on the North China Plain. Climate-wise it belongs to the warm temperate semi-arid monsoon belt, with a dryness index of about 1.40 and pronounced continental behaviour: springs that are dry and windy, hot rainy summers, high clear autumns and cold winters with little snow. The annual mean is around 12°C, and the four seasons are sharply drawn — which is partly why there is no bad month to visit, only different ones.
May to September is the obvious window, when lotus is out and river crab is putting on weight; outside it the lake is colder, cheaper and emptier. Reed production is the other economy, with mats, screens and woven pictures shipped as far as Europe and North America, which earned this place its reputation as the home of reeds. Tourism grew fast once the three big cities started treating it as a weekend destination, and the area carries top-level national scenic status today.
Travel with them
This is a place with an unusually rich paper trail — read one of these before you go and the reed beds stop being scenery.
Sun Li
Fifty-four short stories, reportage pieces and essays written between 1939 and 1950, with more than sixty vividly drawn women at their centre. Sun Li was from here, and this is the book that made the 'Lotus Lake school' — the reason the lake reads as literary to Chinese travellers before they have ever seen it.
Adapted from the novel by Xu Guangyao
The boys of Baiyangdian during the war: Gazi and his three friends run rings around the occupying forces out of the reeds, in stories that keep the cruelty and the childishness side by side. It was filmed on this water, in these channels, which is why the landscape looks exactly the way it does today.
Wartime drama
Heavy from its first frame to its last, score included, and unapologetically so — which is what makes it feel like a record rather than a drama. It is the nearest thing to standing in the reed maze with a punt-gun and a reason.
Li Fushun and Wang Chunxia
Not a southern dream of water towns — this is the dry North China Plain, and its ripples have kept people alive for a thousand years. The book tells the story of the lake's rises and falls as a running argument between people and water.
Sung by Ma Yutao
Ma Yutao has the wide, bright, unadorned mezzo of the classic Chinese folk-soprano — long breath, full resonance, genuine feeling — and this is the song associated with her. Play it out loud on the water and it makes sense in about eight bars.
The questions visitors ask us most about Baiyangdian, answered plainly.
Prices and practical details are reviewed every month by our Beijing team and updated the day a rule changes.
Take an intercity train to Baoding, about 1h 30m from Beijing, then bus 1 from near the railway station to the coach centre for a frequent service to Anxin county; local buses run to Anxin roughly every 20 minutes. Coaches also leave Beijing's Muxiyuan terminal for Anxin and Xiongxian — Xiongxian costs ¥27 and takes about two hours. By road, Beijing to Anxin is 162 km via the Beijing–Shenzhen expressway.
Lake entry is ¥30 and the two headline parks are ¥50 each, so a realistic day of sightseeing plus a rowed boat shared between six comes to about ¥200–400 a head including food and transport from Baoding. Boats are charged per vessel, not per person, so a full boat is dramatically cheaper per head.
May to September, peaking in July and August. The Baiyangdian Lotus Festival has been held for more than a dozen years with different themes each month: Charming Lotus in July, the fragrance of lotus for a hundred li in August, and moonlight over the lotus pond in September, alongside fishing competitions, eco tours and calligraphy and photography exhibitions.
For almost everything, yes — all the island sights are reached by water, with the single exception of Yuanfei Lotus Garden, which is reachable by road. Boat hire is charged by the boat: ¥140 for a rowed six-seater, ¥190 for eight, ¥270 for fourteen, or ¥220 and ¥320 for seven- and eleven-seat speedboats.
No. Private boats can skip the ¥30 lake fee, which is exactly the offer touts make, and it is where the overcharging begins. Buy from one of the three official wharves: Anxin, Zaolinzhuang or the Xiongxian hot-spring-town wharf. In general, the nearer the wharf is to the sights, the lower the price.
River fish first. The whole-fish banquet runs ¥30–50 a head, cornmeal cakes stewed with one-inch wild fish about ¥20–40, a plate of cold wild lotus root around ¥25, and steamed river crab by seasonal price in August and September. Alongside those, the smoke-cured fish sold from street stalls and the local red-oil salted duck eggs.
Eggs claiming to be anything rarer than duck. There are no wild goose eggs here, eggs are sometimes dyed and sold as duck eggs, and duck eggs are passed off as goose eggs. Buy from fixed stalls, and treat any 'wild duck egg' sold out of a cage as farmed — most genuinely wild ones do not reach the market at all.
Yes, and it makes a good two days. Langya Mountain sits about 50 km northwest of Baoding in Yi county, roughly two hours by road, from ¥14 on the coach leaving Baoding coach centre at 08:55 and 14:50. Its five ridges and twenty-six peaks gave it its name, and it is famous for the five heroes who jumped from it in 1941.
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Sanqing Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
A vertical forest of granite pillars in Jiangxi — the Python Out of the Mountain, the Goddess of the East Sea, two cable cars and a cliff-hugging walkway at 1,660 metres.
Tianjin
City guide · 12 tours
Beijing's port city next door — a river of 24 bridges, 2,000 colonial villas, and the best street breakfast in northern China.
Datong
City guide · 12 tours
A frontier capital of carved Buddhas — the Yungang Grottoes, a temple pinned to a cliff, and the oldest wooden tower in China.
Taiyuan
City guide · 12 tours
Shanxi's provincial capital and noodle heartland — the spring of Jinci, two Ming pagodas, and a museum that explains the whole province.
Pingyao
City guide · 12 tours
China's best-preserved ancient walled town — a Ming wall, the first Chinese bank, and two temples of painted clay just outside the gates.
Wutai Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
China's foremost Buddhist mountain — fifty-plus temples in one valley, crowned by five flat-topped peaks up to 3,058 m.
Hulunbuir
City guide · 12 tours
China's finest grassland — a 263,000 km² sweep of steppe, birch forest and border river, best driven with the windows down.
The Forbidden City
City guide · 12 tours
Beijing's 600-year imperial palace — 8,700 rooms behind a 72-hectare wall, and the largest surviving wooden palace complex on earth.
Sanya
City guide · 12 tours
China's only true winter-sun coast — four very different bays, a coral island and a 108 m sea Buddha, all at 18° north.
Haikou
City guide · 12 tours
Hainan's capital is the island's living city — 600-year-old arcade streets, a volcanic village, and a morning-tea-to-midnight food culture.
Beihai
City guide · 12 tours
24 km of fine white sand on one side, a volcanic island of coral and lava on the other — plus a 19th-century arcade old street in between.
Nanning
City guide · 12 tours
Guangxi's green capital is a gateway to Detian Falls, Beihai and Vietnam — and a genuinely excellent food city if you let it slow you down.
Guangxi
City guide · 12 tours
One autonomous region, a dozen landscapes — limestone peaks and rice terraces in the north, a Vietnam border and a warm gulf coast in the south.
Huizhou
City guide · 12 tours
A free West Lake, a Taoist mountain and 200 km of white-sand coast — the Pearl River Delta's most underrated weekend.
Beidaihe
City guide · 12 tours
Northern China's classic beach escape — one sunrise headland, 10 km of calm swimming water, and a bird flyway overhead twice a year.
Shanhaiguan
City guide · 12 tours
The town where the Great Wall stops being a rumour of mountains and walks into the Bohai Sea.
Qinhuangdao
City guide · 12 tours
126 km of Bohai coast in one municipality — a working port, two famous resorts, and the only desert dunes that meet this sea.
Yesanpo
City guide · 12 tours
Gorge country where the Taihang and Yan ranges collide — 52.5 km of canyon walls, a cave that spits fish, and a river to fall off.
Zhuhai
City guide · 12 tours
The delta's slow city: a 28 km promenade, 146 islands, oysters fattened where the river meets the sea.
Wuyi Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
Nine bends of clear water, red sandstone cliffs, and the tea that made a mountain's name.
Jiuzhaigou
City guide · 12 tours
108 mineral-blue lakes in one 55 km valley — the place that ruins water everywhere else for you.
Mount Siguniang
City guide · 12 tours
Four snow peaks, three valleys, and the friendliest 5,000 m mountain in China to stand on top of.
Hailuogou
City guide · 12 tours
A glacier that comes down to 2,850 m, hot springs in the forest, and Gongga Shan filling the sky above both.
Daocheng Yading
City guide · 12 tours
Three 6,000 m sacred peaks, glacial lakes at 4,600 m and twenty hours of road — the hardest, highest payoff in Sichuan.
Shunan Bamboo Sea
City guide · 12 tours
Seventy thousand mu of bamboo over twenty-eight hills, a red sandstone corridor under a closed green roof, and a banquet made entirely of bamboo.
Dujiangyan
City guide · 12 tours
Not a monument but a machine: three pieces of engineering with no dam, still doing their job after 2,270 years.
Qingcheng Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
The mountain where Daoism was organised, and the one Chengdu escapes to when the basin turns into an oven.
Qingdao
City guide · 12 tours
Red-tiled roofs, cold beer and a granite mountain that walks straight into the sea — the easiest good time on the Yellow Sea.
Mount Tai
City guide · 12 tours
1,545 metres, 6,290 stone steps and three thousand years of emperors — the one mountain in China that is also a document.
Jinan
City guide · 12 tours
A provincial capital with 700 springs under the pavement — people still queue at the spouts to fill their kettles.
Weihai
City guide · 12 tours
1,000 km of clean coast, a free bathing beach, the island where the Beiyang Fleet died — and thousands of wild swans every winter.
Qufu
City guide · 12 tours
One family, two thousand years of steles, and a ¥150 pass that covers the lot — the easiest serious day trip in Shandong.
Penglai
City guide · 12 tours
China's immortals' coast — a Song-dynasty naval harbour you can walk for free, a mythology nobody ever found, and the ferry to 32 islands.
Changdao
City guide · 12 tours
32 islands, one causeway, a ¥150 land pass, tens of thousands of gulls and nowhere you can drive — the place where everything happens by boat.
Nanjing
City guide · 12 tours
Capital of six dynasties, capital of the Republic, and the city that eats more duck than anywhere else on earth.
Suzhou
City guide · 12 tours
Two thousand five hundred years of canals, sixty surviving gardens, and a city that shuts its gates at half past five.
Zhouzhuang
City guide · 12 tours
Nine hundred years, fourteen bridges, one ticket — and a town that only makes sense before eight in the morning.
Tongli
City guide · 12 tours
Fifteen canals, seven islets, forty-nine bridges — and a town that still gets up at dawn because it lives here.
Wuxi
City guide · 12 tours
Taihu on one side, a Grand Buddha on the next hill, and ribs sweet enough to argue about — the most underrated city on the Yangtze delta.
Yangzhou
City guide · 12 tours
A city built by salt merchants who had more money than restraint — gardens, a narrow lake, and the best breakfast in China.
Zhenjiang
City guide · 12 tours
Three hills, one ferry landing, and an unreasonable share of Chinese literature — the Yangtze city people drive past.
Changzhou
City guide · 12 tours
A 2,500-year-old canal city that built a dinosaur park and refuses to apologise for it.
Wuzhen
City guide · 12 tours
A town that is two towns: the older, quieter East Zone and the lit-up West Zone you sleep inside.
Xitang
City guide · 12 tours
Nine canals, 122 lanes, one long roofed corridor — and a town that still works for a living.
Hangzhou
City guide · 12 tours
A lake in the middle of a city, a tea village in the hills, and two thousand years of getting the mood right.
Xixi Wetland
City guide · 12 tours
Ten square kilometres of marsh inside Hangzhou, and the only way into half of it is a boat.
Ningbo
City guide · 12 tours
A 7,000-year-old port with Asia's oldest private library, a free waterfront 20 years older than Shanghai's, and the best seafood before the islands.
Mount Putuo
City guide · 12 tours
A Buddhist island with no cars, three great temples and a ¥10 lunch that is the point of the place.
Qiandao Lake
City guide · 12 tours
A thousand islands that did not exist sixty years ago, and the cleanest big-lake water in China.
Shaoxing
City guide · 12 tours
Two and a half thousand years of water-town China, and Lu Xun's house is free.
Zhoushan
City guide · 12 tours
1,390 islands, one road bridge in, and a harbour that lands more fish than almost anywhere on earth.
Hengdian
City guide · 12 tours
A backlot the size of a town, where the palaces are copies and the film crews are real.
Yandang Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
A volcano that weathering turned into scenery — 500-odd sights of peak, cave and waterfall across eight scenic areas.
Zhejiang
City guide · 12 tours
One small, mountainous, absurdly rich province that holds a lake, two canal towns, a Buddhist island and a dead volcano.
Hong Kong Outlying Islands
City guide · 12 tours
Two hundred-odd islands, half an hour of ferry from the financial district, and not a car on three of them.
Hong Kong Shopping
City guide · 12 tours
A duty-free port where the tag starts lower, two citywide sale seasons knock a third off, and every mall sits on an MTR exit.
Macao
City guide · 12 tours
Four hundred years of Portuguese streets, a fake Venice under a painted sky, and the best egg tart in Asia.
Urumqi
City guide · 12 tours
The city furthest from the sea, with a snow range on its doorstep and dinner starting at nine.
Hong Kong SAR, China
City guide · 11 tours
A harbour skyline you already know by heart, dim sum trolleys at dawn, and 260 islands an hour from the neon.
Taiwan, China
City guide · 11 tours
Night-market alleys, high-mountain railways, and a coastline that changes character every hundred kilometres.
Qinghai Lake
City guide · 12 tours
A 4,400 sq km inland sea at 3,200 m, ringed by rapeseed gold, prayer flags and the best cycling road in China.
Mount Emei
City guide · 11 tours
A 3,099-metre Buddhist summit you can reach by cable car before lunch — and a mountain full of monkeys that will absolutely rob you.
Beijing
City guide · 11 tours
Six centuries of imperial red walls, a Great Wall you can climb before lunch, and the best roast duck on earth.
Taipei
City guide · 11 tours
A 24-hour bookstore, a night market that never stops sizzling, and a city that apologises when you bump into it.
North Xinjiang
City guide · 11 tours
Alpine lakes the colour of poured enamel, a village of log cabins under birch trees, and the last tear the Atlantic ever sheds.
Lanzhou
City guide · 11 tours
A city split in half by the Yellow River, where beef noodles are a breakfast ritual and the Silk Road still runs through the streets.
Mount Hua
City guide · 11 tours
Five granite peaks, one plank road bolted to a cliff face, and a sunrise that justifies the 2am start.
Dunhuang
City guide · 11 tours
A desert oasis where Buddhist cave art survived a thousand years and a crescent lake refused to dry up.
Gannan
City guide · 11 tours
433 kilometres of the Yellow River's first bend, a 3.5 km prayer-wheel circuit, and Tibetan grasslands almost nobody has commercialised yet.
Sichuan–Tibet Highway
City guide · 11 tours
2,142 kilometres of cliff-edge switchbacks, four of China's most beautiful mountains, and a road the Tibetans walk on their knees.
Kangding
City guide · 11 tours
The town that gave Asia its most famous love song, a 7,556m sacred peak on its doorstep, and the last real Tibetan town before the road climbs to Lhasa.
Lhasa
City guide · 12 tours
A city of prayer wheels and butter lamps at 3,700 metres, where the sun shines 3,000 hours a year and the world's highest palace watches over it all.
Nyingchi
City guide · 11 tours
Tibet's greenest corner — peach blossom valleys, a 7,782 m peak that hides from almost everyone, and the world's deepest canyon.
Namtso
City guide · 11 tours
A 1,920-square-kilometre sheet of impossible blue at 4,718 metres, ringed by snow peaks and prayer flags.
Chongqing
City guide · 12 tours
A vertical city of fog, cable cars and cliff-side stilt houses, where the火锅 never stops boiling and the night skyline outshines Hong Kong.
Qiandongnan
City guide · 11 tours
A thousand Miao households stacked up a mountainside, drum towers and wind-rain bridges in Dong villages, and a 600-year-old Ming garrison town on the road to Guiyang.
Libo
City guide · 11 tours
Emerald rivers threading through karst peaks, a 600-metre forest growing out of a riverbed, and China's largest wild plum grove.
Guiyang
City guide · 11 tours
China's summer capital at 1,100 metres, where the nights run on sour fish soup, street-side barbecue and mahjong that never quite stops.
Zhenyuan
City guide · 11 tours
A 2,000-year-old river town where the Wuyang River carves an S through the mountains and every lane hides a story.
Huangguoshu
City guide · 11 tours
Asia's biggest waterfall, and the only one on earth you can walk behind, above and around — plus 600-year-old Ming dynasty villages a short drive away.
Harbin
City guide · 11 tours
Minus 30 degrees, a frozen river you can walk across, and a cathedral built by Russians who never went home.
Yunnan
City guide · 11 tours
Snow mountains, tropical rainforest, twenty-five minorities and a plate of rice noodles — all in one province.
Shanghai
City guide · 11 tours
A 1920s waterfront of colonial banks facing a science-fiction skyline, soup dumplings you eat with a straw, and 20 million people moving like clockwork.
Zhangjiajie
City guide · 11 tours
Three thousand sandstone pillars straight out of Avatar, a glass skywalk bolted to a cliff, and a cable car that leaves from downtown.
Guangzhou
City guide · 11 tours
A 2,200-year-old trading port where dim sum is a religion, colonial islands sit beside 600-metre towers, and the food never stops.
Guilin
City guide · 11 tours
Karst peaks rising straight out of a green river, rice terraces carved into mountainsides, and the best bowl of noodles you'll eat in China.
Shenzhen
City guide · 11 tours
A fishing village that became a megacity in forty years — and it still has 500-year-old banyans, empty beaches and dim sum worth the border crossing.
Chengdu
City guide · 11 tours
A 3,000-year-old city where the schedule is tea, mahjong and hotpot — and the pandas are just the opening act.
Xinjiang
City guide · 11 tours
Snow peaks, grassland, desert and oasis — one-sixth of China, and the longest road you will ever ride.
Xi'an
City guide · 14 tours
Thirteen dynasties of emperors, a terracotta army buried for 2,200 years, and a walled city you can cycle in 100 minutes.
Qinghai
City guide · 11 tours
China's high-altitude blue heart: a salt lake you can walk on, a 3,200-metre sea, and yak butter tea at the roof of the world.
Tibet
City guide · 11 tours
A plateau the size of Western Europe where the sky starts at your feet, prayer flags carry the wind, and the roads run past 8,000-metre peaks.
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