City guide · Jiangsu
A 2,500-year-old canal city that built a dinosaur park and refuses to apologise for it.
Reviewed by our Beijing team Updated 2026-10-10
The short version
City guide
Photographs from the coast, and what other travellers wrote afterwards.
Here you can spend one yuan, take the person you love, and ride the BRT right across the city — hills and water, and all of it in view. You can wear your loosest clothes and slippers and walk freely across the square at dusk. And this thoroughly modern city sits on the shore of Taihu, held in the arms of the Grand Canal.
A traveller's note, 'Jiangnan Little Town — Changzhou, Here I Come'
What I like most about Changzhou is the free parks, large and small. The scale of Hongmei, the quiet of Dongpo, the energy of Qingfeng, the ease of Renmin — these are part of daily life here. Come to Changzhou and just wander into them and feel how pretty the city is.
A traveller's note, 'Changzhou, the Always-Happy Prefecture'
Changzhou is the city in the middle that everyone drives past, and it has stopped minding. It is 2,500 years old, it was called the key town of the three Wu and the famous capital of eight districts, and the Grand Canal runs through the middle of it. In the last twenty years it also built China Dinosaur Park and an animation theme park, and it is quietly pleased with both.
It is known as the city of dragons, and there are two explanations in circulation. One is a myth: six of the dragon king's nine sons ended up guarding Changzhou, so the people built six-coloured dragon boats and raced them on Baiyun Creek at the Dragon Boat Festival, and the place became the city of six dragons. The other is arithmetic: the Qi and Liang dynasties produced fifteen emperors from here, and the dragon stood for the emperor. Qianlong, who toured Jiangnan six times and prayed at Tianning Temple three, wrote the plaque that settled it.
What that leaves is a city of odd pairings, and the pairings are the fun of it. A thousand-year-old monastery with a 153.79-metre pagoda stands next to the biggest free park in town. A 2,500-year-old walled city with three concentric moats sits next to a theme park with a ride called the Crazy Fire-Dragon Drill. Two hours south, in Liyang, there is a lake that supplies the city's best dish and a bamboo sea with a cable car strung over it.
It is also one of the cheapest cities in the delta to be a tourist in. Buses cost ¥1, the parks cost nothing, a bowl of silver-thread noodles costs very little, and the only thing that really adds up is the day trip south to the lake.
Changzhou
Seven things that are worth rearranging a day for.
Highlights
Tianning pagoda is thirteen storeys and 153.79 m, the biggest of the more than 4,000 pagodas in the country, and it is attached to a working monastery founded in the seventh century. Inside, the Buddhist story is told in Dongyang wood carving, Yangzhou lacquer, Changzhou random-thread embroidery and Hui'an stone carving, in a style borrowed from Tang and Song architecture. Entry to the temple is ¥20; the pagoda is ¥60 more.
China Dinosaur Park is not only a thrill park. Its dinosaur hall is the largest single collection of Chinese dinosaur fossils on display anywhere, and the grounds are built as a Mesozoic set — waterfalls, cold rock faces, a dried-up sea, dense jungle, a primeval cave. Then there is the Sky Tower, Fire-and-Water Power, Winged Flight and the Crazy Fire-Dragon Drill.
The line locals quote is: for Ming and Qing go to Beijing, for Sui and Tang go to Xi'an, for the Spring and Autumn period come to Yancheng. It is the most complete surviving above-ground city site of that period in the country, a national protected site, and the geometry of the three concentric walls and moats is still legible from the ground.
Tianmu Lake is called the pearl of Jiangnan, and it produces the dish Changzhou is proudest of: casserole fish head soup made only with bighead carp raised in the lake and simmered in water from the lake, over a sandy bed with no mud and no muddy taste. The lake, the bamboo sea and the hot springs are its three products.
This is the city's best feature and the one visitors miss. Hongmei Park is the first garden of Changzhou, Qingfeng Park is 45 hectares of city forest with a hundred-metre fountain and a beach, Dongpo Park is a quiet peninsula where Su Dongpo is said to have moored eleven times, and every one of them is free.
Changzhou made the combs of the palace — the saying is that the palace combs and famous fine-toothed combs of Changzhou are the best under heaven — and Biji Lane was the street where every household made them. The lane is named after them: Qianlong saw the workshops and gave the street its name. It is free, it is on the canal, and the shops still sell them.
Suggested routes
Temples, parks and the canal — the version with no theme park in it at all.
Start at Tianning Temple in the morning — the halls are big and so are the bell and the drum, which is why it is called the first monastery of the south-east. Pay the ¥60 for the pagoda; the lift does most of the climb and the top gives you the whole city.
Walk out of the back into Hongmei Park, which is free: climb Hongmei Pavilion, then the Wenbi pagoda, and do the eight named views if you have the afternoon. Come out of the south gate and Dongpo Park is a short walk, with the Grand Canal running past it.
Stops: Tianning TempleTianning pagodaHongmei ParkDongpo Park
Take the bus out to Yancheng in Wujin: the Spring and Autumn theme park first if you want the rides, then the ruins park at ¥20 for the actual three walls and three moats. The wild animal park next door is there if you have children and energy.
Back in town for the evening on Biji Lane by the canal, where the comb shops are, then dinner on Jinling Middle Road or the Shuangguifang food street.
Stops: YanchengBiji LaneShuangguifang
What most visitors come for: dinosaurs in the morning, an animation park in the afternoon, temples in between.
China Dinosaur Park in the morning — go to the fossil hall first, while the queues for the rides are building, then work through the rides you actually want. Buses 302, 29 and B12 go to the park stop.
Global Animation Play Valley in the afternoon, out at Taihu Bay in Wujin: nine themed zones including Hero Gate, Taobao Street, Mysterious Island, Moore Manor, Legend World and Holy Mountain. In July and August it stays open until 22:00.
Stops: China Dinosaur ParkPlay Valley
Tianning Temple and the pagoda, Hongmei Park behind it, Dongpo Park after lunch, and Biji Lane on the canal at dusk. Sleep near the railway station or around Nandajie.
Stops: Tianning TempleHongmei ParkDongpo ParkBiji Lane
The full version: adds the day south to Tianmu Lake and the Nanshan Bamboo Sea.
Tianning Temple, the pagoda, Hongmei Park, Dongpo Park and Biji Lane — all in the old city, all walkable or a ¥1 bus apart.
Stops: Tianning TempleHongmei ParkBiji Lane
China Dinosaur Park for the day, and Play Valley in the late afternoon if you still have the legs. If you have had enough, spend the evening on Qingfeng Park's 45 hectares instead.
Stops: China Dinosaur ParkPlay Valley
Down to Liyang: Tianmu Lake in the morning for the water and the fish head soup, then the Nanshan Bamboo Sea in the afternoon for the cable car, the mirror lake and the 12.8 m bronze longevity statue. Bring mosquito repellent and a swimsuit — the lake has water activities and the bamboo sea has hot springs.
Stops: Tianmu LakeNanshan Bamboo Sea
Sights
The tallest in China
A thousand-year-old monastery east of the old city, facing the Grand Canal with Hongmei Park behind it, and the largest and best-preserved ancient monastery in Changzhou. The four things it is known for being big are the hall, the Buddha, the bell and the drum, hence the title first monastery of the south-east. Qianlong came three times and left a plaque. The pagoda is thirteen storeys and 153.79 m — the tallest of the more than 4,000 pagodas in the country.
Tip Pay for the pagoda. The temple alone at ¥20 is a bargain, but the pagoda is the thing — and at night the whole tower is lit, which is when it photographs best from the park behind it.
Museum and thrill park
Called the Jurassic of the east, in the modern leisure district of Changzhou New Area. The grounds are a built environment — splashing waterfalls, cold rock faces, a waterless sea, dense jungle, primeval caves — designed to put you in the Mesozoic. The dinosaur hall is the core and the soul: the largest concentration of Chinese dinosaur fossils on display anywhere. Around it are the Sky Tower, Fire-and-Water Power, Winged Flight and the Crazy Fire-Dragon Drill.
Tip Do the fossil hall first, before the ride queues form, and check the show board on the way in. If you are travelling without children and do not want the rides, think hard before spending ¥200 — the Dinosaur Valley hot spring resort 500 m from the east gate is an alternative way to spend the day.
2,500 years, three walls
West of central Wujin, and the most complete surviving above-ground city site of the Spring and Autumn period in China — some 2,500 years old and a national protected site. Locals say: for Ming and Qing go to Beijing, for Sui and Tang go to Xi'an, for the Spring and Autumn period come to Yancheng. It has the clear water of the Jiangnan countryside and the geometry of a monument left on the plain.
Tip The ¥20 ruins half is the one with the actual 2,500-year-old earthworks, and most people wrongly assume the ¥160 park is the whole thing. Do the ruins, then decide whether you want the rides and the recreated streets.
Free, and the biggest
The first garden of Changzhou, north of Tianning Temple and named for the Hongmei Pavilion that stands in it. The pavilion was first built in the Tang and rebuilt in the Guangxu years of the Qing; it is 17 m tall on two storeys, and its mass is unusual for a building of its type. From the late winter into spring the plum comes out and people come to walk and to look at the snow from the upper floor.
Tip Come early in the morning, when the park is full of people doing tai chi and walking birds, and treat it as the city's living room rather than a sight. It is directly behind Tianning Temple, so the two are one stop.
Free, and quiet
Also called the boat-mooring pavilion, east of the centre, and a Jiangnan garden made of a peninsula with water on three sides plus a half-moon island in the old canal. Su Dongpo is said to have come to Changzhou eleven times and moored his boat here; in the Southern Song someone built the pavilion to remember him, and Qianlong wrote a plaque for it on one of his four visits.
Tip Small and easy to skip, which is a mistake — it is the quietest of the free parks and the one where the canal actually reads. Do it after Hongmei Park, on the way back into town.
The comb street, free
West of the old city, right on the canal, on the site of the old Piling post station. Changzhou made combs for 1,500 years — the palace comb and the famous fine comb — and every household on this street made them. Qianlong saw workshops and shops along both sides and gave the lane its name. At night every shop hung a palace lantern and every workshop a work lamp, and the reflection in the canal looked like a golden dragon: the eighth of the eight views of the western suburbs, known as the lamplight of the comb bridge.
Tip This is where you buy combs rather than in a souvenir shop, and the lane is worth seeing after dark for the canal reflection alone. Combine it with Nandajie, which is a few minutes away.
Two hours south
Eight kilometres south of Liyang, named for the Tianmu range it belongs to, and called the pearl of Jiangnan and a green fairyland. It has three core products — the lake and hills park, the Nanshan Bamboo Sea and the imperial-water hot springs — and it is held up as a model of one-stop leisure. Hills ring the water and the water reflects the hills, and it is the source of the fish head soup.
Tip The lake water is filtered through the green hills and sits on a sandy bed rather than mud, which is why the fish have no muddy taste. Order the fish head soup here, not in the city. Bring a swimsuit for the water activities.
Bamboo and a cable car
In the southern hills of Liyang, a place built around resource use, ecological protection and tourism all at once, with no pollution for miles around. Bamboo covers the slopes, clinging to rock in every posture; there are thousand-year-old pines, a mirror lake with rafts on it, streams between the hills and wooden lodges. It also has a 12.8 m bronze statue of the god of longevity, called the number one longevity star in the country.
Tip Bring mosquito repellent — the bamboo is full of them — plus long sleeves, a hat and shoes you can walk in. A swimsuit is worth packing; there are hot springs in the bamboo. Do it in the same day as Tianmu Lake.
45 hectares, free
A city forest park built around three themes — ecology, popular science and activity — and the largest free open park in Changzhou at 45 hectares. Its landmark is the Rainbow Land earth structure; the highlights are the hundred-metre fountain and an artificial beach. Planting runs from aquatic to wetland to trees and shrubs, from lawn to flower border to woodland.
Tip Come in the evening when the fountain is running. It is the most active of the free parks — Hongmei is the biggest, Dongpo the quietest, Renmin the most idle, and this one the liveliest.
Animation theme park
In the Taihu Bay resort area of Wujin, themed on animation art and game culture, fusing digital entertainment with the technology to make it physical — a fantasy world made real by turning game scenes into built places. Nine zones: Hero Gate, Taobao Street, Mysterious Island, Moore Manor, Legend World, Interstellar Legend, Beast Continent, the Play-Tribe Harbour and Holy Mountain.
Tip If you are doing both this and the dinosaur park in one day, do the dinosaurs in the morning and come here for the late afternoon — in July and August it is open until 22:00, which makes it the better evening option.
Food
Said to have been created at the Wan Hua teahouse south of Fuqiao on Xiaoheyan in the Daoguang years. The crab oil is golden and glossy, rich without being cloying, the crab smell hits you before the basket does, the soup is sweet, the skin is thin but holds, and the filling is tender and slippery. Eat them with vinegar and shredded ginger.
Created in Liyang and refined by the cook Zhu Shuncai over nearly thirty years, now rated one of Jiangsu's best traditional dishes. It only works with bighead carp raised in the lake and water from the lake: the surrounding green hills filter the water and the bed is sand rather than mud, so the fish have no earthy taste at all.
An oval baked cake with a texture and flavour of its own, savoury or sweet, and the everyday food the city likes most. It comes out of the oven smelling strong, the colour yellow and moist rather than burnt, the sweetness and salt in balance, crisp but not brittle — and it is traditionally a breakfast.
A Changzhou speciality with thirty-odd years behind it, fussy about ingredients and strict about method: the noodles are fine as thread, white as silver, soft and slippery with real bite, and they do not go mushy in the pot. It is in the official catalogue of Chinese snacks.
Made since 1932 by a vegetarian house in Changzhou, and made from nothing animal at all. Fragrant, dry, chewy but soft, and savoury — slice it thin, drizzle sesame oil, and it looks like ham. Good with drinks and good as a cold plate.
A pastry shaped like a horse's hoof, said to have appeared among the people after the Taiping army took Changzhou in 1860 to celebrate their victory. Made with fine white flour, white sugar and bean oil, baked in a traditional oven: golden, sweet, crisp and light. Now listed in the catalogue of famous Chinese dim sum.
Named because the round yellow pastry looks like a crab shell. Made with a flaky and a fermented dough, rolled into small flat cakes, coated in sesame and stuck to the wall of the oven. Crisp outside, and the filling comes savoury — spring onion, pork, crab, shrimp — or sweet: sugar, rose, red bean, date.
Changzhou's canonical dishes include the evergreen thousand-ball, casserole fish head, chicken-brain tofu, pearl aspic, pepper-leaf chicken feet, sesame fish steak, the flower-and-fruit cup, and Changzhou braised pork in wine lees. If you are eating with a group, order several and let the table argue.
Where to eat
The hundred-year-old dumpling house
A hundred years old, one of the city's ten famous old eating houses, and the home of the crab-roe soup dumpling — a household name that has won provincial and ministerial awards and was listed among China's ten famous dim sum in 1990.
Old snacks, local prices
An old-name snack shop doing soup dumplings, tofu soup, mixed noodles and taro in syrup — all straightforwardly Jiangnan in flavour and all cheap. It is busy at every meal and the service is not the reason you go.
For a proper banquet
Another hundred-year-old house, described locally as the top name card of Changzhou and not exaggerating much: a spacious, quiet Jiangnan-style dining room, large private rooms, mainly Jiangsu and Zhejiang cooking with credible Sichuan and Cantonese. Expensive, and the right place if you are hosting.
Fifty stalls, one card
A recently built street of more than fifty snack shops, everything around ¥10–20 a dish. You buy a card at the top-up point first and spend it at any shop on the street, which saves a lot of small change.
The restaurant street
The street locals name when asked where to eat properly. Big houses in a row — Fuji, Ruby, Loushanglou, Zhang Shengji, Sanpinyuan among them — cooking Huaiyang, Hangzhou, Cantonese and Sichuan, with good rooms and good service, and known locally as the Chinese-restaurant street.
Where to stay
The practical base
The pick for most visitors: transport everywhere, easy reach of the sights, and not far from the busy shopping district. Everything from chain rooms to full-service hotels, and the north square serves the intercity high-speed line.
Budget, 100 metres from the gate
About 100 m from the north square entrance and 200 m from the coach station exit, next to Hongmei Park and Tianning Temple, with shops, supermarkets, restaurants, banks and entertainment all around it.
Closest to the dinosaurs
In the Wanda Plaza commercial centre of Xinbei, next to China Dinosaur Park and close to the municipal government, the city square, the exhibition centre, the grand theatre and the railway station, with direct access to the Shanghai–Nanjing expressway.
A garden hotel with a Ming garden in it
A three-star garden hotel in the centre, quiet despite being central, with the three-hundred-year-old Jiangnan garden Jinyuan standing inside the grounds. It has hosted senior national leaders, which tells you what kind of house it is, and the garden alone is worth the room.
If you want the top end
The only hotel in Changzhou with a private in-room hot spring pool looking out at sky, stone bank, water and planting, with 24-hour butler service. It sits inside the same Universal Dinosaur City resort as the park, 500 m from the east gate, and the resort shuttle runs to the park, the theatre and the three-rivers-three-parks area.
Getting around
Changzhou Benniu International (CZX) is in Benniu town in Xinbei district, 3 km from the Shanghai–Nanjing expressway and 18 km from the city, with routes to Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Shenyang, Harbin, Chongqing, Kunming and Dalian — the Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Shenyang and Harbin flights run daily or several times daily.
Changzhou station on Guanhe West Road is a special-class passenger and freight station directly under the Shanghai railway bureau, and because it sits at the boundary of the Shanghai–Nanjing section almost every train stops here. It has two squares: the south square serves the old Beijing–Shanghai line and the north square the Shanghai–Nanjing intercity high-speed line. Changzhou North is an elevated station about 8 km from the centre.
The road network is good — the Shanghai–Nanjing expressway and national highway 312 both pass the city — and fast coaches leave for Shanghai, Suzhou, Nanjing, Zhenjiang, Danyang and Hefei every 30 to 50 minutes. The main terminal at 18 Xinfeng Street, next to the railway station, handles most of the long-distance departures, with more than 1,000 departures a day.
Cheap and good: ¥1 on an air-conditioned bus, ¥0.60 with a card, ¥0.30 for students, and free for the over-seventies and for disabled passengers. Changzhou also runs the first BRT in Jiangsu and only the third in China after Beijing and Hangzhou. Line 1 runs from Changzhou North to Wujin bus centre over about 29.8 km, and line 2 from the No.1 bus company to Qishuyan bus centre over about 21.5 km.
Flagfall ¥9 for 3 km, then ¥1.8 a kilometre plus ¥1 fuel; after 6 km the rate goes to ¥2.7 a kilometre, and from 11pm to 5am the flagfall is ¥12 with a 30% night surcharge on top. There are only about 2,500 taxis in the entire city, and the 96196 booking line has a poor answer rate — plan around that.
Tianmu Lake and the Nanshan Bamboo Sea are in Liyang, roughly two hours south. Air-conditioned bus 109 runs from the main coach station straight to the Nanshan Bamboo Sea stop; once you are in Liyang town, bus 9 goes to the Tianmu Lake hotel stop. It is a long day and worth making an early start of it.
Shopping
Made here since the Wei, Jin and Northern and Southern dynasties — 1,500 years. Once tribute for the palace, now an everyday object and a collector's item, exported abroad. Good materials, worked by carving, painting and hot-etching, and both pretty and genuinely usable. Buy them in Biji Lane, where they were made.
The Liyang chestnut is properly called the pearl chestnut: thin shell, big kernel, glossy red-brown, sweet. The best are the new tender ones before the Mid-Autumn festival — pale yellow skin, crisp raw, and cooked with something they go soft and fragrant like osmanthus, which is why they are also called osmanthus chestnuts.
Grown at Hengjian in Liyang, where the hills roll, the cloud sits low, the climate is mild and the soil damp. Because the plantation lies inside the bamboo sea scenic area, and because the leaf looks like the eyebrow of the god of longevity, it is called Shoumei — longevity eyebrow. Flat and slightly curved, green with white down, a clean lasting aroma and a fresh mellow taste.
One of the city's best-known local products, and the snack that turns up on every list of what Changzhou tastes like. Cheap, keeps indefinitely, and travels better than almost anything else on this page.
Worked in crossing lines of uneven length with colour laid in layers, which is why it suits oil paintings, photographs and drawings better than any other Chinese stitch. Bold needlework, flowing lines, rich colour and strong depth. Look for it alongside the combs rather than in a department store.
The other Changzhou craft: carving into the surface of the bamboo skin itself, a technique with a long local pedigree. Small pieces, high skill, and the sort of thing that looks better the closer you hold it.
Two Liyang specialities that travel: the wind-dried goose, cured and hung, and the white celery, pale and crisp. Both are on the standard lists of what to bring back from the south of the municipality.
The commercial centre clusters on Yanling West Road and Biji Lane. Nandajie is the old busy quarter, with Taifu and New Century department stores, the Renmin Park leisure area and the city government around it; the Jiangnan department store is at 101 Nandajie. Yanghu Plaza, at the north end of Huayuan Street in Wujin, is a modern culture-and-shopping block with a musical fountain. For a one-stop sweep of local produce, the Changzhou Sanrong speciality centre on Jinling Middle Road has the full range at fair prices.
Practical
Only about 2,500 taxis serve the whole city, so build your day around buses and the two BRT lines rather than around hailing cabs.
| Best months | Spring and autumn, when the temperature is reasonable. The city flower is the rose and the city tree the southern magnolia, both summer-flowering, so a summer trip has its own reward; summer highs often pass 36°C and winter is damp and cold |
|---|---|
| Key tickets | Tianning Temple ¥20 plus ¥60 for the pagoda; China Dinosaur Park ¥200 (children ¥100); Play Valley ¥180; Yancheng ruins ¥20 / theme park ¥160; Tianmu Lake ¥65; Nanshan Bamboo Sea ¥90 |
| Free | Hongmei Park, Qingfeng Park, Dongpo Park (5:30–18:30), Biji Lane — all day, all free |
| Festival calendar | Rose lantern festival at Hongmei Park 15 May–1 June; Liyang tea festival in April; the Changzhou tourism festival September–October; Tianmu Lake beer summer in September; the Tianning Temple fair on the 28th and 29th of the seventh lunar month; New Year bell-ringing at Tianning on 31 December |
| For the bamboo and the lake | Mosquito repellent — the bamboo is full of them; a swimsuit, for the lake water activities and the hot springs in the bamboo; long sleeves and a hat for sun and for the evening chill; and shoes you can actually walk in |
| Getting around | Bus ¥1 air-conditioned, ¥0.60 on a card; taxi ¥9 for 3 km then ¥1.8 per km plus ¥1 fuel, ¥2.7 beyond 6 km, ¥12 flagfall plus 30% at night; airport bus ¥10; BRT lines 1 and 2 |
| Useful numbers | Tourism bureau 0519-8163333; airport 0519-3266000 / 0519-8100463; railway station 0519-85015688; Changzhou North 0519-88112054; coach terminal 0519-88175312; taxi booking 96196 |
| Hospitals | Changzhou No.1 People's Hospital (Third Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University), 185 Juqian Street, 0519-6180000; Changzhou Hospital of TCM, 25 Heping North Road main and 231 Heping Middle Road south, 0519-89896990 / 0519-88124955 |
| Postcode | 213000; Changzhou post office, 99 Nandajie, 0519-86632011 |
Tips
The temple and Hongmei Park are together in the east, the dinosaur park is north in Xinbei, Yancheng is south-west in Wujin, and the lake and bamboo are two hours away in Liyang. Doing them in any other order costs you an hour per day on buses.
The temple at ¥20 is cheap and worth it, but the pagoda is the point — 153.79 m, thirteen storeys, the tallest in the country, with a lift for most of the climb. Come back after dark to see it lit from Hongmei Park behind it.
The ¥160 Spring and Autumn park is rides and reconstructions. The ¥20 ruins park next to it is the actual 2,500-year-old site — three walls, three moats, a national protected monument. Most visitors only see the expensive half.
The fossil hall is the most serious part of the park and the emptiest early. Do it before the ride queues build, check the performance board on the way in, and decide honestly how many rides you want before paying ¥200.
Mosquito repellent is not optional in the bamboo sea, and long sleeves plus a hat do double duty against sun and evening chill. A swimsuit is worth carrying — there are hot springs up there and water activities at the lake.
Hongmei is the big one, Dongpo the quiet one, Qingfeng the lively one, Renmin the idle one — and they are all free. An hour in one of them at dawn tells you more about Changzhou than a day in a theme park.
Background
Changzhou sits in the south of Jiangsu, taking the Yangtze to the north and Taihu to the south, with the East China Sea to the east and Shanghai, Nanjing and Hangzhou all roughly equidistant. It is in the middle of the Yangtze delta and forms the Su-Xi-Chang metropolitan belt with Suzhou and Wuxi. It was established as a city in 1949 and now administers the two county-level cities of Jintan and Liyang and the five districts of Wujin, Xinbei, Tianning, Zhonglou and Qishuyan, over 4,385 square kilometres with about 4.5 million residents.
It is also the only sizeable Chinese city whose urban area is crossed by the 120th meridian east, and the city has made that fact into its eastern landscape axis — you will see it marked. The climate is northern subtropical and maritime: mild, wet, four distinct seasons, plum rain in late spring and early summer, hot wet summers that regularly pass 36°C, and damp, cold winters.
The city's history begins 2,500 years ago with Ji Zha, enfeoffed at Yanling, who was known among the states for good diplomacy, a command of ritual and music, and keeping his promises — the sort of reputation that gets a place named after you. In the Ming there was the educator Xie Yingfang, of whom it was said that the scholars of Wu competed to be his students and his virtue weighed heavy south of the Yangtze, and the writer and anti-pirate hero Tang Jingchuan. Under the Qing came the Yanghu school of prose led by Yun Jing, the Changzhou school of poetry led by Zhang Huiyan, the Changzhou school of painting led by Yun Nantian, and the Menghe school of medicine.
Modern Changzhou produced the reformist statesman Sheng Xuanhuai, the patriotic industrialist Liu Guojun and the painter Liu Haisu, and in scholarship Zhao Yuanren, Wu Zhihui and Wu Dingliang in the Republic, followed by more than fifty academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Engineering, Hua Luogeng among them.
It is also a revolutionary city: Qu Qiubai, Zhang Tailei and Yun Daiying, all early leaders of the Chinese Communist Party, came from here, as did Li Gongpu and Shi Liang of the seven patriots. There is a memorial area for the three of Changzhou — the memorial hall plus the former homes of Qu Qiubai and Zhang Tailei and the Yun Daiying memorial square — and it is on the third national list of patriotic education bases. At Shuixi village in Liyang was the New Fourth Army's Jiangnan command, where Chen Yi and Su Yu fought.
Changzhou sits on the old Wu-Yue border, in a land of fish and rice that grows good tea and supports good opera, and for a long time the three things old Changzhou liked best were drinking tea, watching opera and listening to story-telling. People went to the theatres and story houses for kunqu, for spoken storytelling and for Suzhou ballad-singing: on stage the Wu dialect sang of knitted brows and longing, of iron horses and partings; in the audience there were pots of strong tea bitter-then-sweet, dishes of crisp broad beans, and applause that filled the house.
The city's leisure has since diversified — KTV, bars, teahouses and cafés on every street, the Olympic sports centre and the grand theatre adding to it — and people now put more into their health and into getting out of town, so hiking and exercise at the weekends have become ordinary. But the teahouses survived, and so did the habit of sitting a long time over one pot.
The festival year follows the old calendar as much as the new: the Tianning Temple fair on the 28th and 29th of the seventh lunar month, which in Ming and Qing times had grown into a market known far beyond the city; the New Year bell-ringing that Qianlong's temple still does; the rose lantern festival in late spring; and the Liyang tea festival in April and the Tianmu Lake beer summer in September, both of which are attached to things the countryside around the city actually produces.
Travel with them
Directed by Steven Spielberg, from Michael Crichton's 1990 novel
The film that brought the kings of the old earth back to life, with effects that still hold. Watch it before you go to China Dinosaur Park — the park's whole design, from the waterfalls to the waterless sea to the primeval cave, is an attempt to build this film's atmosphere on the ground, and it makes much more sense once you have seen it.
Alina Thomas
Every Chinese city has an interesting story, and Changzhou is no exception. The book follows the author's travels here and her conversations with everyone she met — young and old, Chinese and foreign — and fills in the historical background as it goes. Carry it with you and see which Changzhou story you get.
Li Zhi
By the independent musician Li Zhi, who was born in Changzhou, from his second album Van Gogh. It is about moving from one southern city to another on a rainy day, and the mood is exactly right for walking one of the free parks in spring drizzle.
The questions visitors ask us most about Changzhou, answered plainly.
Prices and practical details are reviewed every month by our Beijing team and updated the day a rule changes.
Two to three. Two days splits into the old city — temple, pagoda, Hongmei Park, the canal and Biji Lane — and the theme parks north of the centre. Three days adds the day trip south to Liyang for Tianmu Lake and the Nanshan Bamboo Sea, which is a long day and the best scenery in the municipality.
It depends on what you want from it. The dinosaur hall is a genuine museum with the largest concentration of Chinese dinosaur fossils on display anywhere, and that part is worth a lot. But the ticket also covers the thrill rides, and if you are not going on them you are paying for things you will not use. Families with children rarely regret it; adults travelling alone often do.
Quite a lot: Hongmei Park with its thousand-year-old pavilion and eight named views, Qingfeng Park with 45 hectares of city forest and a hundred-metre fountain, Dongpo Park on its riverside peninsula, and Biji Lane, the old comb-making street on the canal. All four are free, open all day and reachable on a ¥1 bus.
They are in Liyang, roughly two hours south of Changzhou, and they are normally done as one long day. Bus 109 from the main coach station goes to the Nanshan Bamboo Sea, and in Liyang town bus 9 runs to the Tianmu Lake hotel stop. Bring mosquito repellent for the bamboo, a swimsuit for the lake and the hot springs, and shoes you can walk in.
Crab-roe soup dumplings first — golden crab oil, thin skin, plenty of soup, eaten with vinegar and ginger. Then the big sesame cake, sweet or savoury; silver-thread noodles, fine as thread and white as silver; Yancheng vegetarian ham, made since 1932; and the Tianmu Lake fish head soup, which is only made with bighead carp raised in the lake and water from the lake.
Spring and autumn, which is when the temperature is reasonable and the flowers are out. The city flower is the rose and the city tree is the southern magnolia, both of which bloom in summer, so a summer trip has its own reward. The rose lantern festival runs 15 May to 1 June in Hongmei Park, and the Changzhou tourism festival runs September to October.
Buses, easily. The fare is ¥1 on an air-conditioned bus, ¥0.60 with a card, and there are two BRT lines that cross the city fast — Changzhou built the first one in Jiangsu. Taxis start at ¥9 for 3 km but there are only about 2,500 in the whole city and the booking line is unreliable, so do not build a schedule around hailing one.
Yes, and it is the cheap one of the three. Wuxi is about 20 minutes east by train and Suzhou is barely further, so you can sleep in Changzhou and day-trip both ways. What you get here that they do not have is the dinosaur museum, the tallest pagoda in China and a set of large free parks — plus noticeably lower hotel prices.
Plan this trip
The same places, with a driver, an English-speaking guide and the tickets already bought.
City guides
Dalian
City guide · 15 tours
The Northern Pearl — China's most romantic coastal city.
Shenyang
City guide · 12 tours
Where the Qing dynasty began — an imperial palace, a warlord's mansion and the cheapest good food in the northeast.
Changbai Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
A volcano on the North Korean border, a jade-green crater lake at 2,189 m, and hot springs on the way down.
Kunming
City guide · 12 tours
China's Spring City — a mild plateau capital of flowers, markets and the Stone Forest, with gulls on the lake in winter.
Dali
City guide · 12 tours
A walled Bai town between a 4,000 m mountain and a great lake — wind, flowers, snow and moon, and life at a slower speed.
Shuhe
City guide · 12 tours
The quiet version of Lijiang — a Tea Horse Road village of canals, stone bridges and slow afternoons, 4 km from the crowds.
Lijiang
City guide · 12 tours
A UNESCO Naxi old town of canals and cobbles beneath a 5,596 m snow mountain — the cultural heart of north-west Yunnan.
Xiamen
City guide · 12 tours
A subtropical island city of temples, fishing-village lanes and the best street food in Fujian — with the car-free islet of Gulangyu a 20-minute ferry away.
Gulangyu
City guide · 12 tours
A car-free island of colonial villas, pianos and cats, twenty minutes off Xiamen — and the one place where the trick is simply to stay the night.
Fuzhou
City guide · 12 tours
A 2,200-year-old capital of banyan trees and mountains-within-the-city, where the Ming lanes of Sanfang Qixiang meet the dockyard that built China's modern navy.
Lugu Lake
City guide · 12 tours
A 2,680 m lake on the Yunnan–Sichuan border, home to China's last matrilineal people, pig-trough canoes and a great deal of doing nothing.
Xishuangbanna
City guide · 12 tours
China's tropical south — rainforest, wild elephants, Dai villages and the Mekong, wrapped around the gateway city of Jinghong.
Shangri-La
City guide · 12 tours
A Tibetan town at 3,300 m in Yunnan's Diqing prefecture — monasteries, grassland, prayer wheels and cold thin air.
Nanchang
City guide · 12 tours
Jiangxi's 'hero city' on the Gan River — one great Tang pavilion, a 160-metre Ferris wheel, and the best claypot soup you will eat in China.
Hefei
City guide · 12 tours
Anhui's 2,000-year-old capital: the hometown of China's model judge, a moat-turned-garden ring, and the fast rail gateway to Huangshan.
Hongcun
City guide · 12 tours
A 900-year-old Hui village laid out as an ox, with water running to every door and a mirror-still crescent pond at its heart.
Wuhan
City guide · 12 tours
Three towns, two rivers and the best breakfast in China — a huge, blunt river city of bridges, lakes and cheap, brilliant street food.
Changsha
City guide · 12 tours
Hunan's loud, young capital: a 3,000-year-old city that eats chilli-hot food, stays up all night and treats foot massage as a civic duty.
Fenghuang Ancient Town
City guide · 12 tours
The stilt-house river town of Shen Congwen's 'Border Town' — glowing lanterns, stepping stones and the best two nights in western Hunan.
Lushan
City guide · 12 tours
A cloud-wrapped granite mountain with a Victorian hill station on top, waterfalls in three tiers, and the mist that Su Shi said you could never see through.
Wuyuan
City guide · 12 tours
China's 'most beautiful countryside' — dozens of white-walled Huizhou villages strung along streams and terraced into the hills, and two weeks a year of gold.
Mount Heng (Hengshan, Hunan)
City guide · 12 tours
The South Great Peak: a pilgrimage mountain of 72 summits where the temples run all the way to the top, and the sunrise over the cloud sea is the whole point.
Huangshan
City guide · 12 tours
Yellow Mountain: 82 granite peaks of twisted pines and grotesque rock, a sea of cloud that changes by the hour, and hot springs at the foot.
Wudang Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
The Taoist first mountain of China — a gilded bronze hall on a 1,612 m summit, temples hung off cliff faces, and the birthplace of tai chi.
Luoyang
City guide · 12 tours
Thirteen dynasties, 100,000 Buddhas carved into a river cliff, China's first Buddhist temple — and a whole city that turns peony-pink every April.
Yuntai Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
A UNESCO geopark in Henan where red-stone gorges squeeze a river to a slot, a 314 m waterfall drops in one plunge, and every path leads to another pool.
Rizhao
City guide · 12 tours
A low-key Shandong beach town where the sun rises straight out of the Yellow Sea, the sand runs 60 km and a seafood dinner costs less than a coffee in Shanghai.
Yantai
City guide · 12 tours
A northern Shandong port of fairy-tale cliffs, wine cellars and long golden beaches — where emperors once hunted the elixir of life and China's wine industry still begins.
Lianyungang
City guide · 12 tours
A working Jiangsu port with a myth in the middle of it — the Flower-Fruit Mountain of Journey to the West, a sea causeway to a big island beach, and some of the cheapest seafood on the coast.
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.
Baiyangdian
City guide · 12 tours
The biggest freshwater lake on the North China Plain — and almost none of it can be reached except by boat.
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.
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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