City guide · Sichuan
Not a monument but a machine: three pieces of engineering with no dam, still doing their job after 2,270 years.
Reviewed by our Beijing team Updated 2026-10-10
The short version
City guide
Photographs from the coast, and what other travellers wrote afterwards.
If Ulaanbaatar's night is the murmur of the Inner Mongolian steppe, then what sound stands for Dujiangyan? Standing on the Nanqiao bridge looking toward the Bottle-Neck, listening to the Min River slap the bank, I suddenly understood every episode of the eight hundred li of its history.
A traveller's note, Dujiangyan: The Journey in Pursuit of Freedom
I found a teahouse with comfortable chairs, ordered a cup and started dozing off. Sun on the river, the river breeze, tea poured, legs crossed — no wonder they say life here is slow. In a town like this you could not hurry even if you wanted to.
A traveller's note, Dujiangyan! The Slow Life!
While Chengdu's old lanes and courtyards were coming down and going up again as steel and concrete, Dujiangyan kept its western-Sichuan domestic style, its original Shu-land look and its symbols. And it kept something else: the reason any of that was possible. Dujiangyan is the large-scale water project built in ancient China and still in use, sitting west of the city on the upper Min River, begun under Li Bing, the Qin governor of Shu, and his son around 256 BC, and rebuilt and extended by every dynasty since.
The whole scheme is two systems: the weir head and the irrigation network fed by it. The head is three works and a handful of subsidiary banks — the fish-mouth that divides the water, the Flying Sand Weir that spills the flood and ejects the silt, the Bottle-Neck that lets water into the plain, plus the inner and outer Jingang banks and the herringbone dyke. It irrigates, it controls floods, it carries silt away, it served river transport and it supplies the city. The plain it feeds is the one everybody calls the Land of Abundance.
Standing here you can hear Li Bai singing in the hills, see Zhuge Liang flicking his feather fan, and see Li Bing pointing at the water thundering past — or at least that is the local pitch, and the water really does thunder. You go in at the Lidui gate, follow the weir and the bottle-neck, cross the swaying Anlan cable bridge to the Erwang Temple, and ride the escalator up Yulei Mountain for the whole apparatus laid out below you.
Come for the afternoon and stay for the evening. Dujiangyan is slower than Chengdu by a noticeable margin: teahouses along the river, cold beer and river fish on the Nanqiao strip, the bridge lit up over moving water. It is the most relaxed town within an hour of the provincial capital, and there is always water running under it.
Dujiangyan
Seven things that are worth rearranging a day for.
Highlights
A bank shaped like a fish's snout, sitting out in the middle of the Min River with its head up, part of a set that includes the Hundred-Zhang Dyke, the horse-fork weirs and the Jingang banks. It splits the river into the outer channel — the Jinma River, the main course, which takes the flood — and the inner channel along the foot of the hills, which is the artificial one that irrigates. It does this with shape and gradient alone, and adjusts itself as the level rises and falls.
The plain, unremarkable-looking spillway that is actually the key to keeping Chengdu dry: when the inner channel carries more than the Bottle-Neck can pass, the surplus pours over the weir and back into the Min, and the same movement flings the silt clear. In a genuinely exceptional flood it is designed to breach and dump the water back into the main river. It used to be bamboo cages packed with stones; it is concrete now, and the principle has not changed at all.
A gap cut by Li Bing and his crews through the long ridge that ran from the mountain out toward the riverbank — the throat that controls how much water enters the inner channel, named for being shaped like a bottle's mouth and working like one. It is the metering gate of the whole system, and the reason the plain gets water by design rather than by luck.
A 128 m escalator — the first xieshan-style roofed gallery escalator in the country, in two flights — links the Erwang Temple to Yulei Tower and gets you to the top in about five minutes without effort. From the tower you get the Erwang Temple, the fish-mouth, the cable bridges, the Flying Sand Weir, the Fulong Temple and the whole of Dujiangyan city in one look.
As the lights come up, people gather along the Nanqiao strip: dinner or a late supper with the river roaring past and the decorated bridge lit overhead. It has become a whole way of doing Chengdu nightlife — tens of thousands of people along the bank from May to October, singing and drinking.
Walk over the Nanqiao bridge and you are in the rebuilt Guanxian old town, which was once the throat of the road from the provincial capital to Ngawa, the start of the tea-horse road, and a market town rich enough to be called Little Chengdu. Ming and Qing western-Sichuan detailing has been put back into it: the east gate tower, the old bridges, the old streets.
Suggested routes
The short line inside the scenic area — the three works and the temples, at a walk.
Enter at the Lidui old garden gate and go straight along the Weir-Merits way to the Fulong Temple, then out along the Flying Sand Weir to the fish-mouth itself. This is the order that makes the engineering legible: first the garden on the severed hill, then the spillway, then the divider.
Cross the Anlan cable bridge over the river to the Erwang Temple on the hillside.
Stops: Lidui gardenFulong TempleFlying Sand WeirFish-mouth
Take the escalator up to Yulei Tower for the view over the works, the cable bridges and the city, then walk down the hill through Yulei Pass and the west gate to the City God temple and out of the Yulei Mountain exit.
Cross the Nanqiao bridge into the old town for food; if it is late enough, stay for the night-beer strip.
Stops: Yulei TowerCity God templeNanqiaoGuanxian old town
The full in-park line plus the escalator and the evening — the version most people should do.
In at the Lidui old garden gate, then Qingxi garden, the river shoal, the nanmu grove and the nature-and-culture exhibition hall, which sets the whole thing up properly before you see any of it.
Then the works themselves: the Flying Sand Weir, the fish-mouth, the Anlan cable bridge, the Erwang Temple and the Qin Weir Tower.
Stops: Lidui gardenFlying Sand WeirFish-mouthErwang Temple
Ride the Cloud-Walking Gallery escalator up to Yulei Tower — five minutes, and it saves you an hour of steep steps — and then walk the last stretch of the old Songmao trading road on the way down.
Out through Yulei Pass, the west gate and the City God temple, and into the old town for the late afternoon.
Stops: Cloud-Walking GalleryYulei TowerSongmao road
Dinner and beer on the Nanqiao strip: river fish, prawns, eel, spicy rabbit. Locals who find the Nanqiao prices high go to the night-beer street by the bird-and-flower market instead.
If you would rather sit down, there are two shows: the outdoor Dao Explains Dujiangyan at 10:30 most mornings near the north gate, and the Time-Travel Dujiangyan stage show at the Flying Dragon Arena, 19:30 nightly.
Stops: Nanqiao night-beer stripTime-Travel theatre
The pair everybody does: the machine one day, the mountain the next.
Morning on the works: Lidui garden, Flying Sand Weir, fish-mouth, Anlan cable bridge, Erwang Temple. Afternoon up the escalator to Yulei Tower, down through Yulei Pass and the west gate to the City God temple.
Evening in the old town and on the Nanqiao night-beer strip, then the Time-Travel Dujiangyan show at 19:30 if you want it. Sleep in the old town — you are five minutes from the park gate.
Stops: Dujiangyan worksYulei TowerNanqiao stripTime-Travel show
Bus 101 from the Dujiangyan coach centre, or from the Lidui gate of the scenic area, runs to the front mountain of Qingcheng in about 30 minutes; the intercity train is a ¥5, few-minute alternative. Entry ¥90, cable car ¥35 one way.
In hot weather, Hongkou is the other option — an hour north, 364 sq km of protected forest, and rafting at ¥170 a head, small two-person boats or big ones with a boatman, on a course with rescue points every ten or twenty metres.
Stops: Qingcheng front mountainHongkou
Sights
The divider
Also called the fish-mouth bank, and named for the obvious reason: it lifts its head in the middle of the Min River, and it works together with the Hundred-Zhang Dyke, the horse-fork weirs and the Jingang banks as one set. West is the outer river — the Jinma, the true course, which carries the flood; east, along the foot of the hills, is the inner river, the artificial channel that does the irrigation. It uses terrain and gradient to finish the job and adjusts itself automatically at high and low water.
Tip Read it as a shape, not a structure. Nothing here moves, gated or pumps — the river does all the work and the bank just tells it where to go.
The spillway
Also called the flood-discharge channel, with three jobs — spilling floods, ejecting silt and regulating volume — and the reason the Chengdu plain stays dry. When the inner channel carries more than the Bottle-Neck can pass, the surplus goes over the weir and back to the Min, and in an exceptional flood the weir is meant to breach and let the whole lot go. Meanwhile the Min arrives out of the mountains loaded with sand and stone; the weir flings that load clear instead of letting it silt up the Bottle-Neck and the canal network.
Tip It looks like nothing, which is the point. Stand for a minute and watch what the water does where the two channels meet.
The intake
Cut by Li Bing and his people through the long ridge the mountain sent down toward the riverbank, this is the artificial throat that controls what the inner river receives — shaped like the neck of a bottle, doing the work of one, hence the name. It acts as the control gate of the whole scheme, the reason the inner channel runs water-without-drought and the reason the Land of Abundance exists at all.
Tip Look at it from the Nanqiao bridge in the evening as well as from the path. From down at the water, the whole system finally makes sense.
Garden
You enter the park by the south gate and this is the first thing you are in: the hill left standing on its own when the Bottle-Neck was cut, now a garden with the river on two sides and the three works beyond it. Ancient was the Qian di village, Song dynasty the Flower Isle, Qing the Mulberry Garden; rebuilt and extended in 1931 and renamed for the hill it stands on. Old trees, famous stumps, and the birthplace of the Sichuan school of penjing.
Tip Do not walk straight through it. The penjing stumps here are the origin of a whole Sichuan art form, and the place is quiet in the morning.
Temple
Built to honour Li Bing, the Qin governor of Shu who cut the works, and his son Erlang. The present buildings are late-Qing and early-Republican; the three gold characters over the gate are in the hand of the patriot general Feng Yuxiang, and the rear hall holds stele carvings by Zhang Daqian and Xu Beihong. The grounds are planted with rare trees and old growth thick enough to shade everything, which is why it is called the Jade Rampart Immortal Capital. The 2008 earthquake destroyed about 80% of it, and restoration took years.
Tip Go up and out the back: the escalator to Yulei Tower starts here, and the temple's upper terraces give you the works from above for free.
Viewpoint
A replica-style sightseeing tower on the top of Yulei Mountain, the landmark of the post-earthquake rebuild, reached by the Cloud-Walking Gallery: 128 m of escalator in two flights, the first roofed xieshan-style gallery escalator in China, connecting the Erwang Temple to the tower in about five minutes. From the top you get the Erwang Temple, the fish-mouth, the cable bridge, the Flying Sand Weir, the Fulong Temple and the whole city.
Tip The local trick is to ride up and walk down. The descent has the better views, and the stairs are gentler on the way down than you fear.
Bridge and old road
The wooden suspension bridge slung across the Min where the channels separate, one of the classic images of Sichuan, and it moves under a crowd. Nearby, the last surviving scrap of the Songmao road — the old route from the Chengdu plain through Songpan and Mao county into the uplands, a branch of the tea-horse road and the southern Silk Road, and the only land link to those parts for centuries. It ran more than 700 li; under two kilometres of it is left, inside the park.
Tip Cross the bridge early in the day if you dislike heights and crowds together. The Songmao stub is short — walk it slowly and read the plaques.
Old town
Over the decorated Nanqiao bridge and you are in Guanxian, the rebuilt old town: the east gate tower, historic bridges and old streets put back with Ming and Qing western-Sichuan detailing. Once it was the throat of the road from the provincial capital to Ngawa and the start of the tea-horse road, a distribution and staging town so busy it was called Little Chengdu. Main sights inside: Confucian Temple street, Ruilian street, the Ming city wall, the mosque, the old yamen, the Water Works office and Maogong Temple.
Tip This is where you eat. The streets around the bridge and in the old town hold most of the town's good cheap food, and the riverside strip does the night.
Nature reserve, rafting
About 70 km from Chengdu and an hour and a bit by road, Hongkou is the closest stretch of original ecology to the capital: 364 sq km of forest under national protection, 2,500-plus rare plants, 25 nationally protected animal species, over 100 mammals and 250-odd birds, in air and water clean enough that Chengdu families come to sit in it. It also hosts the China International Hongkou Rafting Festival, and in summer the shallows at the bank fill with children and with the famous water mahjong.
Tip This is a summer Saturday, not a sightseeing morning. Take a change of clothes and a dry bag, and expect to spend the whole day wet.
Food
In Sichuan, night beer simply means late-night eating and drinking, and here it means the strip along the Min: cold beer with prawns, eel, lobster, river snails, spicy rabbit, bullfrog in pickled chilli, edamame, boiled peanuts and duck necks. The Nanqiao strip is the one by the scenic area and the pricier of the two; locals go to the street by the bird-and-flower market.
Named for the topping: minced pork fried until dry, fine, crisp and fragrant, shaped like crumbs and tasting of anything but. The noodles are pulled at eight parts cooked, drained of every drop of water, then buried under ground peanuts, sesame and sugar while still hot, and stirred at the table. Hot, fragrant, and unfairly good for something so plain.
Soy milk strained, boiled and set with gypsum water in the vat, then served with a broth built from dried squid and shrimp, and chicken shreds on top. Pale, savoury, aromatic. Add vinegar and it sharpens into something that opens the appetite rather than closing it.
Nobody in Dujiangyan can tell you when the spring rolls started, but the queue at the Wugui bridge stall has taken over half the street. There is no proper shop — a table, a few chairs, and three characters: spring spring rolls. That is enough to keep people coming back.
Sold from a basin, skewered and glowing red: the sort of thing that makes a chilli-lover swallow hard on sight, with a garlic-and-chilli version alongside. Eat it standing up beside the Nanqiao bridge, which is the correct place and the correct posture.
The mountain's four, sold and eaten in Dujiangyan too: the rice wine brewed from kiwi fruit and Qingcheng spring water by a Daoist method; tribute tea, fired through eleven steps and sent to court for dynasty after dynasty; Daoist pickles, the thousand years of Daoist dietary discipline distilled into one small dish; and ginkgo-and-chicken soup, the local restorative that is as good as it is simple.
Where to eat
Night beer
The first of the strip and the one everybody names: stir-fried prawns, coiled eel, lobster, river snails, spicy rabbit, bullfrog in pickled chilli, edamame, boiled peanuts, duck necks, and the bridge lit up over the water beside you.
Home cooking
Plain home-style Sichuan, open all night: trotters in a thick, fresh broth, soft and sticky enough to fall apart, with the little dishes that come alongside and white beans cooked to mush. The stir-fries are worth ordering too, which is not always true of a trotter house.
Street food
You get a strip of fragrant rabbit in your hand, you smell it, you bite — lean meat that somehow is not dry or stringy at all, and it falls apart at once. Hand-pulled, and about ¥40 for a whole rabbit, which is why there is usually a queue.
Skewers
Nothing to look at, and the sort of place that gets remembered anyway: a small ordinary shop doing skewers and malatang properly. Come here when you want the everyday version rather than the riverside version, and order by pointing.
Snack shop
The shop that food people in Dujiangyan keep going back to: beef tofu pudding, black-sesame dumplings and wontons, in clean, pleasant surroundings. Eleven yuan a head and you come out full, which may be the best arithmetic in town.
Where to stay
Budget, behind the coach station
Directly behind the passenger centre on Guanfeng Road — three minutes' walk from it, with good transport and a lot of snack shops around. Rooms come with air conditioning, a fan, 24-hour showers, 1.8 m beds, tatami and computer rooms, broadband and wireless. Clean and idiosyncratic in equal measure.
Budget, in the new town
On the busy commercial stretch of Xingfu Avenue, about 3 km from the scenic area and easy to reach. Every room has an LCD television, independent air conditioning, IDD phone and a private bathroom with 24-hour hot water, and local and internet calls are free.
Mid-range, central
In the Tianhe Shengshi core commercial district, with the boutique shopping street, the food street and the bar street all around it. Business twins, executive singles and suites, 24-hour hot water, air conditioning, satellite television and free broadband. About 4 km from the intercity station, 1.5 km from the bus station and 10 km from Qingcheng Mountain.
Inside the scenic area
The only hotel inside the scenic area, at the back gate of the Erwang Temple, looking across to Qingcheng Mountain and Longchi forest park, on the road to Jiuzhaigou and Huanglong. 102 rooms and suites in a range of styles, thirty minutes from Chengdu.
Riverside, top end
On the bank of the Min, 500 m from the high-speed rail station, run by an international five-star management team with a British-butler style of service. The pick if you want the comfortable version of a Dujiangyan night.
Getting around
The obvious answer, and the reason Dujiangyan works as a day trip: trains run in both directions all day between Chengdu and Dujiangyan, about 30 minutes and ¥15, and you can buy the ticket at the station when you arrive. Outbound, the first is about 06:32 and the last about 20:17; coming back, the first is about 07:15 and the last about 21:16. The line continues to Qingchengshan station for ¥5 more.
Three Chengdu stations serve Dujiangyan, and one airport service. Chadianzi, from ¥16, rolling departures from 06:30. Ximen, every 5–10 minutes from 06:30 to 20:30, ¥11 by express and ¥6.5 local. Xinnanmen, from 08:40, ¥25 — and its 09:30 departure runs direct to the front mountain of Qingcheng for ¥21. Six coaches a day run from Shuangliu airport to Dujiangyan, ¥24, and must be booked 24 hours ahead.
Five routes, all straightforward, all ending at the Lidui park car park via Xingfu Avenue and the old town's Xuanhua gate. The Shaoxi line and the old Chengguan road are toll-free; the Chengguan expressway costs ¥20 for a car; the IT Avenue and Chengqing routes are toll-free for Chengdu-plated vehicles via Wenjiang. In season, a tourist shuttle also runs from the car park outside the Wuhou Shrine museum, hourly from 08:00 to 20:00 between May and November.
Dujiangyan's public system genuinely links the station, the old town and both scenic areas, which is unusual for a Chinese town this size. Route 4 runs from the intercity station to Lidui park at the scenic-area entrance; route 7 links the park with the passenger centre; 12 and 17 cover the northern and eastern districts. Buses start at 06:50 and finish at 18:30 in winter, 19:00 in summer.
Mostly Santana, Jetta and Chevrolet Sprint: ¥5 for the first kilometre, then ¥1.6 per kilometre in daylight and ¥1.9 at night, with each metered trip including five free minutes of waiting. Fares inside the town are small, which makes this the easy way to get from the station to the park gate or out to Qingcheng when you cannot be bothered with the bus.
Shopping
The mountain's four, and the reason to go shopping here at all. The rice wine is made with kiwi fruit and Qingcheng spring water by a Daoist method, and carries the line: Qingcheng is the quietest under heaven, and this wine the first of the four. Tribute tea goes through eleven careful firings and was tribute for dynasty after dynasty. The Daoist pickles answer a thousand years of Daoist dietary thinking in one saucer. And ginkgo-and-chicken is the local restorative.
The first of Dujiangyan's eight major medicinal crops and a standard of Chinese pharmacy: it moves the qi, activates the blood, disperses wind and stops pain. A aromatic perennial about a metre tall, valued only for the tuber below — the bigger and heavier the better, with the cut face showing a chrysanthemum pattern and a strong scent.
Magnolia bark, protected as a geographical-indication product, standardised and grown at scale in recent years so that an old and precious traditional medicine has a modern market. Buy it from a proper pharmacy rather than a souvenir stall, where the word medicinal means whatever the seller wants it to.
Dujiangyan's hills supply endless material: thousand-year stumps, burls, roots off the cliffs and out of the gorges, wood cured by frost and wind into shapes nobody could design — and the burl pieces in particular stop people in their tracks. For the edible version, the Ren family hand-made sweets — crisped rice, peanut, dragon-whisker, cun-jin and walnut slices — are sold in any supermarket in town.
Practical
Dujiangyan is the rare historic site you can watch doing its job, thirty minutes from Chengdu. Give it the morning and the evening rather than a rushed two hours between other plans — the riverbank after dark is half of what the town is.
| Entry | ¥90 · audio guide ¥10 · escalator ¥20 one way / ¥30 return |
|---|---|
| Half price | Full-time students up to and including bachelor's degree · ages 60–69 with a senior card · minors over 6 and under 18 |
| Free | Serving military and military-academy students · Chengdu senior card holders · 70 and over · disabled and disabled veterans · children under 6 or under 1.3 m |
| Hours | 8:00–18:00, 2 Mar – 30 Nov · 8:00–17:30, 1 Dec – 1 Mar |
| Combined ticket | Dujiangyan + Qingcheng Mountain ¥180 — the two are 10 km apart, and worth two days |
| Climate | Mid-subtropical humid · annual mean about 15.2°C · four distinct seasons, no fierce summer, no hard winter |
| Shows | Dao Explains Dujiangyan, 10:30 daily near the north gate, ¥168/188/288 · Time-Travel Dujiangyan, 19:30 at the Flying Dragon Arena, ¥120–480 |
| Hospital | Dujiangyan People's Hospital, 285 Xingfu Road · 028-87125145 |
| Phones | Scenic area 400-1151-222 · Sichuan tourism complaints 028-96927 · www.djy517.com · post office, 179 Guanwen Road |
Tips
Night beer in Sichuan means a late meal with beer, and there are two strips: the Nanqiao one by the scenic area, which is convenient and pricier, and the one by the bird-and-flower market, which is where Dujiangyan people actually go. If ¥110 a head sounds like tourist money, that is because it is.
On 5 April the town holds the Water-Releasing Festival, a re-enactment of opening the weir for the irrigation season, listed as national intangible cultural heritage in 2006. It is the biggest day in the Dujiangyan year, and the works make much more sense seen the way they were meant to be used.
The 128 m escalator gets you to Yulei Tower in about five minutes. Take it up, and walk down through Yulei Pass and the west gate — the descent has the better views, and it lands you at the City God temple and the old town.
The ¥180 Dujiangyan plus Qingcheng ticket is good value, and the two are 10 km apart — but doing both in one day means seeing everything at a run and remembering none of it. One place per day, and spend the evening on the riverbank.
An hour north, 364 sq km of protected forest, rafting at ¥170 a head with rescue points every ten or twenty metres, and the famous water mahjong in the shallows. It is the local answer to July, and it is a whole day, not a detour.
There are beds at every level in both halves of the city, but the old town puts you minutes from the park gate and walking distance from the night-beer strip. That is worth more than a slightly better mattress out by the ring road.
Background
In the early years of the works it was called Jianpeng: the mountain beside it, Yulei, was known as Jian Mountain before the Qin and Han, and the people living around the site were the Di and Qiang, who called a weir a peng. Under the Shu Han kingdom of the Three Kingdoms a commandery was set up at Du'an and the works took the name Du'an Weir from it — and also the name Gold Dyke, after the fish-mouth bank, using the dyke to stand for the whole scheme.
Under the Tang it became the Jianwei Weir, named for how it was built: bamboo split into cages three feet across, packed with stone and piled to hold back the water, a cage being called a jianwei. The name Dujiangyan appears for the first time in the Song history, in a line about the annual maintenance at Yongkang military prefecture — caging stone and snaking it across the river to hold water and irrigate several commanderies. From the Song, Dujiangyan is the name for the whole system, and it has stuck ever since.
The Chengdu plain that this works created was, in antiquity, a place of brutal water: too much of it and too little of it, in the same year. Li Bai's lines in The Road to Shu — of the ancient kings Cancong and Yufu, and of people ending up as fish and turtles — are not poetic exaggeration but a description of what the basin did before anyone managed it. In 256 BC, the fifty-first year of King Zhaoxiang of Qin, Li Bing, the Qin governor of Shu, and his son began the work.
The plan was plain and it has never changed: split the Min in two, send one part into the plain, and you get flood control and irrigation from the same gesture — harm reduced, fields watered, damage turned into advantage. It irrigates, it carries silt away, it served navigation and it supplies the city. What it produced on the ground is the Land of Abundance, and what it is technically is the oldest damless diversion works still in operation anywhere in the world.
Travel with them
Yu Qiuyu
A photographic collector's edition built around Yu Qiuyu's essays, with professional photographs alongside and a note written by Yu for each image. The two media push against and into each other, and the result is a slower, more considered and more felt way of looking at a place than a guidebook manages.
Wang Guoping
A heavily illustrated book on Dujiangyan and the country around it — the scenery and the historic sites in pictures and text. Flipping through it is like travelling with your eyes; you can get the whole shape of the place and its monuments quickly, which makes it a good thing to read before you go rather than after.
Qiang Jinwu
The distinctive thing here is the method: each sight is lit up by a story, sharpened by a story, drawn by a story, brought alive by a story. It is artistically infectious and it hands a guide a stock of vivid material — a readable, strange, rich collection of local legend rather than a history.
The questions visitors ask us most about Dujiangyan, answered plainly.
Prices and practical details are reviewed every month by our Beijing team and updated the day a rule changes.
The irrigation system is the whole point: the fish-mouth divider, the Flying Sand Weir and the Bottle-Neck, plus the Lidui garden, the Erwang Temple, the Anlan cable bridge, the Yulei Tower and the last stub of the Songmao trading road. Across the Nanqiao bridge is the rebuilt Guanxian old town, and in the evening the riverside turns into the night-beer strip. It is history you can watch working, with water still going through it after 2,270 years.
July and August are the classic months: when most of the Sichuan basin is unbearably hot, Dujiangyan and Qingcheng Mountain stay pleasant with a breeze, and the summer night-beer festival fills the riverbank from May to October. April 5th, at Qingming, brings the Water-Releasing Festival, a re-enactment of the ancient opening of the weir, which is the town's biggest event of the year. Winter is quiet and cheap, but cold and green-grey.
The intercity train is the easy answer: from Chengdu North or Chengdu West to Dujiangyan takes about 30 minutes and ¥15, with trains from roughly 06:32 to 20:17. Buses also run — Chadianzi station from ¥16, Ximen station every 5–10 minutes (¥11 express, ¥6.5 local), Xinnanmen from 08:40 for ¥25 — and in season a tourist shuttle leaves from outside the Wuhou Shrine. Six coaches a day run from Shuangliu airport, ¥24, booked 24 hours ahead.
You can, but it is a rush and most people regret it. They are 10 km apart and a combined ticket is ¥180. The sensible plan is Dujiangyan in one day — the works in the morning, the old town and the riverside in the evening — and Qingcheng the next. If you truly have one day, do the works in the morning and the front mountain in the afternoon, and accept that you will be moving fast.
Very. There are hotels at every level in both the old town and the new, and the old town is the better bet because it puts you next to the scenic area. Options run from ¥80 guesthouses behind the coach station to a ¥388 riverside hotel with a butler-style service. Book ahead only for the Water-Releasing Festival in early April and summer weekends.
Two is the standard answer: the Dujiangyan scenic area on the first day with the night-beer strip in the evening, and Mount Qingcheng on the second. If you have a third, add the Hongkou nature reserve and its rafting, about an hour north, which is what Chengdu families do with a hot summer weekend.
The Nanqiao night-beer strip is the local ritual — river fish, prawns, eel, spicy rabbit, boiled peanuts and cold beer beside the water, at about ¥110 a head. In town: zhazha noodles with their crisp fried topping, chicken-thread tofu pudding, spring rolls from the stall at Wugui bridge, spicy dried tofu skewers sold from a basin, and the four treasures of Qingcheng — Daoist rice wine, tribute tea, pickles and ginkgo-and-chicken soup.
Plan this trip
The same places, with a driver, an English-speaking guide and the tickets already bought.
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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.
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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