City guide · Sichuan
A glacier that comes down to 2,850 m, hot springs in the forest, and Gongga Shan filling the sky above both.
Reviewed by our Beijing team Updated 2026-10-10
The short version
City guide
Photographs from the coast, and what other travellers wrote afterwards.
I love glaciers and snow mountains. They have a kind of spell over you — they make you reverent and afraid at the same time, and they keep bringing you back. They give me something to look up to; they let me straighten my back in the middle of a busy, pointless life and find a glimpse of somewhere for the soul to live.
A traveller's note, 'Two Days Around Chengdu: Western Sichuan'
Snow falling outside, snow mountain in front, hot tea and a hot pool — this is the picture I dreamed of. I showed the Japanese the photo of this hot spring at 2,700-odd metres and they were openly envious of it. I slept here one night and several days of exhaustion simply disappeared.
A traveller's note, 'I Love the Plateau, I Love Snow Mountains'
Most glaciers in the world sit above the treeline, unreachable without ropes. This one comes down through cloud forest and mist to about 2,850 m, on the eastern flank of Gongga Shan — the King of Shu, 7,556 m, the highest mountain in Sichuan. You ride a green shuttle up the valley, take a cable car across the ice fall if you want the aerial view, or walk a boardwalk through old forest and stand at the bottom of the ice. If you can walk uphill for an hour, you can see it properly.
The valley is organised by altitude into numbered camps, and the number is the whole system: bigger means higher and closer to Gongga. Camp 1 at 1,940 m is warm, forested, subtropical — palms and bamboo among the Han and Yi villages. Camp 2 at 2,580 m is where the hot springs are. Camp 3 at 2,940 m is the shuttle's last stop and the classic place to watch the sunrise paint the peaks gold. Camp 4, cable car only, no beds, stands almost against the mountain with the whole glacier below it.
Above everything is the Great Ice Fall — over 1,000 m high and about 1,100 m across, more than ten times the scale of Huangguoshu Falls. Behind its calm white face the ice is moving, pushing rock and debris down the mountain, which is why you view it from platforms and never walk onto it. Between the gate and the summit the valley stacks seven climate and vegetation bands, which is why the forest keeps changing as you climb — macaques, squirrels, red-bellied pheasant, and in summer takin and blue sheep coming down to drink at the hot springs.
At the bottom is Moxi, the old town at the valley mouth on the tea-horse road: Ming and Qing timber houses, a Gothic Catholic church built by a French missionary in 1918, and the memory of the Long March — in May 1935 the Red Army's First Front Army passed through on its way to Luding Bridge, and Mao, Zhu De, Zhou Enlai and Chen Yun slept in that church and held the Moxi Conference in the priest's house. It is the bus stop, the place to eat and sleep, and worth a slow afternoon of its own.
Hailuogou
Seven things that are worth rearranging a day for.
Highlights
One of the lowest modern glaciers anywhere — its tongue reaches about 2,850 m, below the treeline, through cloud forest. Shuttle, cable car or boardwalk; no ropes, no guide, no technical gear. Nowhere else in China lets you stand this close to ice this old this easily.
On a clear morning the first light lands on Gongga's southern summits — the Three Linked Peaks, Gold and Silver Mountain, and the unnamed peak, all above 6,300 m — and lays gold over the snow. It happens around 06:40 in spring and summer and about 07:20 in autumn and winter.
Pools in the old forest at 2,580 m, steam drifting through the trees, snow falling on the branches around you while you sit in it. The water is a sodium-bicarbonate neutral medical thermal spring, and ¥80 buys the single best hour of a Hailuogou trip.
More than 1,000 m high and about 1,100 m across — over ten times the scale of Huangguoshu. The cable car crosses it, which is the only way to see the whole thing at once. It looks still. It is not: the ice behind the white face is moving rock downhill all the time.
The boardwalk from Camp 3 to the viewpoint runs through primeval forest hung with moss and lichen. Quiet walkers see macaques, squirrels and red-bellied pheasant; in summer, takin and blue sheep come down to the hot-spring stream to drink. Seven climate bands are stacked between the gate and the summit.
Ming and Qing timber houses, a French Gothic church from 1918 whose bell has been ringing for a century, and the room where the Moxi Conference was held in 1935. A lived-in town rather than a museum, and the only sensible place to base yourself.
Suggested routes
Glacier one day, springs and old town the next. This is the trip.
Bus from Chengdu Xinnanmen at 09:30, about five hours through Ya'an and the Erlangshan Tunnel, arriving at Moxi in the afternoon. Or drive the 280 km yourself in six to eight hours.
Walk the old street before dinner: the Ming and Qing timber houses, the 1918 Catholic church, the Moxi Conference site. Eat yak, drink the local plum wine, sleep low — you are only at 1,600 m and tomorrow you climb to nearly 3,000.
Stops: Moxi old townCatholic church
Take the first green shuttle up. Ride all the way to Camp 3, then either the cable car to Camp 4 for the aerial view of the ice fall and Gongga, or the forest boardwalk to the viewpoint and down to the base of the glacier — one to two hours, carrying your own food.
Come back down and stop at Camp 2 for the hot springs, ¥80, and stay until the light goes. If you are sleeping up here, do the sunrise tomorrow; if not, ride the last shuttle down and sleep in Moxi.
Stops: Camp 3Camp 4Camp 2 hot springs
Sleep inside the valley so you can be standing outside at 06:40.
Arrive in Moxi, buy your ticket and shuttle pass, and ride up through the forest — the vegetation changes with every band: palms and bamboo near Camp 1, conifers and moss higher up.
Check in at Camp 2 at 2,580 m and spend the evening in the pools. Note the last shuttle up is 17:00 and the hotels stop checking in after 17:30 — do not cut it fine.
Stops: MoxiCamp 1Camp 2
Be on the balcony or up at Camp 3 before 06:40 in summer, 07:20 in autumn and winter. The light lands on Gongga's southern summits first.
Then the glacier: cable car to Camp 4 for the whole ice fall at once, and the boardwalk down to the ice if your legs are willing. Afternoon back at the pools. Winter visitors get snow and steam at the same time.
Stops: Sunrise on GonggaCamp 4Glacier viewpoint
Ride down through the forest in the morning light, and give Moxi a proper hour before you leave — the old street, the church, breakfast on the lane.
Then the road: the 09:30 or afternoon bus back to Chengdu, or the drive via Luding, where you can stop at the iron-chain bridge on the Dadu River if you have not had enough history.
Stops: Moxi old streetLuding BridgeChengdu
For people driving: take the long way and fold in Siguniang and Danba.
Out via Dujiangyan, Yingxiu, Wolong and the 4,500 m Balang Pass to Rilong at 3,200 m — 286 km, five or six hours. A day in Changping or Shuangqiao, horses or shuttle.
Then south over the passes to Xiaojin and on to Danba, the valley of watchtowers and the Jiarong cultural heartland.
Stops: Balang PassRilongDanba
Morning among the old stone towers at Danba, then the road west: Bamei, the Tagong grasslands, and Xinduqiao — the so-called photographers' corridor, ten-odd kilometres of birch, streams, grassland and scattered Tibetan houses.
On to Kangding and its Tibetan town, then down to Luding and Moxi. Every kilometre of this leg is the point.
Stops: DanbaTagongXinduqiao
A full day on the glacier and a night at Camp 2, then a slow morning in Moxi.
Back to Chengdu via Ya'an and the Erlangshan Tunnel — 280 km — or push on to Yajiageng, an hour away, for the red-rock shoals and the alpine lakes below Gongga.
Stops: HailuogouMoxiChengdu
Sights
1,940 m — the warm band
Fifteen kilometres from Moxi, and the moment the valley opens out: clear water, birds, palms and bamboo among the Han and Yi hamlets, a subtropical farm scene. It is the sanctuary for the valley's plants and animals, and the altitude at which the hot-spring hotels sit. Past it you enter the core of the park.
Tip Between here and the 6,300 m of drop up to Gongga's summit the valley stacks seven climate and vegetation bands, one of the most complete vertical landscape sections in China. The forest changes as you ride — watch it.
2,580 m — the pools
Seven kilometres on from Camp 1, at the Hot Water Gorge. A spring mouth bubbles up clearly, with pools ranged from hot to cool, and the whole place is more or less unbuilt — steam in the trees, little concrete, nothing designed. The water is a sodium-bicarbonate neutral medical thermal spring, good for neuralgia, stomach complaints and arthritis.
Tip Winter is the reason to come: you lie in hot water and watch snow fall on the forest around you. Bring your own swimsuit and towel — the simpler places provide nothing.
2,940 m — the sunrise
Past Water Lake, the valley's only ancient moraine lake, and the classic place to watch the sunrise turn Gongga gold. The light lands on the Three Linked Peaks, Gold and Silver Mountain and the unnamed peak — all above 6,300 m on the southern side of the massif — and the silver summits go gold all at once.
Tip Do not sleep through it. This is one of the five famous sights of Hailuogou and the one that decides whether people think the trip was worth it.
Cable car only
The viewpoint almost against Gongga itself, with the whole glacier spread out below you and the Great Ice Fall in front — over 1,000 m high and about 1,100 m across, more than ten times the scale of Huangguoshu Falls. The cable car is the only way up, it crosses the ice fall, and on a clear day you also see small avalanches running on the ice.
Tip Ride up on a clear day and walk down on a wet one. In cloud the cable car sees nothing, while the boardwalk still gives you the forest, the animals and the ice at close range — and the sound of the ice fall.
The reason you came
A low-altitude monsoon glacier pouring down off Gongga, ending in an ice tongue you can approach. The boardwalk from the viewpoint takes you down to the base of the ice, where the Great Ice Fall towers above you — ice caves, ice bridges, blue in the shadowed crevasses. It smells cold and it is, somehow, warm-making.
Tip Local porters on the viewpoint will steady you across the slickest, steepest bits and will try to sell you a chair back down. Take the help; the chair is your call.
The base
The old town at the mouth of the valley, on the tea-horse road, old enough that its Ming and Qing timber buildings still read as a town rather than a set. In the middle of it, a French Gothic Catholic church built in 1918, whose bell has rung for a century. In May 1935, twenty thousand men of the Red Army's First Front Army passed through on the way to Luding Bridge; Mao, Zhu De, Zhou Enlai and Chen Yun slept in the church and held the Moxi Conference in the priest's house. Both sites survive.
Tip Give it a slow morning or evening rather than passing through. It is the only place in the area where you can eat well, find an ATM and arrange a guide in the same ten minutes.
Side valleys
Yanzi Gou is the sister valley, a bit over 10 km away and far quieter — Sky Medicine Water Flat, the Sea-Fixing Needle, red-rock shoals, Takin Flat, Swallow Crag, the ice cellar mouth, the mandala, the Medicine King temple and a Gongga summit viewpoint. Yajiageng, about an hour's drive between Moxi and Kangding, carries both the Tang-Tibet and the tea-horse roads, and the road up passes red-rock shoals and Yajia Qinghai before the stone marker and Ash Lake.
Tip Both need your own wheels. Take Yajiageng if you want the red-rock shoals and the lakes; take Yanzi Gou if you want another glacier valley with nobody in it.
Hot springs
Soaking — in and out of pools at different temperatures, and 40°C feels like a thousand acupuncture needles if you can take it. Showering — stand under the hot-water spout or ladle it over yourself from a wooden bucket. Swimming — the thermal pool as a proper swim, which is heat plus exercise and a real workout.
Test the temperature with a hand or a foot; never jump straight in. Feet first, sit on the edge, splash the water over your whole body, then let yourself down. Start in the cool pools and work up. Twenty to thirty minutes at a time, out for a stretch and water, then back. Do not go alone, and do not rinse off with soap afterwards.
Never on an empty stomach, and never within an hour of a meal or any alcohol — you will get dizzy, faint or far worse. If you have heart disease or high blood pressure, wet your body with the water gradually before immersing; do not go straight in. Over 65: keep it under fifteen minutes.
Anyone with a skin allergy, pregnancy or recent surgery. Diabetics: no more than twenty minutes, water no hotter than 40°C, because heat speeds insulin absorption and loads the heart. Anyone with cancer or leukaemia, and anyone who has just been ill. If you feel wrong in the water, get out — that is the whole rule.
Silver and most metals blacken in sulphur water within minutes, and it does not come off. Also bring your own swimsuit, towel and toiletries: the big hotels supply them, farmhouse places do not, and your own is cleaner regardless. Drink water — you are losing fluid as your temperature climbs.
Springs divide roughly into neutral carbonated, alkaline sodium-bicarbonate, salt and sulphur, and each suits different complaints. This one is sodium bicarbonate and neutral — the mildest of the four, and the reason it works for neuralgia, stomach trouble, diabetes and arthritis. Skin dries out fast afterwards; put lotion on immediately.
Food
Called the crown of beef, and the thing to eat at altitude: high in protein and amino acids, iron, carotene, calcium and phosphorus, very low in fat and very high in calories. Moxi sits in Ganzi and produces a lot of it, so it is cheap here — eat it, and take some home.
The local habit is to slaughter the New Year pig after the winter solstice, cut it into three- or four-jin pieces, thread them on palm-leaf cord, salt them in layers in a vat for three to five days, then smoke them over walnut shells and cypress. Then they hang in the air until they are dry and hard.
Yi food, cut into chunks, boiled and eaten as it is — the old way was to sit round a jar of wine and drink through wheat straws. On Yi festival days the households slaughter cattle, sheep and pigs and simmer great pots of it for anyone who comes to the door.
The Tibetan side of the valley eats smoked and roasted meat with barley wine, butter tea and yoghurt — the foods that make sense at 2,500 m. The Han kitchens of Moxi cook plain Sichuan. Ask for the local dishes in advance if you want them; most restaurants can do them but do not by default.
The local feast for weddings and funerals: nine big bowls — two of pork, plus meatballs and steamed dishes, with crisp pork, noodles, kelp and wood ear around them — laid out in a pyramid of four, three, two, one. Temple feasts are vegetarian, fried bean curd and gourds in vegetable oil.
Old-shade tea is the coarse tea people boil in a pot and drink all day. For New Year, farm households make their own malt sugar: popcorn stuck into cakes, pressed into bars and sliced, or peanut, walnut, sesame and popped grain ground, cut into finger-sized pieces, sun-dried and stir-fried in ash or sand, then coated in sugar.
Where to eat
Street food
One of the very few snack shops on the old street, which is why it stands out. The guokui is flat bread baked until it blisters — filling, cheap, and exactly the thing to eat while you walk the lane. Heading towards the old street, you will see it.
Bar and outfitter
A bar on the middle of the old street that also hires horses, guides and gear — if you need anything arranged, ask for Abu, a Tibetan born and raised in Moxi. Their own fruit wines are the draw: the plum wine is the best of them, the green-plum and kiwi are good, and the cherry is not.
Farmhouse
An all-timber house eight kilometres up towards the Gongga hot springs, with a kitchen doing what it grows: barbecued free-range chicken and snow-mountain bacon, the two dishes people come back up the road for. Clean air, running water, fir-plank walls, warm in winter and cool in summer.
Sichuan
Between the gate and Kangding the cooking is Sichuan and not hugely different from anywhere else; the Tibetan and Yi specialities — smoked meat, barley wine, butter tea, yoghurt, tuo tuo pork — are what you have to ask for. Most hotel and restaurant kitchens default to mild, ordinary dishes unless you tell them otherwise in advance.
Where to stay
The romantic one
In the core of the park at 2,580 m, 23 km from the gate and 9 km from the cable car — reachable only by shuttle, with the last bus up at 17:00 and no check-in after 17:30. What you are buying is the pools at night and the sunrise from the balcony in the morning.
Forest hot springs
A court-garden hotel set among the Gongga peaks and old forest, with the glacier river running past it. Its pools are the lowest-altitude glacier hot springs in China, so bathing here does not bring on the dizziness, chest tightness or breathlessness you get from soaking high — every pool runs on its own flow-through system.
Camp 1, in the park
Tibetan-style hotel built into the slope at Camp 1, 15 km from the gate at 1,940 m and a twenty-minute drive from Camp 3 — a full thousand metres below it. Pools you can swim or bathe in, a spring mouth at 78°C running all year, and water good enough to drink.
Closest to the ice
The closest hotel to the glacier, ringed by primeval forest, and the place to watch the sunrise over Gongga without going outside — or from just outside, which is better. Fully equipped, and priced accordingly. Like Camp 2, the last shuttle up is 17:00 and check-in stops at 17:30.
Four-star at the gate
Built and finished to four-star standard, a cluster of European-style villas stepped up the slope with the Gongga snow peaks standing beside it. Glacier views from the window, and the sunrise on the peaks from your bed if the timing works. Full hot water, ticketing and tour services.
Budget
Near the three-way junction: get off the bus before it enters the station and it is a two-minute walk. Rooms are painted bright colours, there is no air conditioning but there are electric blankets, and some rooms have their own viewing balcony with a snow mountain in it.
Getting around
One departure a day: Chengdu Xinnanmen Station (028-85433609), 09:30, direct to Moxi at the valley gate, about five hours for ¥138. Buy a day or two ahead. Coming back, there is one bus a day to Chengdu for ¥145, with extra departures in peak season — ask locally which.
The classic: Chengdu–Ya'an–Tianquan–Erlangshan Tunnel–Luding–Moxi, about 280 km and six to eight hours on the G318 and G108. Chengdu to Ya'an is 134 km of expressway, Ya'an to Tianquan 38 km of two-lane concrete, and the 110 km through Erlangshan is concrete all the way. The 4.1 km tunnel has two different climates at its two ends.
Route two goes over Niba Mountain via Hanyuan and Shimian, 468 km and about twelve hours. Route three is the western loop: Chengdu–Dujiangyan–Wolong–Xiaojin–Danba–Luding, 750 km over two days, which lets you fold in Mount Siguniang, the Danba watchtowers and the Tagong grasslands on the way. Apart from Kangding–Luding, the road is good throughout.
Inside the park only the green shuttle buses run — a deliberate system, for safety and for the environment. The road is laid in crushed rock rather than concrete on purpose: in winter, compacted snow on a hard surface on these switchbacks is dangerous even with chains. Taxis can only go as far as Camp 1, about ¥30.
From Camp 3, ride the shuttle to the cable-car ticket office and walk the path up to the viewpoint — an hour or two, through old forest. From there you can drop to the base of the glacier. Adjust clothing as you climb: you warm up fast, and sweat plus wind is how people get sick up here.
Practical
Two days is the standard trip and it is enough: glacier and ice fall on day one, hot springs and Moxi on day two. Sleep inside the valley at Camp 2 or 3 if you want the sunrise — that is the one thing a day trip cannot give you.
| Entry | ¥75 — no high or low season, one of the few parks in China with a flat year-round price |
|---|---|
| Shuttle | ¥80; green buses only, last bus up 17:00, taxis stop at Camp 1 (about ¥30) |
| Cable car | ¥150 return, Camp 3 to Camp 4 — the only way up to Camp 4 and the only way across the ice fall |
| Hot springs | ¥80 at Camp 2; sodium-bicarbonate neutral medical thermal spring; pools in the forest at 2,580 m |
| Camps | Camp 1 1,940 m · Camp 2 2,580 m · Camp 3 2,940 m · Camp 4 cable car only, no beds |
| Glacier | Ice tongue reaches about 2,850 m; Great Ice Fall over 1,000 m high and about 1,100 m across |
| Sunrise | About 06:40 in spring and summer; about 07:20 in autumn and winter |
| Bus from Chengdu | Xinnanmen 028-85433609, 09:30 daily to Moxi, about 5 hours, ¥138 |
| Climate | Valley floor spring-like year round, about 15°C average; summits permanent snow, about -9°C average; rain May–September, snow October–April |
| Money | One Agricultural Bank in Moxi, on the old street by the church; other cards incur a fee of about ¥1 per ¥100. Bring cash |
Tips
If the sunrise matters, book a night at Camp 2 or Camp 3. Watching the light land on Gongga is the difference between a good trip and a great one, and you cannot do it from Moxi at 06:40.
Take the cable car on a clear day for the aerial view of the ice fall. On a wet or foggy day, skip it and walk the boardwalk instead — you still get to the ice, and you get the forest and the animals the cable car floats over.
Everything sold inside the park is expensive, and the walk to the viewpoint burns real energy. Chocolate, biscuits, bread and water in your own bag, every time.
You heat up fast on the climb to the viewpoint and cool down fast when you stop, and sweat plus wind at 2,900 m is how trips go wrong. A shell jacket, proper trainers, and crampons if there is ice.
The glacier is moving: it pushes rock and debris downhill, and a deep rumble means a boulder has just rolled. Stay on the platforms and marked paths, and never step onto the ice.
Moxi is small and the food is limited — Han, Tibetan and Yi kitchens with quite different flavours. If you are a fussy eater, bring snacks from Chengdu. Inside the park, rice genuinely does not cook properly at altitude.
Background
The name comes from a conch. Tangtong Gyalpo, the great adept of the Shangpa Kagyu tradition of the Later Tibetan schools, travelled through India, China and the Kham and Tibetan regions and built 128 stupas and 128 bridges — architect, Buddhist scholar, physician, the founder of Tibetan opera, and the man who wrote and staged the sung historical dramas. He left footprints all through Hailuogou, Yanzi Gou and the Dadu valley, building temples, mani piles and stupas.
After Luding Bridge was finished he took the Hailuogou route over the snow mountain to build on the western slope, and when he blew his conch the birds and animals of the forest would gather round the stone cave to hear him chant. They kept coming at the same hour after he left, and trees and flowers grew on the roof of the cave. Then he appeared to a disciple in a dream and said that the great rock he had lived under had been sealed by the god of Gongga as the Hailuogou Spirit Stone, and that the deep valley he had crossed should be named for the conch he carried. That is where Hailuogou comes from.
Hailuogou sits at the foot of Gongga's snow peaks on the eastern edge of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, a region of extreme high mountains. Because the vertical drop is so extreme — more than 6,300 m between the summit and the gate — plant geography and flora are unusually complex and biodiversity unusually rich, forming one of the most representative vertical landscape sections in China and one of the country's richest storehouses of ancient and primitive species. Seven distinct climate and vegetation bands stack up the valley.
The bottom is a dry-valley subtropical climate: long spring, no summer, rich vegetation, an annual average around 15°C. The summits carry snow all year at an annual average of -9°C. The glacier itself descends to about 2,850 m, which is the whole reason this valley matters — a modern monsoon glacier within reach of a shuttle bus. Rain falls mostly from May to September, snow from October to April.
Below the glacier, Moxi sits on the road that carried tea to Tibet and salt and cloth back, and the population it left behind is mixed — Han, Khampa Tibetan and Yi, each with their own kitchen and their own calendar. The Tibetan side is Khampa: smoked and roasted meat, barley wine, butter tea and yoghurt, and the evening tent performances where guests are handed a khata and served roast lamb and boiled potatoes while songs and dances go round the tent by lamplight.
The Yi calendar runs through the year: the Children's Festival around Qingming or Guyu, when the elders take the village children out to play in the fields and teach them history and manners; the Torch Festival on the twenty-fourth day of the sixth lunar month, held for a woman named Sire Agya who led her people to recover her husband's body and came home by torchlight; the Ox King Festival on the first day of the tenth month, when families eat glutinous cakes and paste one on the ox's horn and the animal gets the day off; and the Yi New Year between the twenty-second and twenty-fifth of the tenth month. In July, the sunflower fields below the snow peaks turn the valley gold.
Travel with them
Splendid Tianfu tourism series
Part of the series on Sichuan — the old name for the province is land of plenty, and the claim is not false: long history, fine mountains and rivers, rich produce, and a tradition that runs from the poets who all came to Shu to the travellers who come now.
Shambala
Sung by a sister duo from Hailuogou itself, in Ganzi — young, talented, and with the kind of untrained-open voice the valley gives people. Play it walking the old street in Moxi at dusk.
Directed by Jiang Ping
Set on the old snow mountain in 1949, when a spring thunder woke the land and the changes that followed reached even a valley this high. Melodramatic, and a fair portrait of how quickly this corner of Sichuan turned over.
The questions visitors ask us most about Hailuogou, answered plainly.
Prices and practical details are reviewed every month by our Beijing team and updated the day a rule changes.
One direct bus a day: Chengdu Xinnanmen Station (028-85433609) departs 09:30 for Moxi at the valley gate, about five hours for ¥138. Buy a day or two ahead. Miss it and take a bus to Luding (¥91) and then a local car the last 52 km for about ¥20. Driving via Ya'an and the 4.1 km Erlangshan Tunnel on the G318 is about 280 km and 6–8 hours. There is no train or airport at the gate.
That is the entire point of the place. The glacier comes down to about 2,850 m, so the shuttle and the cable car bring you close and a boardwalk takes you to the base of the ice with no technical gear at all. Walk the boardwalk rather than riding both ways if you can — you get macaques, squirrels, old forest, and the sound of the ice fall for your trouble.
No. It is a living, moving glacier with crevasses and rockfall, and the regular visit does not permit going onto the ice. If you hear a deep rumbling, that is a boulder whose ice pedestal has melted and rolled — stay on the platforms and the marked paths.
Most people base in Moxi old town at the gate, with everything from ¥30 hostel beds to four-star hotels. Inside the valley, Camp 2 lets you soak and watch the sunrise from the balcony; Camp 3 is closest to the glacier and dearest; Camp 1 is lower, warmer and has the big hot-spring hotels. Almost nobody picks Camp 1 just to sleep there, and Camp 4 has no beds at all.
No — it is one of the very few parks in China with no seasonal pricing, because the glacier looks like that all year. Entry is ¥75, the shuttle is ¥80, the cable car is ¥150 return, and the Camp 2 hot spring is ¥80. The cable car is the only optional one of those four.
It works in every season. October to April brings the clearest skies and snow on the peaks; May is the local spring, with wildflowers and the best odds of a clear sunrise; summer is far cooler than the Sichuan basin; winter is snow plus hot springs, which is the combination people come back for. Rain concentrates in May to September, snow from October to April.
Your own swimsuit, towel and toiletries — some places supply towels and disposable swimsuits, farmhouse places supply nothing, and bringing your own is cleaner anyway. Take off metal jewellery before you get in; sulphur blackens silver in minutes.
From Camp 3, ride the shuttle to the cable-car ticket office and then walk the forest path up to the viewpoint — roughly one to two hours, depending on how often you stop. From the viewpoint you can go down to the base of the glacier. Carry chocolate, biscuits and water: everything sold up there is expensive.
Plan this trip
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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.
Daocheng Yading
City guide · 12 tours
Three 6,000 m sacred peaks, glacial lakes at 4,600 m and twenty hours of road — the hardest, highest payoff in Sichuan.
Shunan Bamboo Sea
City guide · 12 tours
Seventy thousand mu of bamboo over twenty-eight hills, a red sandstone corridor under a closed green roof, and a banquet made entirely of bamboo.
Dujiangyan
City guide · 12 tours
Not a monument but a machine: three pieces of engineering with no dam, still doing their job after 2,270 years.
Qingcheng Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
The mountain where Daoism was organised, and the one Chengdu escapes to when the basin turns into an oven.
Qingdao
City guide · 12 tours
Red-tiled roofs, cold beer and a granite mountain that walks straight into the sea — the easiest good time on the Yellow Sea.
Mount Tai
City guide · 12 tours
1,545 metres, 6,290 stone steps and three thousand years of emperors — the one mountain in China that is also a document.
Jinan
City guide · 12 tours
A provincial capital with 700 springs under the pavement — people still queue at the spouts to fill their kettles.
Weihai
City guide · 12 tours
1,000 km of clean coast, a free bathing beach, the island where the Beiyang Fleet died — and thousands of wild swans every winter.
Qufu
City guide · 12 tours
One family, two thousand years of steles, and a ¥150 pass that covers the lot — the easiest serious day trip in Shandong.
Penglai
City guide · 12 tours
China's immortals' coast — a Song-dynasty naval harbour you can walk for free, a mythology nobody ever found, and the ferry to 32 islands.
Changdao
City guide · 12 tours
32 islands, one causeway, a ¥150 land pass, tens of thousands of gulls and nowhere you can drive — the place where everything happens by boat.
Nanjing
City guide · 12 tours
Capital of six dynasties, capital of the Republic, and the city that eats more duck than anywhere else on earth.
Suzhou
City guide · 12 tours
Two thousand five hundred years of canals, sixty surviving gardens, and a city that shuts its gates at half past five.
Zhouzhuang
City guide · 12 tours
Nine hundred years, fourteen bridges, one ticket — and a town that only makes sense before eight in the morning.
Tongli
City guide · 12 tours
Fifteen canals, seven islets, forty-nine bridges — and a town that still gets up at dawn because it lives here.
Wuxi
City guide · 12 tours
Taihu on one side, a Grand Buddha on the next hill, and ribs sweet enough to argue about — the most underrated city on the Yangtze delta.
Yangzhou
City guide · 12 tours
A city built by salt merchants who had more money than restraint — gardens, a narrow lake, and the best breakfast in China.
Zhenjiang
City guide · 12 tours
Three hills, one ferry landing, and an unreasonable share of Chinese literature — the Yangtze city people drive past.
Changzhou
City guide · 12 tours
A 2,500-year-old canal city that built a dinosaur park and refuses to apologise for it.
Wuzhen
City guide · 12 tours
A town that is two towns: the older, quieter East Zone and the lit-up West Zone you sleep inside.
Xitang
City guide · 12 tours
Nine canals, 122 lanes, one long roofed corridor — and a town that still works for a living.
Hangzhou
City guide · 12 tours
A lake in the middle of a city, a tea village in the hills, and two thousand years of getting the mood right.
Xixi Wetland
City guide · 12 tours
Ten square kilometres of marsh inside Hangzhou, and the only way into half of it is a boat.
Ningbo
City guide · 12 tours
A 7,000-year-old port with Asia's oldest private library, a free waterfront 20 years older than Shanghai's, and the best seafood before the islands.
Mount Putuo
City guide · 12 tours
A Buddhist island with no cars, three great temples and a ¥10 lunch that is the point of the place.
Qiandao Lake
City guide · 12 tours
A thousand islands that did not exist sixty years ago, and the cleanest big-lake water in China.
Shaoxing
City guide · 12 tours
Two and a half thousand years of water-town China, and Lu Xun's house is free.
Zhoushan
City guide · 12 tours
1,390 islands, one road bridge in, and a harbour that lands more fish than almost anywhere on earth.
Hengdian
City guide · 12 tours
A backlot the size of a town, where the palaces are copies and the film crews are real.
Yandang Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
A volcano that weathering turned into scenery — 500-odd sights of peak, cave and waterfall across eight scenic areas.
Zhejiang
City guide · 12 tours
One small, mountainous, absurdly rich province that holds a lake, two canal towns, a Buddhist island and a dead volcano.
Hong Kong Outlying Islands
City guide · 12 tours
Two hundred-odd islands, half an hour of ferry from the financial district, and not a car on three of them.
Hong Kong Shopping
City guide · 12 tours
A duty-free port where the tag starts lower, two citywide sale seasons knock a third off, and every mall sits on an MTR exit.
Macao
City guide · 12 tours
Four hundred years of Portuguese streets, a fake Venice under a painted sky, and the best egg tart in Asia.
Urumqi
City guide · 12 tours
The city furthest from the sea, with a snow range on its doorstep and dinner starting at nine.
Hong Kong SAR, China
City guide · 11 tours
A harbour skyline you already know by heart, dim sum trolleys at dawn, and 260 islands an hour from the neon.
Taiwan, China
City guide · 11 tours
Night-market alleys, high-mountain railways, and a coastline that changes character every hundred kilometres.
Qinghai Lake
City guide · 12 tours
A 4,400 sq km inland sea at 3,200 m, ringed by rapeseed gold, prayer flags and the best cycling road in China.
Mount Emei
City guide · 11 tours
A 3,099-metre Buddhist summit you can reach by cable car before lunch — and a mountain full of monkeys that will absolutely rob you.
Beijing
City guide · 11 tours
Six centuries of imperial red walls, a Great Wall you can climb before lunch, and the best roast duck on earth.
Taipei
City guide · 11 tours
A 24-hour bookstore, a night market that never stops sizzling, and a city that apologises when you bump into it.
North Xinjiang
City guide · 11 tours
Alpine lakes the colour of poured enamel, a village of log cabins under birch trees, and the last tear the Atlantic ever sheds.
Lanzhou
City guide · 11 tours
A city split in half by the Yellow River, where beef noodles are a breakfast ritual and the Silk Road still runs through the streets.
Mount Hua
City guide · 11 tours
Five granite peaks, one plank road bolted to a cliff face, and a sunrise that justifies the 2am start.
Dunhuang
City guide · 11 tours
A desert oasis where Buddhist cave art survived a thousand years and a crescent lake refused to dry up.
Gannan
City guide · 11 tours
433 kilometres of the Yellow River's first bend, a 3.5 km prayer-wheel circuit, and Tibetan grasslands almost nobody has commercialised yet.
Sichuan–Tibet Highway
City guide · 11 tours
2,142 kilometres of cliff-edge switchbacks, four of China's most beautiful mountains, and a road the Tibetans walk on their knees.
Kangding
City guide · 11 tours
The town that gave Asia its most famous love song, a 7,556m sacred peak on its doorstep, and the last real Tibetan town before the road climbs to Lhasa.
Lhasa
City guide · 12 tours
A city of prayer wheels and butter lamps at 3,700 metres, where the sun shines 3,000 hours a year and the world's highest palace watches over it all.
Nyingchi
City guide · 11 tours
Tibet's greenest corner — peach blossom valleys, a 7,782 m peak that hides from almost everyone, and the world's deepest canyon.
Namtso
City guide · 11 tours
A 1,920-square-kilometre sheet of impossible blue at 4,718 metres, ringed by snow peaks and prayer flags.
Chongqing
City guide · 12 tours
A vertical city of fog, cable cars and cliff-side stilt houses, where the火锅 never stops boiling and the night skyline outshines Hong Kong.
Qiandongnan
City guide · 11 tours
A thousand Miao households stacked up a mountainside, drum towers and wind-rain bridges in Dong villages, and a 600-year-old Ming garrison town on the road to Guiyang.
Libo
City guide · 11 tours
Emerald rivers threading through karst peaks, a 600-metre forest growing out of a riverbed, and China's largest wild plum grove.
Guiyang
City guide · 11 tours
China's summer capital at 1,100 metres, where the nights run on sour fish soup, street-side barbecue and mahjong that never quite stops.
Zhenyuan
City guide · 11 tours
A 2,000-year-old river town where the Wuyang River carves an S through the mountains and every lane hides a story.
Huangguoshu
City guide · 11 tours
Asia's biggest waterfall, and the only one on earth you can walk behind, above and around — plus 600-year-old Ming dynasty villages a short drive away.
Harbin
City guide · 11 tours
Minus 30 degrees, a frozen river you can walk across, and a cathedral built by Russians who never went home.
Yunnan
City guide · 11 tours
Snow mountains, tropical rainforest, twenty-five minorities and a plate of rice noodles — all in one province.
Shanghai
City guide · 11 tours
A 1920s waterfront of colonial banks facing a science-fiction skyline, soup dumplings you eat with a straw, and 20 million people moving like clockwork.
Zhangjiajie
City guide · 11 tours
Three thousand sandstone pillars straight out of Avatar, a glass skywalk bolted to a cliff, and a cable car that leaves from downtown.
Guangzhou
City guide · 11 tours
A 2,200-year-old trading port where dim sum is a religion, colonial islands sit beside 600-metre towers, and the food never stops.
Guilin
City guide · 11 tours
Karst peaks rising straight out of a green river, rice terraces carved into mountainsides, and the best bowl of noodles you'll eat in China.
Shenzhen
City guide · 11 tours
A fishing village that became a megacity in forty years — and it still has 500-year-old banyans, empty beaches and dim sum worth the border crossing.
Chengdu
City guide · 11 tours
A 3,000-year-old city where the schedule is tea, mahjong and hotpot — and the pandas are just the opening act.
Xinjiang
City guide · 11 tours
Snow peaks, grassland, desert and oasis — one-sixth of China, and the longest road you will ever ride.
Xi'an
City guide · 14 tours
Thirteen dynasties of emperors, a terracotta army buried for 2,200 years, and a walled city you can cycle in 100 minutes.
Qinghai
City guide · 11 tours
China's high-altitude blue heart: a salt lake you can walk on, a 3,200-metre sea, and yak butter tea at the roof of the world.
Tibet
City guide · 11 tours
A plateau the size of Western Europe where the sky starts at your feet, prayer flags carry the wind, and the roads run past 8,000-metre peaks.
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