City guide · Sichuan
108 mineral-blue lakes in one 55 km valley — the place that ruins water everywhere else for you.
Reviewed by our Beijing team Updated 2026-10-10
The short version
City guide
Photographs from the coast, and what other travellers wrote afterwards.
Jiuzhaigou is a beauty you have to see with your own eyes. They say October is the finest month — every hillside dyed yellow and red against blue water. As the writer Wei Wei put it: natural beauty, beautifully natural; heaven on earth, earth in heaven.
A traveller's note, 'Jiuzhaigou–Chengdu–Leshan–Emei, independent'
If you have never been at altitude, start drinking hongjingtian a few days out. Coming down from Huanglong I watched a traveller collapse on the boardwalk with altitude sickness. It looked genuinely dangerous.
A traveller's note, 'A Sichuan girl's budget spring weekend in Jiuzhaigou'
The name means nine-village valley, after the nine Tibetan hamlets strung along it, and the local boast — after Jiuzhaigou you stop looking at water — is closer to true than it has any right to be. There are 108 lakes here, called haizi, and the colour runs the whole palette within a single basin: pale yellow, dark green, rust red, deep blue, turquoise. Move three steps and it changes again.
The park is a Y. Two arms climb from the junction at Nuorilang: the Rize arm east to Primeval Forest, and the Zechawa arm south to Long Lake and the small, absurd Five-Colour Pool. The main stem, Shuzheng Valley, runs downhill past nineteen linked lakes and the widest waterfall here — Nuorilang, 20 m high and 300 m across, the closing shot of the 1980s Journey to the West.
What you are actually looking at is calcium carbonate. Groundwater saturated with limestone lays travertine on every lake bed and weir, which is why the water is so impossibly bright and the dams so intricately stepped. Ancient glaciers carved the valley; the mineral rebuilt it. Autumn, when red and gold forest backs onto blue water, is what the posters promise — and in the second half of October, roughly what you get.
It is also Tibetan country on the old tea-horse road. Prayer flags, water mills, the largest village Shuzheng with four hundred of the valley's thousand residents, and a Bon-po heritage older than the Buddhism layered over it. Bring cash for the villages, keep your voice down at the temples, and remember this is a tightly managed world heritage site: overnight stays inside the valley are banned and smoking anywhere outside Nuorilang costs ¥500.
Jiuzhaigou
Seven things that are worth rearranging a day for.
Highlights
Pale yellow, dark green, rust, deep blue, turquoise — often inside one basin. The colour shifts with the season, the light and where you stand. Locals stopped being surprised by this centuries ago; you will not manage it in two days.
Nuorilang, 20 m high and 300 m across and the widest here; Shuzheng, the smallest of the four great falls and the most intricately laced with trees; Pearl Shoal, a 40 m drop off a fan of travertine that throws rainbows in sunlight.
Catch a summit opening in the cloud mid-valley and the scale of the place resets. Best light for the peaks is morning — by afternoon you are shooting into the sun.
Every slope turns: yellow, red, rust, against mineral blue. It lasts roughly from mid to late October. It is also when the park is at its absolute busiest, so buy tickets the moment the 30-day window opens.
Nine of them, Shuzheng the largest with four hundred residents. Water mills, prayer flags, a folk-culture yard, and the temple at Zharu where the whole valley turns out for the Mazihui festival on the 15th day of the third lunar month.
From December the waterfalls freeze into natural ice sculptures hung off the cliffs, and lakes half-freeze into patterns of white and blue. Boardwalks get wire mesh and netting for safety, and the crowds disappear.
Suggested routes
The efficient loop: shuttle to a far tip, walk downhill, transfer, repeat.
Be at the gate before the 07:00 ticket office opens in peak season. Take the shuttle all the way to one tip of the Y — Long Lake on the Zechawa arm, or Primeval Forest on the Rize arm — and get off at the top.
Walk downhill instead: from Long Lake it is 1 km of boardwalk to Five-Colour Pool; from Primeval Forest it is 3 km of boardwalk to Five-Flower Lake, past Arrow Bamboo, Panda Lake and its 80 m drop.
Stops: Long LakeFive-Colour PoolFive-Flower Lake
At the Nuorilang hub change onto the other arm and do the same in reverse, or drop into Shuzheng Valley for the linked lakes, the waterfall and the village.
Finish at Nuorilang Falls around 10:00–12:00 if you can arrange it — after midday the falls fall into shadow and the contrast against the sky kills the photograph.
Stops: Nuorilang FallsShuzheng LakesShuzheng Village
The version that lets you wait for light and still see Huanglong.
Start on the Rize arm. Mirror Lake before 08:00 while the surface is still glass, then Pearl Shoal between 10:00 and 14:00 when the sun slants onto the falls, then Five-Flower Lake from the shore at 09:00 or from Tiger Mouth at 16:00.
Come back down through Nuorilang and, if there is light left, Shuzheng Valley. Sleep outside the gate at Zhangzha — overnight stays inside the valley are banned.
Stops: Mirror LakePearl ShoalFive-Flower Lake
Shuttle to Long Lake at 3,060 m, walk the 1 km down to Five-Colour Pool, and spend the best light of the day there — 10:30 to 14:00, when the sun is straight onto it.
Afternoon down the main stem: Rhinoceros Lake between 08:00 and 09:30 if the light holds, then Tiger Lake, Shuzheng Falls and the nineteen linked lakes around 11:00. Swan Lake between 14:00 and 15:00 is the sleeper shot of the valley.
Stops: Long LakeFive-Colour PoolShuzheng Valley
Leave early on the 06:30–07:30 direct bus (¥40 in peak season, roughly two hours) or a chartered car for about ¥250 one way. Take the cable car up and walk down — the park is far bigger than it looks and the full circuit takes four hours plus.
The entrance is at 3,070 m and Huanglong Temple at 3,558 m, so this is a genuine altitude day. Do it after two days in the valley, not before. The last bus back leaves Huanglong around 15:00.
Stops: HuanglongFive-Colour PoolHuanglong Temple
Sights
The signature lake
Called the single marvel of Jiuzhaigou, and it is: the basin runs turquoise overall while separate patches shift yellow, green and blue. The colour concentrates around the outlet, where the autumn leaves burn against the water. The full view is from Tiger Mouth on the road above.
Tip Two visits beat one: shoot the shoreline in the morning and come back for Tiger Mouth in the afternoon. The lake looks like a different place from above.
Widest falls
Twenty metres high and 300 m across, pouring over a travertine weir at 2,365 m — the shot every Chinese viewer knows from the closing credits of the 1980s Journey to the West. In winter it freezes into a natural ice sculpture, all that muscle turned still.
Tip The visitor centre 300 m upstream is the shuttle hub, the restaurant, the shop and the transfer point for all three valleys. Use it as your anchor for the day.
The high arm
Long Lake sits at 3,060 m and is the highest, largest and deepest lake in the valley — 300,000 sq m of ink-blue water under peaks that put on white armour in early autumn. A 1,000 m boardwalk downhill reaches Five-Colour Pool, the tiny, absurdly saturated pool that never freezes even when everything around it does.
Tip The legend says the god Dage wore 189 steps into the cliff fetching water for the goddess Semo, and that a wish made at the pool and carried back up those steps binds two people for life. The steps are real. Walk them slowly — this is the highest point most visitors reach.
Be there before 08:00
On a windless morning the surface copies the forest so exactly that locals say fish swim in the sky and birds fly underwater. It is two kilometres uphill from Nuorilang on the Rize side, and it is the one sight in the valley that genuinely punishes a lie-in.
Tip Sunrise or wind ends it. If the surface is broken, do not wait — go on to Pearl Shoal and try again at 17:00 on the way out.
Travertine fan
A huge fan of pale yellow travertine over which the water churns, broken by thousands of tiny pores into beads that catch the light like spilled pearls. At the lip it drops 40 m as a crescent-shaped fall. The moss here is not slippery — it feels like sponge under bare feet.
Tip Midday is right for this one, which makes it the perfect counterweight to the 08:00 start at Mirror Lake. Plan the morning and the middle of the day around those two.
Villages and terraces
The main stem is the inhabited arm: nineteen linked lakes like jade set into the gorge, tied together by trees, small falls, plank bridges, a mill and a prayer hall. Shuzheng is the largest of the nine villages and holds four hundred of the valley's thousand residents, with a folk-culture yard you can walk through.
Tip Reed Lake has no shuttle stop — get off nearby and walk half an hour. The best angle is from the ten-metre mound at the sharp right-hand bend in the road, around 09:00.
Old growth
At the very top of the Rize arm: deep moss and leaf litter underfoot, wet fragrant air, wind in the canopy. Two trails leave the road, a short one and a long one — take the full loop, about forty minutes, and keep your eyes up for birds. Winter closes this section entirely.
Tip Do not walk from Swan Lake down to Arrow Bamboo Lake unless you are genuinely fit — it is a long, tiring stretch of boardwalk with nothing between the two.
Side trip
The other half of a classic northern Sichuan trip: a 3.6 km stair of travertine pools climbing to 3,558 m at Huanglong Temple, with the famous Five-Colour Pool at the top and the 2 km Golden Sand Beach flow of glittering shallow water below it. Bigger than it looks — allow four hours or more.
Tip Ride up, walk down. The entrance is 3,070 m and the temple 3,558 m, a 500 m gain over 4,200 m of boardwalk — go slow, and do this after Jiuzhaigou, never before.
Food
The dish Jiuzhaigou is proudest of: potatoes steamed, pounded in a wooden bucket until sticky, formed into cakes and simmered with pickled greens and chilli. Slippery, sour-hot, cheap, and the one local thing you will not find anywhere else.
Called the crown of beef, raised on the plateau around Songpan and Jiuzhaigou, cured in brine, sliced thin and tossed with chilli. Rich, faintly gamey, and the standard thing to take home. Insist on tasting before you buy.
Pale yellow, faintly sour then sweet, known as Tibetan beer. It is what gets poured at celebrations, and it arrives with a song — if a Tibetan host sings you a drinking song, that is the etiquette, not a performance.
Ya tea is the coarse brick tea from Ya'an that Tibetans have drunk for centuries to make up for a diet short in vegetables; butter tea is that tea churned with yak butter and salt. Very high calorie, genuinely restorative at altitude, and an acquired taste.
Fresh curd is sour and white and makes a sharp, tangy filling; dried, Tibetans eat it as a snack or stir it into soup. The buns are the version everyone can eat — order a basket for the table.
Morels are semi-cultivated here above 3,000 m where conifer forest gives way to alpine meadow. Sichuan locals simmer them with duck. The mountain fungi of the region — matsutake, morel, green-cork mushroom — are the best-value thing on any menu in the area.
Where to eat
In the valley
The only genuinely local food inside the park. Several families in the largest village serve Tibetan dishes — yak, butter tea, barley wine, milk dreg buns — and it is the one place in the valley where eating feels like part of the trip rather than a logistics problem.
Cafeteria
The park's mid-valley canteen at the junction of the three valleys: a buffet between ¥50 and ¥113, or à la carte at a marked-up price. It is also the shuttle transfer point, the shop and the only legal smoking area, so it is busy at midday by definition.
Sichuan kitchens
The strip of restaurants beside the park entrance does straightforward Sichuan cooking and a few halal and Tibetan places. Cheaper than anything inside the gate, and the obvious place for a hot dinner after eight hours on a boardwalk.
Local prices
A ten-minute walk from the gate, this village has more restaurants than the gate strip and noticeably keener prices. Ask your guesthouse owner to order for you or to buy on your behalf — the difference on a group dinner is real.
Where to stay
The splurge
The most ambitious hotel in Sichuan, built back into the hillside and mostly hidden in forest — a glass-roofed atrium like a conservatory with black swans swimming in it. Service, by common consent, has never quite caught up with the architecture.
Four-star
1.5 km from the gate, with proper facilities, a courtyard layout and warm, slightly formal rooms. Close enough to walk to the shuttle in the morning and far enough from the gate strip to get some quiet.
Lower-altitude five-star
Five-star by badge rather than by the standards of the coast, but it sits lower than the other big hotels — the reason it gets recommended to anyone who slept badly their first night at altitude.
Tibetan-run
Four kilometres from the gate, next to the Highland Red and Fantasy Jiuzhai show venues, and decorated properly Tibetan. A Tibetan family runs it, and they are the sort of hosts who will sort your bus ticket and tell you which valley to do first.
Budget
In Pengfeng Village, five hundred metres from the gate and under ten minutes on foot. A typical Tibetan row house, wi-fi in the rooms, beds from ¥35, and the best value per metre of any bed near the entrance.
Mid-range
Ten minutes by car from the gate, small and tidy with big windows in every room and a Tibetan feel, a restaurant upstairs and a shop next to the lobby. Good base if you are doing two valley days and want somewhere quiet to come back to.
Getting around
Jiuzhaigou-Huanglong Airport (JZH) is 88 km from the gate, a 1.5–2 hour drive. Chengdu has around twenty flights a day, 40 minutes in the air and close to ¥1,000 because they rarely discount; Chongqing has fewer flights but noticeably cheaper fares after discount. The airport's nickname among locals — nine flights, nine turn backs — is about weather, and it is not a joke invented by the marketing department.
Because the airport bus is unreliable, most visitors pre-book a car: about ¥250 in the low season and ¥300–400 in peak for a vehicle that seats four. Worth it if you land late or in October. Do not go straight from the plane up to Huanglong — that is a fast way to meet altitude sickness on day one.
There is no railway to Jiuzhaigou; everyone who is not flying comes by road from Chengdu, 8–10 hours on mountain routes for ¥120–150. Buy a day ahead. Note carefully: Jiuzhaigou the park and Jiuzhaigou County town are tens of kilometres apart — check which one your ticket says.
A car from Chengdu runs about ¥1,000, roughly ¥250 a head, more if you travel at night. The 913 km Grand Jiuzhaigou Loop has two halves: the west line via Dujiangyan, Wenchuan, Maoxian and Songpan (about 430 km) and the east line via Guanghan, Deyang, Mianyang, Jiangyou and Pingwu (about 520 km). Take one each way.
Only green shuttle buses run inside the valley; no taxis, no private cars. They loop all three valleys with stops at every main sight and a bus every two or three minutes, and Nuorilang is where you change direction. The ticket is valid for one entry only.
Flagfall outside the park is ¥4 in a Xiali, ¥5 in a Santana or Jetta, ¥6 in a Hyundai or Mitsubishi, with two kilometres included. Useful for the couple of kilometres between Zhangzha blocks, the gate and the coach station; agree a price first for anything longer.
Shopping
The most-bought souvenir in Jiuzhaigou, cured and sliced, cheap at ¥70–80 a jin and over ¥100 for the good stuff. The trap is the upsell: shops routinely weigh you double what you asked for, so state your quantity twice, taste first, and watch the scale.
The Qiang are the other people of this borderland, and their needlework is the real craft here. The Yunyun shoe is the signature — boat-shaped, upturned toe, thick sole, clouds stitched along the upper. Genuinely handmade and genuinely hard-wearing.
Morel, the plateau codonopsis the locals call dao dang, and black wood-ear fungus — all grown or gathered locally, all good in a duck soup. The cordyceps, fritillaria and musk also on sale are where visitors lose money.
Rings, beads and small crafted pieces travel well and make good gifts. Skip the Tibetan knives: they are sharp enough to hurt you, and they will be confiscated at airport security — and not only at airports, but on Chengdu's high-speed rail and metro too.
Practical
Two days inside the valley plus one for Huanglong is the trip. The mistake is trying to do it in a day: the valleys run over 55 km and the shuttle only pays off if you ride to a far tip and walk down.
| Peak season | 1 April–15 November: ¥220 ticket + ¥90 shuttle; half price ¥110 + ¥90 |
|---|---|
| Off-season | 16 November–31 March: ¥80 ticket + ¥80 shuttle; half price ¥40 + ¥80 |
| Free entry | Under 6 or under 1.20 m (both ticket and shuttle); 70+, serving/disabled military and retired cadres get the ticket free but buy the shuttle |
| Second day | Not allowed in peak season. Off-season: ¥20 handling fee plus the next day's ¥80 shuttle |
| Booking | jowong.com, the only authorised site, up to 30 days ahead; hotline 028-86066969 |
| Ticket office | Opens 07:00 in peak season, 08:00 off-season — and the worst queue is 08:30, when the tour groups arrive |
| Shuttle | ¥90 peak / ¥80 off-season, one entry only; 08:00–19:00, often 17:00 off-season |
| Huanglong | 144 km away, ¥200 peak / ¥60 off-season; cable car ¥80 up, ¥40 down; 08:00–18:00; allow 4 hours |
| Park rules | No smoking outside the Nuorilang centre (¥500 fine); no overnight stays inside the valley |
| Useful numbers | Park enquiries 0837-7739753 · complaints 0837-7739309 · shuttle 0837-7766016 · coach station 0837-7739900 |
Tips
Peak-season tickets are real-name and date-specific and the daily cap is real. Open jowong.com thirty days out, pick your date, and book — then build the rest of the trip around it.
Shuttle to Long Lake or Primeval Forest, then descend on the boardwalks. It saves your legs, it puts the waterfalls in front of you rather than behind, and it is the reason the shuttle fare is worth paying.
If you got off at a popular sight, walk one stop further before boarding again. The queue at the stop you arrived at is the queue everyone else is standing in.
Some restaurants around the gate keep one price list for residents and another for visitors. Ask the price before you order, or have your guesthouse owner buy on your behalf — it is the single easiest saving in Zhangzha.
Villages take cash, and while there is an Agricultural Bank by the visitor centre and a Construction Bank by Yinxin hotel outside the gate, the ATMs are not something to rely on at 07:00.
National Day jams the west line every year without fail — traffic has been known to crawl from 20 km out and reach the station at 23:00. The east line stays freer and is prettier anyway.
Background
This corner of the upper Jialing and Min river country was old Di-Qiang land, with human activity recorded as far back as the Shang. Jiuzhaigou itself was Tibetan for centuries, its people descended from the Oluo tribe of the Maqu grasslands in Gansu — a Qiang branch conquered by Tubo and left behind when the Tibetan empire pushed east in the early Tang. The county was called Nanping, and the entire notice the old Nanping county gazetteer gave the place was one line: within the Yangdong tribal lands, a gorge several li long, water floating green, reflecting the forest haze.
Until the 1960s there were no roads in, only horse tracks, and the valleys lived by subsistence. Then, in the 1970s, a logging crew walked in — and spared it. It became a national forest park, then one of China's first national key scenic areas in 1982, then a national nature reserve, and in 1992 UNESCO put it on the World Heritage list. That is less than sixty years from unknown to icon.
The story the valley tells about itself is a love story. The mountain god Dage and the goddess Wono Semo fell for this place and stayed; the demon Shemozha tried to drive Dage out and carry Semo off. In the fight Semo dropped the mirror Dage had given her and it shattered into more than a hundred fragments — which is why there are more than a hundred lakes. The cliff that trapped the demon is the Treasure Mirror Rock, and you can still see a face in it.
The older layer is Bon, the pre-Buddhist religion of the Tibetan world, which survives here with real influence in the Sichuan Tibetan areas. That, plus the valley's position on the seam between Tibetan and Han, pastoral and farming country, shows in the architecture: Tibetan village layouts built with Chinese pitched roofs, hanging columns, upturned eaves and moon gates, and white stones set on the parapets exactly as the Qiang of Mao county and Wenchuan do it.
The valley runs 2,000–3,200 m and the summits carry snow year round. Spring averages 9–18°C and changes its mind hourly; summer is stable at 19–22°C with cool nights that want a light jumper; autumn is pleasant by day and genuinely cold after dark, with frost by late October; winter sits below zero. Rain is scarce all year and concentrates in July and August.
That vertical range is also why the place looks different every time you look at it: seven vegetation bands stacked between the gate and the peaks, and colour that is a function of which band you are standing in and what month it is. The park sells itself as four seasons, four beauties — true enough, and autumn is still the one that wins.
Travel with them
Rongzhong Erjia
The song that made Jiuzhaigou a household name in China — oh, magical Jiuzhaigou, paradise on earth. Rongzhong Erjia, himself from Ngawa, folds Tibetan traditional music into pop production. Play it on the shuttle up the Rize arm and try not to smile.
Wong Wing-tsan
A Japanese new-age pianist wrote and improvised this score for an NHK documentary, Jiuzhaigou: A Miracle Born of Water and Forest, in 2001; the album came out in Taiwan in 2008. Slow, meditative piano — the right thing for Mirror Lake at 07:00.
Directed by Zhang Yimou
The duel between Broken Sword and Nameless — Tony Leung and Jet Li — was shot on the water at Arrow Bamboo Lake. Watch it before you go and you will recognise the flat, mineral-blue shallows the moment the shuttle stops.
Deng Yi
Deng Yi was there when the logging crews were in and there again when the protection came: a first-hand account of the valleys under the axe, the long fight to save them, and the early years of opening them to visitors, written with a personal eye for the Tibetan households of the valley.
The questions visitors ask us most about Jiuzhaigou, answered plainly.
Prices and practical details are reviewed every month by our Beijing team and updated the day a rule changes.
Peak season (1 April–15 November) is ¥220 for the ticket plus ¥90 for the shuttle; off-season (16 November–31 March) is ¥80 plus ¥80. Half price — ¥110 peak, ¥40 off-season, shuttle always full price — goes to under-18s, students with an undergraduate-or-below card, and visitors aged 60–69. Children under 6 or under 1.20 m go free entirely; over-70s, serving and disabled military, and retired cadres get a free ticket but still buy the shuttle.
In peak season, effectively yes. Tickets are sold by name and for a specific date on jowong.com, the only authorised booking site, up to 30 days ahead, and daily entries are capped. Bring the passport or ID you booked with and collect at the counter or a self-service machine. The booking line is 028-86066969. Off-season you can usually buy on the day, when the ticket office opens at 08:00 instead of 07:00.
In peak season, no — a second day means a fresh ticket. In the off-season you can re-enter once by paying a ¥20 handling fee plus the next day's ¥80 shuttle, so day one costs ¥160 and day two ¥100. That is the single strongest argument for a winter trip if you want to photograph without crowds.
No. The park does not close, though some boardwalks do: Long Lake car park to Five-Colour Pool, Upper Seasonal Lake to Zechawa village, Arrow Bamboo Lake to Pearl Shoal, Mirror Lake to the Shuzheng mill, and Heijiao bridge to the gate. The Primeval Forest section through Grass Lake and Swan Lake is closed for regeneration. What you gain is frozen waterfalls, half-frozen lakes and almost nobody else.
The valley sits between 2,000 and 3,200 m and most people are fine, but take it seriously: walk slowly, drink less, do not run, skip the hot bath and eat lightly on day one. Keep warm — a cold at altitude is a different problem. Huanglong, next door, reaches 3,558 m at its temple and 3,900 m at the top terraces; do Jiuzhaigou first, and if you feel unwell, descend rather than push on.
Technically no, but practically yes. The three valleys run about 55.5 km end to end and the round trip is over 100 km — you cannot walk that in a day. The shuttle is ¥90 in peak season and ¥80 off-season, valid for one entry only, running 08:00–19:00 (often finishing near 17:00 in the low season) with a bus every two or three minutes. Nuorilang is the transfer hub between all three valleys.
Layers, because the top of the valley runs colder than any forecast for the gate. A shell jacket handles the plateau's mood swings; comfortable shoes are non-negotiable and waterproof ones better, since some boardwalks cross water. Sunglasses, sunscreen and lip balm — the UV and the dryness both bite. Red or white photographs well against blue water and gold leaves.
Plan this trip
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Taiyuan
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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.
Mount Siguniang
City guide · 12 tours
Four snow peaks, three valleys, and the friendliest 5,000 m mountain in China to stand on top of.
Hailuogou
City guide · 12 tours
A glacier that comes down to 2,850 m, hot springs in the forest, and Gongga Shan filling the sky above both.
Daocheng Yading
City guide · 12 tours
Three 6,000 m sacred peaks, glacial lakes at 4,600 m and twenty hours of road — the hardest, highest payoff in Sichuan.
Shunan Bamboo Sea
City guide · 12 tours
Seventy thousand mu of bamboo over twenty-eight hills, a red sandstone corridor under a closed green roof, and a banquet made entirely of bamboo.
Dujiangyan
City guide · 12 tours
Not a monument but a machine: three pieces of engineering with no dam, still doing their job after 2,270 years.
Qingcheng Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
The mountain where Daoism was organised, and the one Chengdu escapes to when the basin turns into an oven.
Qingdao
City guide · 12 tours
Red-tiled roofs, cold beer and a granite mountain that walks straight into the sea — the easiest good time on the Yellow Sea.
Mount Tai
City guide · 12 tours
1,545 metres, 6,290 stone steps and three thousand years of emperors — the one mountain in China that is also a document.
Jinan
City guide · 12 tours
A provincial capital with 700 springs under the pavement — people still queue at the spouts to fill their kettles.
Weihai
City guide · 12 tours
1,000 km of clean coast, a free bathing beach, the island where the Beiyang Fleet died — and thousands of wild swans every winter.
Qufu
City guide · 12 tours
One family, two thousand years of steles, and a ¥150 pass that covers the lot — the easiest serious day trip in Shandong.
Penglai
City guide · 12 tours
China's immortals' coast — a Song-dynasty naval harbour you can walk for free, a mythology nobody ever found, and the ferry to 32 islands.
Changdao
City guide · 12 tours
32 islands, one causeway, a ¥150 land pass, tens of thousands of gulls and nowhere you can drive — the place where everything happens by boat.
Nanjing
City guide · 12 tours
Capital of six dynasties, capital of the Republic, and the city that eats more duck than anywhere else on earth.
Suzhou
City guide · 12 tours
Two thousand five hundred years of canals, sixty surviving gardens, and a city that shuts its gates at half past five.
Zhouzhuang
City guide · 12 tours
Nine hundred years, fourteen bridges, one ticket — and a town that only makes sense before eight in the morning.
Tongli
City guide · 12 tours
Fifteen canals, seven islets, forty-nine bridges — and a town that still gets up at dawn because it lives here.
Wuxi
City guide · 12 tours
Taihu on one side, a Grand Buddha on the next hill, and ribs sweet enough to argue about — the most underrated city on the Yangtze delta.
Yangzhou
City guide · 12 tours
A city built by salt merchants who had more money than restraint — gardens, a narrow lake, and the best breakfast in China.
Zhenjiang
City guide · 12 tours
Three hills, one ferry landing, and an unreasonable share of Chinese literature — the Yangtze city people drive past.
Changzhou
City guide · 12 tours
A 2,500-year-old canal city that built a dinosaur park and refuses to apologise for it.
Wuzhen
City guide · 12 tours
A town that is two towns: the older, quieter East Zone and the lit-up West Zone you sleep inside.
Xitang
City guide · 12 tours
Nine canals, 122 lanes, one long roofed corridor — and a town that still works for a living.
Hangzhou
City guide · 12 tours
A lake in the middle of a city, a tea village in the hills, and two thousand years of getting the mood right.
Xixi Wetland
City guide · 12 tours
Ten square kilometres of marsh inside Hangzhou, and the only way into half of it is a boat.
Ningbo
City guide · 12 tours
A 7,000-year-old port with Asia's oldest private library, a free waterfront 20 years older than Shanghai's, and the best seafood before the islands.
Mount Putuo
City guide · 12 tours
A Buddhist island with no cars, three great temples and a ¥10 lunch that is the point of the place.
Qiandao Lake
City guide · 12 tours
A thousand islands that did not exist sixty years ago, and the cleanest big-lake water in China.
Shaoxing
City guide · 12 tours
Two and a half thousand years of water-town China, and Lu Xun's house is free.
Zhoushan
City guide · 12 tours
1,390 islands, one road bridge in, and a harbour that lands more fish than almost anywhere on earth.
Hengdian
City guide · 12 tours
A backlot the size of a town, where the palaces are copies and the film crews are real.
Yandang Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
A volcano that weathering turned into scenery — 500-odd sights of peak, cave and waterfall across eight scenic areas.
Zhejiang
City guide · 12 tours
One small, mountainous, absurdly rich province that holds a lake, two canal towns, a Buddhist island and a dead volcano.
Hong Kong Outlying Islands
City guide · 12 tours
Two hundred-odd islands, half an hour of ferry from the financial district, and not a car on three of them.
Hong Kong Shopping
City guide · 12 tours
A duty-free port where the tag starts lower, two citywide sale seasons knock a third off, and every mall sits on an MTR exit.
Macao
City guide · 12 tours
Four hundred years of Portuguese streets, a fake Venice under a painted sky, and the best egg tart in Asia.
Urumqi
City guide · 12 tours
The city furthest from the sea, with a snow range on its doorstep and dinner starting at nine.
Hong Kong SAR, China
City guide · 11 tours
A harbour skyline you already know by heart, dim sum trolleys at dawn, and 260 islands an hour from the neon.
Taiwan, China
City guide · 11 tours
Night-market alleys, high-mountain railways, and a coastline that changes character every hundred kilometres.
Qinghai Lake
City guide · 12 tours
A 4,400 sq km inland sea at 3,200 m, ringed by rapeseed gold, prayer flags and the best cycling road in China.
Mount Emei
City guide · 11 tours
A 3,099-metre Buddhist summit you can reach by cable car before lunch — and a mountain full of monkeys that will absolutely rob you.
Beijing
City guide · 11 tours
Six centuries of imperial red walls, a Great Wall you can climb before lunch, and the best roast duck on earth.
Taipei
City guide · 11 tours
A 24-hour bookstore, a night market that never stops sizzling, and a city that apologises when you bump into it.
North Xinjiang
City guide · 11 tours
Alpine lakes the colour of poured enamel, a village of log cabins under birch trees, and the last tear the Atlantic ever sheds.
Lanzhou
City guide · 11 tours
A city split in half by the Yellow River, where beef noodles are a breakfast ritual and the Silk Road still runs through the streets.
Mount Hua
City guide · 11 tours
Five granite peaks, one plank road bolted to a cliff face, and a sunrise that justifies the 2am start.
Dunhuang
City guide · 11 tours
A desert oasis where Buddhist cave art survived a thousand years and a crescent lake refused to dry up.
Gannan
City guide · 11 tours
433 kilometres of the Yellow River's first bend, a 3.5 km prayer-wheel circuit, and Tibetan grasslands almost nobody has commercialised yet.
Sichuan–Tibet Highway
City guide · 11 tours
2,142 kilometres of cliff-edge switchbacks, four of China's most beautiful mountains, and a road the Tibetans walk on their knees.
Kangding
City guide · 11 tours
The town that gave Asia its most famous love song, a 7,556m sacred peak on its doorstep, and the last real Tibetan town before the road climbs to Lhasa.
Lhasa
City guide · 12 tours
A city of prayer wheels and butter lamps at 3,700 metres, where the sun shines 3,000 hours a year and the world's highest palace watches over it all.
Nyingchi
City guide · 11 tours
Tibet's greenest corner — peach blossom valleys, a 7,782 m peak that hides from almost everyone, and the world's deepest canyon.
Namtso
City guide · 11 tours
A 1,920-square-kilometre sheet of impossible blue at 4,718 metres, ringed by snow peaks and prayer flags.
Chongqing
City guide · 12 tours
A vertical city of fog, cable cars and cliff-side stilt houses, where the火锅 never stops boiling and the night skyline outshines Hong Kong.
Qiandongnan
City guide · 11 tours
A thousand Miao households stacked up a mountainside, drum towers and wind-rain bridges in Dong villages, and a 600-year-old Ming garrison town on the road to Guiyang.
Libo
City guide · 11 tours
Emerald rivers threading through karst peaks, a 600-metre forest growing out of a riverbed, and China's largest wild plum grove.
Guiyang
City guide · 11 tours
China's summer capital at 1,100 metres, where the nights run on sour fish soup, street-side barbecue and mahjong that never quite stops.
Zhenyuan
City guide · 11 tours
A 2,000-year-old river town where the Wuyang River carves an S through the mountains and every lane hides a story.
Huangguoshu
City guide · 11 tours
Asia's biggest waterfall, and the only one on earth you can walk behind, above and around — plus 600-year-old Ming dynasty villages a short drive away.
Harbin
City guide · 11 tours
Minus 30 degrees, a frozen river you can walk across, and a cathedral built by Russians who never went home.
Yunnan
City guide · 11 tours
Snow mountains, tropical rainforest, twenty-five minorities and a plate of rice noodles — all in one province.
Shanghai
City guide · 11 tours
A 1920s waterfront of colonial banks facing a science-fiction skyline, soup dumplings you eat with a straw, and 20 million people moving like clockwork.
Zhangjiajie
City guide · 11 tours
Three thousand sandstone pillars straight out of Avatar, a glass skywalk bolted to a cliff, and a cable car that leaves from downtown.
Guangzhou
City guide · 11 tours
A 2,200-year-old trading port where dim sum is a religion, colonial islands sit beside 600-metre towers, and the food never stops.
Guilin
City guide · 11 tours
Karst peaks rising straight out of a green river, rice terraces carved into mountainsides, and the best bowl of noodles you'll eat in China.
Shenzhen
City guide · 11 tours
A fishing village that became a megacity in forty years — and it still has 500-year-old banyans, empty beaches and dim sum worth the border crossing.
Chengdu
City guide · 11 tours
A 3,000-year-old city where the schedule is tea, mahjong and hotpot — and the pandas are just the opening act.
Xinjiang
City guide · 11 tours
Snow peaks, grassland, desert and oasis — one-sixth of China, and the longest road you will ever ride.
Xi'an
City guide · 14 tours
Thirteen dynasties of emperors, a terracotta army buried for 2,200 years, and a walled city you can cycle in 100 minutes.
Qinghai
City guide · 11 tours
China's high-altitude blue heart: a salt lake you can walk on, a 3,200-metre sea, and yak butter tea at the roof of the world.
Tibet
City guide · 11 tours
A plateau the size of Western Europe where the sky starts at your feet, prayer flags carry the wind, and the roads run past 8,000-metre peaks.
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