City guide · Sichuan
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.
Reviewed by our Beijing team Updated 2026-10-10
The short version
City guide
Photographs from the coast, and what other travellers wrote afterwards.
Walking the Jade Corridor between the tall bamboo, red sandstone underfoot like a carpet, pine wind in the ears and the smell of bamboo leaves in the air, you feel you have stepped outside the world. Keep climbing, and look for the strange human-faced bamboo.
A traveller's note, Breathing in the Jade Corridor
When you take up the pole and let the raft drift out onto the Sea-Within-the-Sea, every bit of noise in the world goes off with the water. Even a bellyful of worry turns into something like pleasure.
A traveller's note, Poling a Raft on the Sea-Within-the-Sea
There is a place where, when the wind gets up, green waves heave against the sky and the whole hillside roars, and when it drops, everything goes still, soft and far away. On a clear day the light flashes off the leaves and the green sea glitters gold; in the rain the cloud wraps the hills, the bamboo shadows sway, and the view turns into ink. That is not a brochure line, it is a fair description of the Shunan Bamboo Sea — the bamboo sea of southern Sichuan.
It sits in Yibin, on the border of Changning and Jiang'an counties, and it is enormous: more than 70,000 mu of nann bamboo pouring over 28 hills and 500-odd knolls, 58 species in total, 87% plant cover, and the densest concentration of negative air ions anybody in China has bothered to measure. Eight main scenic areas, two preamble areas, 134 sights. Deng Xiaoping's successor as premier, Li Peng, came here and wrote four characters that the park has never stopped repeating: the Shunan Bamboo Sea is the greenest under heaven.
The park is strung together by a handful of set pieces. The Jade Corridor is the signature: a road paved in red sandstone arched over by bamboo leaning so far inward that the light comes down in slivers. The Sea-View Tower, reached by one of China's longest cable cars, gives you the whole rolling green at once. And in the cliffs behind, Xianyu Cave holds Ming-dynasty carvings inside a natural rock cavity, while the Tianbao Stockade runs 1,500 m of Qing-dynasty fortress along a cliff face.
Between those, the park asks you to do very little: pole a raft across a lake, walk the Forget-Your-Worries valley in the evening, stand in the spray at the Seven-Colour Falls, and eat. The food is half the reason to come — a whole-bamboo banquet that runs from winter shoots through bamboo fungus to something called bamboo bird's nest, and outside the park, the noodles Yibin is famous for.
Shunan Bamboo Sea
Seven things that are worth rearranging a day for.
Highlights
The park's signature and the single most photographed stretch in it: a road paved in local red sandstone, the colour of cinnabar, walled by old and new bamboo leaning inward until they almost meet overhead. Cool and half-lit even at noon; when it snows, the ground turns to silver brocade and the bamboo to jade flowers.
One of the longest cable cars in China, 2,742 m with a 350 m rise, running from the Moxi valley floor straight up to the Sea-View Tower and the Jade Corridor area. From the air you finally get what the name means: ten thousand acres of bamboo, moving like a sea.
A temple complex tucked inside a natural rock cavity in a sheer cliff, with a single narrow path in and a precipitous drop below. Inside are Ming-dynasty cliff carvings from 1506–1522 and reliefs of the Journey to the West stories, a reclining Buddha cut into the red sandstone, a Guanyin hall with eighteen arhats on the walls, and the monks' hall where the ashes of past abbots are kept.
A Qing-dynasty fortress built in 1862 along a cliff to hold the place against Shi Dakai's Taiping army: about 1,500 m long, 20 m high and 10 m wide, with thirteen stone gates, mostly half-caves built against the rock. In sunshine the red sandstone glows gold; in mist the whole thing turns strange and theatrical. The giant mushroom rock beside the path is over 10 m tall and looks like it should have fallen already.
In the gourd-shaped valley between Shigu and Shiluo hills, the Shuiliao stream drops nearly 200 m in four tiers under the bridge — and throws rainbows when the sun is on it. Locals say that late at night the roar of the water carries the sound of bells and drums from the hills on either side.
The way to travel on water here. A small raft seats four for ¥80, a covered big raft about eight for ¥220, and the classic drift is across the Sea-Within-the-Sea, where the bamboo closes in on every side and the whole point is to stop rowing for a while and let the noise go.
Suggested routes
The standard plan: cliffs and caves on the way in, the corridor and the tower on the way out, Lizhuang for the afternoon.
Drive or bus in from Chengdu — about 4.5 hours. Zhuhai town, with its bamboo along the river and the fields behind it, is still only the outer edge; the west gate of the park is at Wanling town, further on.
Go straight for the far south-west corner while the light is on the cliffs: Xianyu Cave, then the 1,500 m of the Tianbao Stockade, then cool off at Qinglong Lake. After a day of that, reward yourself properly with a whole-bamboo banquet, and sleep at Wanling.
Stops: Xianyu CaveTianbao StockadeQinglong Lake
Do the crowded sights early: the cable car queue for the Sea-View Tower is appalling on holidays, so be at it when it opens. Come down through the Jade Corridor, which is where the park looks most like itself.
The Bamboo Sea Museum is a kilometre outside Wanling — a southern-Sichuan courtyard complex standing on the Moxi river, full of bamboo crafts worth taking home. Then drive the hour to Lizhuang old town for a slow afternoon: the wine, the white-cut pork, and then the road back to Chengdu.
Stops: Sea-View TowerJade CorridorBamboo Sea MuseumLizhuang
If you only have a day, this is the loop that gets the park's whole range into eight hours.
Enter on the through ticket and run the set in geographical order: Forget-Your-Worries valley, the Moxi stream, the Jade Corridor, Xianyu Cave, the Tianbao Stockade, the Seven-Colour Falls, Qinglong Lake and the Bamboo Sea Museum.
Eat the whole-bamboo banquet in the middle of it rather than at the end, and stay the night in the park if you can — one day means most of it is spent in a car, and the park is at its best in the evening, when the day trippers have gone.
Stops: Forget-Your-Worries valleyJade CorridorXianyu CaveSeven-Colour Falls
Take the cable car up to the Sea-View Tower at opening time for the aerial view you missed, then walk the Jade Corridor back down while the light is still slanting.
Leave by the west gate and break the drive with an hour in Lizhuang old town, or in Shuanghe for the Grape Well cold rice cake.
Stops: Sea-View TowerJade CorridorLizhuang
The park has its own traditional top ten. Three days walks them without hurrying.
Work the wet half of the park: the Seven-Colour Falls dropping in four tiers, Qinglong Lake, and a raft out onto the Sea-Within-the-Sea. Finish at the Forget-Your-Worries valley in the evening — water, bamboo, and moonlight if the sky clears.
Stops: Seven-Colour FallsQinglong LakeForget-Your-Worries valley
Xianyu Cave and the Tianbao Stockade in the morning while the sun is on the red sandstone, then the Temple of Heavenly Sovereign and the old battlefield site above the bamboo.
Afternoon at the Bamboo Sea Museum, and an evening watching a bamboo-carver work — the park has plenty of them, and watching the process is half the pleasure.
Stops: Xianyu CaveTianbao StockadeBamboo Sea Museum
Cable car to the Sea-View Tower at opening, then the Jade Corridor and the Cloud-Watching Pavilion for the long view.
Finish on the lower walks — Camellia Hill and the thirteen bridges over Flower Stream — before driving out via Lizhuang or Shuanghe.
Stops: Sea-View TowerJade CorridorFlower Stream bridges
Sights
Signature walk
The road is laid with the local red sandstone, the colour of cinnabar and bright as rosy cloud, and the dense old and new bamboo on either side arch over it. The surface rises and falls, the culms lean inward until they very nearly meet, and the corridor becomes deeper and prettier the further you go. In high summer it is a cool world of its own; a poem written for it goes: red cloud for a carpet, jade columns for a frame, the fierce sun has no heat here, and the wild wind no violence.
Tip This is the one place where the crowds are worth tolerating. Walk the length of it rather than shooting twenty metres from the entrance.
Cliff temple
Deep, strange and dangerous-feeling: a temple built into a natural rock cavity in a sheer cliff, reached by one path. Ming-dynasty cliff carvings from 1506–1522 and a relief cycle of the Journey to the West. Past the chained dragon and under a flying waterfall you reach the Reclining Buddha hall, carved from red sandstone with fourteen heavenly figures behind it, then the Guanyin hall with the eighteen arhats and a stone ox lying in a water basin.
Tip It is a proper scramble, with wet rock and a lot of steps. Boots rather than sandals, and do it before the tour groups arrive.
Qing fortress
Built in 1862, in the Xianfeng years, by the local authorities to keep Shi Dakai's Taiping army out of Sichuan: about 1,500 m of fortification along a cliff, 20 m high and 10 m wide, mostly half-caves built against the rock, with thirteen stone gates that were never going to be easy to take. Bamboo closes over it on every side, so you walk it feeling protected rather than exposed.
Tip Sunlight on the red sandstone is the whole show here — go on a clear morning. In mist it goes strange and theatrical instead, which is also fine.
Waterfall
The Shuiliao stream, running out of the deep forest, drops nearly 200 m in four tiers into the gourd valley between Drum Hill and Gong Hill — and throws rainbows when the sun catches it. Below it a pool of blue-green water holds the reflection of the bamboo, still against all that movement, and beside it the Falling Soul Terrace balances a huge rock over nothing much at all.
Tip The falls are at their best after rain, and the ground around them is wet and slick. Watch your feet, and bring the rain shell — you will be in the spray.
Aerial view
One of the longest cable cars in China: 2,742 m end to end with a 350 m rise, running from the Moxi valley floor up to the Sea-View Tower and the Jade Corridor area. It is thrilling without being frightening, and the payoff is the one view of the park you cannot get any other way — ten thousand acres of bamboo, wave after wave of it, from above.
Tip Holiday queues here are the worst in the park. Do it at opening, or accept an hour of standing.
Museum
Built out over the water of the Moxi river in southern-Sichuan domestic style, halls, terraces, pavilions and corridors all opening into each other. It collects and shows bamboo crafts: weaving, carving and the bamboo-skin technique, more than 300 pieces in four categories. The highlight is a version of the Qingming Shanghe Tu woven from a million bamboo threads, each one thin as a cicada wing, by six master weavers over a year. Bamboo-skin work from here won gold at the Panama-Pacific exposition in 1914.
Tip It is also the shop. If you want a bamboo thing to take home that is not a keyring, this is where to buy it.
Lakes and a hilltop temple
Fairy Lake sits on the hilltop above Xianyu Cave, some 12 km from the Wanling bridge, closing the cave circuit: about two hectares of clear green water, golden at sunrise and sunset, and a watercolour in the morning mist. Higher still, Dragon Chant Temple — once Dragon Tail Temple — stands at 980 m on Nine Dragons Hill, where the wind moves the bamboo until it sounds, the locals say, like a dragon chanting. Forty-one statues survive inside.
Tip Fairy Lake is quiet precisely because it is a detour. Take the boat out to the middle; the breeze off it is the best air conditioning in the park.
Evening walk
Deep, pretty and quiet, with water running beside the path the whole way. The local idea is that you come here in the evening, alone with the night sky and the moon, or with your family, and listen to the bamboo music under the moonlight. It is the park at its least crowded and most itself.
Tip Go after dinner rather than as a morning sight. You want it dark, and you want the day trippers gone.
Food
The dish the park is known for: chicken raised loose in the bamboo stewed slowly with fresh bamboo fungus until the broth smells across the courtyard. It is the one thing every restaurant here does properly, and the one thing you should order without asking.
The stage before the fungus opens — a small round thing like an egg, wrapped in a jelly of its own, with a genuinely crisp bite. You can only eat it in the Shunan Bamboo Sea, because it has to be picked here and cooked the same day.
Not a bird's nest at all, but the nest of a bird that lives in the bamboo. It has almost no flavour of its own and is eaten for the texture and, according to local conviction, for the complexion. Light, faintly gelatinous, and a good excuse to order a second thing.
The park genuinely has shoots in every season: winter and spring shoots in January and February, spring shoots in March and April, bitter and hemp bamboo shoots in May, sweet dragon bamboo and reed shoots in June, hard-head yellow and lovable bamboo in July and August, chicken-claw and soft bamboo in September and October, and winter shoots again from November. Yulan slices, water-packed shoots and salted shoots are the preserved versions.
The plainest dish on the table and one of the best: shoots sliced on the bias, a few greens for colour, tossed in a wok with nothing to hide behind. It tastes of bamboo and not much else, which is what bamboo is supposed to taste like.
Once called Youtiao noodles, renamed because the dressing is so oil-rich and water-free that the bowl would catch light: local wheat noodles tossed with Yibin yellow sprouts, sesame oil, rendered lard, star anise, sesame, peanuts, walnuts, chilli and Sichuan pepper, then finished with spring onion and pea shoots. The city's breakfast, and the best thing to eat on the way out.
Ye'erba — also called ya'erba — is a steamed rice cake wrapped in a galangal leaf, translucent, pale and fat, and it is what Yibin people eat at festivals. And out at Shuanghe old town east of Changning, the cold rice cake is made with water from the Grape Well, a spring whose bubbles rise in strings like grapes; the water is the whole trick.
Where to eat
Park restaurant
Right beside the Seven-Colour Falls, in thick bamboo with water running past: simple, old-fashioned rooms, and a kitchen whose signature is a panda banquet built out of bamboo. There are bonfire evenings and bamboo-pole dancing, and there is a car park, which in this park is not a small thing.
Resort dining
The big resort on 300 acres with 30 hectares of lake in front of it does the full-bamboo banquet at its most polished: floor-to-ceiling glass, lake and village in view, Chinese and Western kitchens, and the kind of service that makes a bamboo shoot taste like a restaurant dish rather than a farmhouse one.
Farmhouse
Up at the top of the Xianyu Cave scenic area, a one-stop farmhouse operation: food, beds, cards, fishing, parking, car hire, guiding and ticket booking. Rough around the edges, cheap, and the right place to end a long cliff day without driving anywhere.
Local cooking
Around the museum and the Moxi stream, the small family places do one menu and do it well: bamboo fungus and chicken, bamboo fungus egg, white-oil shoots, cured pork and whatever greens came in that morning, at prices that make the resort rooms look silly. Ask what came out of the bamboo today and let them cook it.
Old town
East gate of the old Shuanghe town, south along the lane, and the Grape Well is there: spring water rising off the bottom in strings of bubbles like grapes. The families here soak the rice, grind it and set it with that water, which is why the cold rice cake from Shuanghe tastes different from the same thing anywhere else.
Where to stay
Mid-range, on the road in
Built to three-star standard, on the road that runs to the Forget-Your-Worries valley, the museum and the Moxi stream, with a car park of a few dozen spaces. It is a sensible base for the western half of the park, and there is a sister hotel in Changning town if you arrive late.
The big one
Three hundred acres with the bamboo sea running for tens of kilometres behind it, and the resort itself built glass-fronted over the lake: a 5,000 sq m spa and hot-spring centre, a yacht club and floating golf range on 30 hectares of water, walking loops around the hills and the lake. It is the comfortable way to do the park.
Family-run, good value
A family-style villa hotel sitting between the Moxi stream and the cable car below and the museum, the drift, the visitor centre and the Forget-Your-Worries valley above. Rooms are individually decorated, and there is a Yibin travel guide written into each one. Good, cheap, and in exactly the right place.
By the falls
Down by the Seven-Colour Falls in thick bamboo with the stream running: simple, unpretentious decoration, complete rooms, and a handful of romantic couples' cabins along with doubles and view rooms. About sixty guests, a restaurant for a hundred, and the falls a few minutes' walk away.
Farmhouse
Two hundred metres from the museum, with the ten-li Moxi stream running past the door. It was risen out of a bare hillside in 2004 and is now four acres of flower and fruit, clean water and clean air — the sort of place where you walk out in the morning and wonder whether you are still in a park.
Cheapest bed in the park
At the top of the Xianyu Cave area, the cheapest roof in the park and the closest to the cliffs. It runs everything a walker needs — meals, parking, car hire, guiding, tickets — which is handy, because nothing else up here does.
Getting around
Yibin has two airports: the military-civilian Caiba Airport, expanded twice and running services to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Kunming, and the new Wuliangye Airport being built. Caiba is 7 km from the city — bus 8, a taxi or the airport shuttle — and the park is about 60 km further on by road. Chengdu Shuangliu (CTU) is the alternative gateway, with road transport all the way down.
The Chengdu–Kunming railway runs north to south straight through Yibin, with several passenger services a day, and Yibin station connects north to Chengdu and Chongqing and south to Kunming and Guiyang. It is the slow, comfortable way down from Chengdu if you would rather not sit in a car for four and a half hours.
From Chengdu, Xinnanmen station runs a direct service to the bamboo sea in the morning — about 4 hours, roughly ¥85–112 depending on the coach. From Yibin, the south coach station runs to Changning every 12 minutes for about ¥10 and an hour, and Changning runs on to the park every 15 minutes for another 40 minutes. Yibin's other stations: Ximen for intercity services, Nan'an for the counties.
The honest best answer, because the park is 13 km by 6 km with 124 scattered sights. The route is simple: Chengdu–Chongqing expressway to Neijiang, Neijiang–Yibin expressway to the Yibin south exit, then the tourist expressway south of the city up to Changning county and on to the park — about 380 km, 4.5 hours, well signed all the way. Note that the park's west gate is at Wanling, not at Zhuhai town on the outer edge.
Public transport inside is thin and the distances are long, so charter a car and driver for about ¥200–250 a day — the park will arrange one for you — or self-drive. The cable car, electric carts and the rafts cover the specific hops up the hills and across the water. Yibin taxis start at ¥3 with ¥1.40 per kilometre and a 50% surcharge after 5 km; city buses are ¥0.50–2; a pedicab starts at ¥2.
Shopping
Bamboo split into threads fine as hair and woven into baskets, trays, wine and tea things. The museum's Qingming Shanghe Tu took six master weavers a year and a million threads, and even a modest market piece is made with the same technique. Buy it here rather than in a city souvenir shop, where the same money buys machine work.
The technique the park is proudest of: the outer skin of the bamboo used as a surface, which won gold at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in 1914 and has since grown into five categories and nearly two hundred products. It is the one bamboo craft that looks like nothing else in China.
Root carving takes the waste root — the gnarled, weather-beaten knuckles of it — and cuts it into longevity gods, arhats, beauties, birds and beasts. Tube carving uses the freak stems, including the human-faced bamboo, in relief and intaglio, with dragons, figures and landscapes, and it is the one collectors actually keep.
The edible souvenirs: yulan slices made from winter and spring nann shoots, water-packed shoots, salted shoots, and dried bamboo fungus from Jiang'an, which is listed in the standard Chinese cookbooks as the good stuff. Vacuum-packed, they travel, and one bag is several dinners at home.
Jiang'an plums are listed among China's six best plum varieties by the pomologist Yu Dejun, in more than ten local forms — large white, small white, incense-ash, cinnabar, ox-heart, chicken-blood — with the large white the best of them: hollow at the tip, the stone coming away clean, crisp and fragrant. Jiang'an also leads the country in summer oranges, which flower in March and April and are picked the following May, so they arrive in the empty season with flowers and fruit on the tree at once.
Practical
The park is big, the sights are scattered and internal transport is thin — drive yourself or charter a car for ¥200–250 a day. And bring a thicker layer than the season seems to need: it is on high ground, and the temperature drops at night even in August.
| Entry | ¥110, 1 Jan – 30 Nov · ¥60, 1–31 Dec · concessions ¥55 / ¥30 |
|---|---|
| Concessions | Ages 60–69, children 1.1–1.4 m, full-time students, disabled visitors · under 1.1 m free |
| Through ticket | One ticket covers the park; no separate admissions inside, only the paid extras |
| Extras | Cable car (one-way or return) · electric carts · rafts ¥80 small / ¥220 covered |
| Climate | Annual mean about 15.5°C · winter rarely below 0°C · summer rarely above 30°C · 345 frost-free days |
| Humidity | Above 83% year round — bring a layer; the park is on high ground and the day-night swing is wide |
| Terrain | Danxia red sandstone, 600–1,000 m; 124 sights over 13 km by 6 km — comfortable shoes, always steps |
| Park phones | Tickets 0831-4980676 / 4980221 · marketing 0831-4980130 · Wanling station 0831-4980656 · Xianyu Cave station 0831-4970177 |
| Emergency | Park police 0831-4980122 · first aid 120 · fire 0831-4980119 · park police post 0831-4980490 · consumer complaints 0831-4980315 |
Tips
The park runs 13 km by 6 km with 124 sights and almost no internal bus. Self-drive if you can; otherwise charter a car and driver at ¥200–250 a day, which the park will arrange, and you will fit the cave, the stockade, the falls and the corridor into two days.
The bamboo sea sits between 600 and 1,000 m, and the day-to-night swing is real even in summer. A light jacket turns a shivering evening walk in the Forget-Your-Worries valley into the best part of the day.
If you are carrying a camera, put on a bright top. Solid green eats every other colour in a frame, and the photographs people come home happiest with are the ones where someone in red or yellow is standing in the Jade Corridor.
The queue for the Sea-View Tower on a public holiday is genuinely appalling. Be there at opening, come down through the Jade Corridor, and you will have done the two most popular things in the park before anybody else has parked.
There are folk carvers all over the park, and watching them is half the pleasure — the root and tube pieces take hours, and seeing one made is what stops it looking like a souvenir.
One day means most of the time is spent in a car getting between sights scattered over 13 km. Two days lets you do the cliffs one day and the corridor and lakes the next, and gives you the evening in the valley, when the park is at its best.
Background
The local legend is that the Wanling hills here were a piece of the red stone the goddess Nüwa dropped while mending the sky, and that a heavenly phoenix, the Jinyuan immortal, came down in secret to weave green over the bare hill and was hauled back to heaven for it. The jailer's daughter, the immortal Yaoqing, heard what had happened, pitied the phoenix, stole her father's pass and helped her out of the south gate — and was caught, and banished to earth herself, to weave green on Wanling hill until the green reached the ninth heaven.
Yaoqing, the story goes, was glad of the sentence. Her father pressed his seven-star fly-whisk on her as she left, the other immortals gave her jade trinkets as seed, and the weaving goddess gave her a white silk ribbon that could turn into cloud and rain. She came down among the bare hills, sowing jade by day, sweeping her whisk and waving the ribbon, until shoots broke ground and new bamboo stood up in green waves running toward the sky. The barren hill became the green jade that is the bamboo sea today, and the Moxi river running through it is the white silk ribbon she dropped.
The park is shaped like the character for zigzag, wide east to west and narrow north to south, running about 13 km by 6 km, with 124 sights: 15 first-rank, 19 second-rank. The hills are classic Danxia red sandstone between 600 and 1,000 m — which is why the paths are red, why the cliffs are red, and why Xianyu Cave and the Tianbao Stockade are cut into and built against red rock. Streams cross the forest in every direction, waterfalls hang high, the lakes are flat as mirrors, and the springs are cold and sweet.
The climate does the rest. The park is mild and wet with four distinct seasons: an annual mean of about 15.5°C, winter rarely below freezing, summer rarely above 30°C, 345 frost-free days, and relative humidity above 83% all year. That combination — red sandstone, constant damp, mild air — is exactly what nann bamboo wants, and it is why the park's traditional top ten reads like a list of moods rather than of places: the Temple of Heavenly Sovereign, the Tianbao Stockade, Xianyu Cave, Qinglong Lake, the Seven-Colour Falls, the old battlefield, the Cloud-Watching Pavilion, the Jade Corridor, Camellia Hill and the thirteen bridges over Flower Stream.
Travel with them
Directed by Ang Lee
The swordsman Li Mu-bai wants out of the jianghu and sends the Green Destiny sword to Beijing with Yu Shu-lien, and the sword is stolen the first night by the governor's daughter Jen. What everybody remembers is the fight that happens above this: two figures going at each other across the tops of bending bamboo, weightless and silent over a green sea — which is the shot that put the Shunan Bamboo Sea on the international map.
The questions visitors ask us most about Shunan Bamboo Sea, answered plainly.
Prices and practical details are reviewed every month by our Beijing team and updated the day a rule changes.
In Yibin, in the far south of Sichuan, on the border of Changning and Jiang'an counties — about 380 km and 4–4.5 hours by road from Chengdu, and about an hour from Yibin. The park itself runs roughly 13 km east to west and 6 km north to south, with 124 sights spread across it, so distances inside are larger than the map suggests.
Any time, because the park is green and cool in every season — the annual mean is about 15.5°C and humidity stays above 83%. Summer is the classic choice, when the bamboo shades the paths and the air stays cool while the Sichuan basin below bakes. Autumn puts red leaves among the green, and winter is quiet with the occasional snow on the bamboo. July and August are also the busiest, so book beds ahead.
Take the Chengdu–Chongqing expressway to Neijiang, come off there onto the Neijiang–Yibin expressway, leave at the Yibin south exit and pick up the tourist expressway south of the city, then follow it through Changning county to the park. It is well signposted the whole way: about 4.5 hours and 380 km. The park's west gate is at Wanling town, not at Zhuhai town, which is only the outer edge.
From Chengdu, the direct service out of Xinnanmen station leaves in the morning and takes about 4 hours for roughly ¥85–112 depending on the service. From Yibin, take a bus from the south coach station to Changning — every 12 minutes, about ¥10, one hour — and then a Changning to Bamboo Sea service, every 15 minutes and about 40 minutes. Trains on the Chengdu–Kunming line also serve Yibin station, from where you change to road transport.
Yes, if you want green calm rather than big mountains. It is the largest original bamboo park in China, the Jade Corridor and the cable-car view are genuinely striking, and the whole-bamboo banquet is a real reason to come. It suits people who like walking, eating and doing nothing in particular; if you need spectacle every hour, two days will feel long. Pair it with Yibin's food and the old town of Lizhuang, about an hour away.
For the view, yes. It runs 2,742 m with a 350 m rise from the Moxi valley floor up to the Sea-View Tower, and it is one of the longest in China — the aerial look over the bamboo is the one angle you cannot get on foot. On public holidays the queue is genuinely awful, so go first thing in the morning. If you would rather keep both feet on the ground, the Jade Corridor and the lakes are still the heart of the park.
Not on foot alone. The park is large and the sights are scattered, and internal public transport is thin, so the honest advice is to self-drive or charter a car and driver for about ¥200–250 a day — the park will help arrange one. That way the cable car, the museum, the caves and the lakes all fit into two days. Wear comfortable shoes: even the easy sights involve steps and slopes.
The whole-bamboo banquet is the point of the trip: fresh shoots in every month of the year, bamboo fungus stewed slowly with free-range chicken, the crisp bamboo fungus egg you only get here, bamboo bird's nest, and preserved and dried shoots of every shape. Outside the park, Yibin ranmian noodles — named for being so oil-rich they would catch light — and ye'erba, a leaf-wrapped steamed rice cake, are the two local things to try. The old town of Shuanghe near the park is famous for its Grape Well cold rice cake.
Plan this trip
The same places, with a driver, an English-speaking guide and the tickets already bought.
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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.
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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