City guide · Sichuan
Four snow peaks, three valleys, and the friendliest 5,000 m mountain in China to stand on top of.
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 finally understood what they meant by the road to Shu being harder than the road to heaven. Narrow corners, the altitude climbing, gravel rattling under the wheels — and then you watch the vegetation change from broadleaf to conifer to alpine meadow. At three or four thousand metres you are driving through cloud. It is like another world.
A traveller's note, 'A Journey Stretched Across the Land of Shu'
I am not a masochist, though I have been hiking since my first year at university. I am not a hedonist either, though I can afford a little luxury now. I just wanted to do one thing I had never done — climb a peak I believed I could climb. Life needs one hardship.
A traveller's note, 'Four Girls, National Day'
The Four Girls stand in a row on the eastern edge of the Hengduan Mountains, the highest summit of the Qionglai range and second in Sichuan only to Gongga, the King of Shu. The legend gives them their name: four sisters who fought the demon that had killed their parents and was eating the village, and who died winning, and became the mountains. The tallest, Yaomei Feng at 6,250 m, is the one serious alpinists come for. The other three are where everybody else begins.
Everything runs through Rilong, a town of one street at about 3,200 m — guesthouses, climbers' cafés, small Sichuan kitchens, horses for hire, guides to be found. It is not a pretty town and it does not try to be. It is simply the only place from which anything here is possible.
From it, three valleys go out. Shuangqiao, seven kilometres away, is the developed one and the only one with a shuttle bus: twenty-odd sights in a line, a dozen peaks over 4,000 m, and the peaks themselves always at a distance. Changping is the classic — no road, horses and a boardwalk, the Four Girls dead ahead for most of 29 km. Haizi is the wild one: 19.2 km of open grassland, ten-odd alpine lakes near 4,200 m, and the route up the mountain.
This is Jiarong Tibetan country, and the mountains are not scenery to the people who live under them. On the fifth day of the fifth lunar month the grasslands at Chaoshan Ping fill for the mountain-worship festival, when families face the peaks and burn juniper. Come in July or August and the meadows are under wildflowers; come in September or October and the sky goes clear and hard and the light turns golden at both ends of the day.
Mount Siguniang
Seven things that are worth rearranging a day for.
Highlights
The classic. Twenty-nine kilometres of gorge, forest and boardwalk with the Four Girls in front of you most of the way, past a ruined lamasery, Dry Lake and the eerie Dead Tree Shoal. Horses do the flat work; the classic turnaround is Muluozi, a broad meadow at 3,760 m.
The big bend on the road into Rilong, where all four summits line up at once. As the sun comes up it lays gilt along the ridge — nothing like a seaside sunrise. Almost every vehicle on the road stops for five minutes, and they are right to.
Nineteen point two kilometres of open grassland with ten-odd alpine lakes — Big Lake, Flower Lake, Blue Lake, Yellow Lake — the best near 4,200 m, above where most visitors ever get. Guozhuang Ping and Chaoshan Ping at the front are the finest full view of the Four Girls in the region.
Da Feng at 5,025 m is the beginner's mountain: no technical climbing, a snow season from December to June, and a summit in five or six hours from a camp at 4,500 m. It is why this valley has a climbing culture instead of just a viewing one.
Above 4,000 m the hills grow matsutake, morel and snow lotus, and Rilong sells them fresher and cheaper than any city. Slow-roast whole lamb over charcoal takes three hours and is worth every one of them. Drink butter tea with it — it is genuinely restorative at altitude.
Prayer flags on the passes, stone watchtowers in the valleys below, butter tea in the guesthouses, and the mountain-worship festival on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month when families face the peaks and burn juniper. This is a lived-in landscape, not a backdrop.
Suggested routes
If you only have a day: the shuttle valley, start to finish.
Breakfast in Rilong, then the local bus or a short walk to Shuangqiao, seven kilometres out. The green shuttle runs the length of the valley to the far end and back — Yin Yang Gorge, Five-Colour Mountain, Sun-Moon Mirror, Sea Buckthorn boardwalk, Nianyuba, Hunter Peak, Ox Heart Mountain, Api Mountain, Wild Man Peak, Ginseng Fruit Flat.
You are looking up at a dozen-odd peaks over 4,000 m the whole way. The one walk worth getting off for is the Nianyuba boardwalk.
Stops: Shuangqiao ValleyFive-Colour MountainNianyuba
Picnic at Ginseng Fruit Flat if the weather holds, then the shuttle back to the mouth and a late-afternoon stop at Mao Bi Liang for the peaks if the light arrives.
Evening in Rilong: a hot meal, butter tea, and an early night. You are at 3,200 m and tomorrow will be harder than today.
Stops: Ginseng Fruit FlatMao Bi LiangRilong
All three valleys, in the order that makes altitude sense.
Bus or car from Chengdu, through Dujiangyan, Yingxiu, Wolong and over the 4,500 m Balang Pass — 286 km, five or six hours, with the vegetation changing from broadleaf forest to conifer to alpine meadow as you climb.
Afternoon: walk the town, hire your horse, meet your guide, drink butter tea. Do not climb anything today. Sleep is the work.
Stops: Balang PassRilong
Morning in Shuangqiao by shuttle, about three hours for the full valley. Lunch back at the mouth.
Afternoon into Changping: no road, so on foot or horse from the ruined lamasery, past the Tibetan watchtowers, Dead Tree Shoal, Big Lake and Lianghekou, reaching Muluozi — a broad flat meadow at 3,760 m — around midday. Turn round there; back at the mouth by about 18:00.
Stops: Shuangqiao ValleyChangping ValleyMuluozi
The wild one, and the only one on foot or horseback. The front section — Guozhuang Ping and Chaoshan Ping — is the best full view of the Four Girls anywhere, and where the mountain-worship festival is held.
The back half holds the lakes, but they sit near 4,200 m and the distance is long; most people never reach them. Take a tent and camp if you can — the grassland at night is the reason to come.
Stops: Haizi ValleyGuozhuang PingChaoshan Ping
Sunrise at Mao Bi Liang if you can face it, breakfast in Rilong, lunch in Wolong, and the long run back to Chengdu in the afternoon.
Or detour south: 54 km to Xiaojin and the Jiajin Mountain forest park — the best-preserved old growth in the county — and on 58 km to Danba for the night, if you are continuing west.
Stops: Mao Bi LiangWolongChengdu
The beginner's 5,000er: one day to arrive, one to adapt, one to camp, one for the summit.
Leave Chengdu at about 06:00, via Dujiangyan, Yingxiu, Wolong and Balang Pass, arriving in the afternoon at 3,200 m. Sleep in Rilong — badly, probably. That is normal.
Sort your permit, your guide and your horse today, not tomorrow morning.
Stops: Balang PassRilong
A short day into Changping: walk or ride from the lamasery, 13 km round trip, to let your body meet 3,760 m and come back down. This day is not optional and it is not a warm-up — it is the reason people summit.
Evening: check gear, pack, eat early. Your guide will brief you.
Stops: Changping ValleyMuluozi
Light packs — the horses carry the kit. The route runs up Haizi Valley past Guozhuang Ping, Dajianbao, Jipengzi and Dacao to base camp, roughly six hours, through alpine meadow and scrub.
Camp sits around 4,000–4,200 m with the summit route clearly visible above it. Afternoon is for a short acclimatisation walk and congee for dinner — it digests fast and replaces fluid and salt.
Stops: Guozhuang PingDajianbaoBase camp
Up at 05:00, away at 05:30. Five or six hours to the top if the group is going well; photographs, then a careful two-hour descent to camp.
Four or five hours back down to Rilong, then straight on to Chengdu — or, honestly, one more night in Rilong. This is a twelve-hour-plus day on your feet.
Stops: Da Feng summitRilongChengdu
Sights
The classic
Developed earliest and still the one to pick: 29 km and about 100 sq km of forest, gorge and snow mountain, with the Four Girls standing 16 km in. Old cypress paths, a ruined lamasery, Dry Lake, waterfalls tens of metres high, and Dead Tree Shoal — standing trees drowned in still water, which reads as desolate and beautiful at the same time. The Qing army fought its Jinchuan campaigns through here.
Tip Most visitors stop at Dead Tree Shoal. Go on — the valley gets better the further in you go, and if you can camp a night at the foot of the peaks with a roast lamb, that is Changping as it is meant to be done.
The easy one
Seven kilometres from Rilong and the only valley with a shuttle, running the full length to the far end. More than twenty sights: Willow Bridge, Yin Yang Gorge, White Poplar belt, Sun-Moon Mirror and Five-Colour Mountain at the front; Nianyuba, Ginseng Fruit Flat, sea buckthorn forest, Jianshanzi and Jiujiahai in the middle; Ox Shed Meadow and Long River Shoal at the end — with a dozen peaks over 4,000 m overhead.
Tip Choose it when you are short on time, or when the weather is bad and you still want to be somewhere. It is a peaks exhibition, not a valley you walk.
The wild one
Nineteen point two kilometres named for its scatter of alpine lakes — Big Lake, Flower Lake, Floating Lake, White Lake, Blue Lake, Yellow Lake — all startlingly clear, holding the sky and the layered hillsides. The sunny slopes grow fungi, including matsutake; the shaded slopes turn red and gold after the first frost. It is also the approach for every climb in the range.
Tip Take a tent. The roadless grassland is the point, and the festivals — the mountain-worship gathering on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, the guozhuang dancing ground — happen here, not in the town.
The sunrise stop
The high bend on the road into Rilong, where the whole four-peak skyline shows at once. As the sun rises it lays a gilt edge along the summits — the local golden mountain, and nothing at all like a sunrise at the sea. Five minutes, and everybody takes them.
Tip Do it on the way in if the weather is clear, and do it again on the way out if it was not. Cloud here is not a rarity — it is the default.
The road in
Balang means Strange Willow Mountain in Tibetan; the summit is 5,040 m and the road crosses at about 4,500 m. Alpine meadow spreads over the upper slopes like carpet, with cloud sea below and conifer forest below that, and yaks grazing through both. There is a marker reading 4,523 m that nearly everybody photographs.
Tip There are barbecue stalls under the altitude marker — roast matsutake, yak skewers, lamb. Eating skewers at 4,500 m is not like eating them anywhere else. Stop if you have time.
Side trip
South of Rilong, 54 km on towards Xiaojin: 20,700 hectares of the best-preserved old growth in Xiaojin County, with golden snub-nosed monkeys, takin, red-bellied pheasant and so many songbirds that the park is nicknamed the thrushes' playground. It is also where the First and Fourth Front Armies of the Red Army linked up in 1935.
Tip Pair it with Danba, another 58 km on: the valley of a thousand watchtowers, the Jiarong cultural heartland, and the stone towers at Wori — more than 360 of them, built as a walled town.
For walkers
Changping Valley runs through to the foot of the Four Girls and over to Li County — the trek out to Bipeng Valley, one of the best-known multi-day hikes in China, three or four days with a local guide and horses. Bipeng itself is famous for autumn colour: 3,688 sq km, ninety per cent vegetation cover, and every gully burning red in October.
Tip Do not attempt the crossing without a guide and horses. It is not a day walk, and the weather at the passes does not negotiate.
Climbing
The classic beginner's snow mountain. From the mouth of Haizi Valley at 3,200 m it is 1,800-plus metres of gain with water all the way, no phone signal and, crucially, no technically difficult ground. Snow lies from December to June; July to November is dry. With a guide, a permit and one day to adapt, most fit people summit.
You need a ¥60 climbing permit, a medical certificate, and a licensed local guide — all three, no exceptions. The guide is not a formality: the route crosses glacier and steep snow, and the decisions about who turns back are made at 05:00 in the dark. Budget three days minimum: arrive, adapt, camp, summit.
Suited to fit, experienced amateur mountaineers who know their gear and have no altitude problems. Three sections call for fixed ropes: the traverse below the col, the slab band just above it, and the summit pitch — with a ridge only a metre wide and rockfall when the season is loose. Take a professional guide and put safety first.
San Feng, 5,355 m, is the satellite peak of Yaomei and needs proper mountaineering equipment and experience. Yaomei Feng, 6,250 m, has one of the great dream routes of world alpinism and is climbed only by the strongest technical teams. Being a beginner mountain does not make Da Feng trivial — it just makes it possible.
Waterproof boots and waterproof gloves between October and June — frostbitten fingers take a month to come right. A buff blocks more UV than any cream, and altitude sun reflected off snow burns in three hours, even under cloud. For the technical peaks: crampons, ice axe, headlamp, goggles, harness, ascender, descender, slings, karabiners, ice screws.
Do not trust hongjingtian — sleep is what acclimatises you. Hire a horse for the descent even if you walked up; people are most exhausted on the way down. Eat congee at camp. If you feel like vomiting, stop and descend — the mountain is not going anywhere. And if you have heart disease, high blood pressure or coronary problems, do not go.
Food
Slow-cooked over charcoal, basted as it turns, three hours minimum until the skin is crisp and gold and the fat has rendered through it. It arrives whole on the table and nobody pretends to be dignified about it. The thing to do with a group after a long day in the valleys.
Above 4,000 m the Ngawa hills grow snow lingzhi, alpine snow lotus, morel, matsutake and green-oak mushroom. High in protein and fibre, good for the stomach, and — the honest reason — extraordinary in a soup. Matsutake here is fresher and cheaper than in any city in China.
Very high calorie, rich and fragrant, with a heavy milk note. One mouthful and you come awake. It really does help with altitude and with warmth, provided you can handle dairy — and if you can eat beef and lamb, you can handle this.
The herders' classic and the way to eat lamb on a grassland: boiled, served in pieces, eaten with your hands. Fragrant rather than fatty, tender, and barely gamey at all. One of the two dishes you should not leave Ngawa without eating.
Roasted highland barley ground into flour — the convenience food of the plateau, mixed with butter and horse tea and kneaded into a lump by hand. Jiarong households grind it with roasted maize, soy and broad bean mixed in, which gives it an almost five-spice smell.
Barley is boiled, jarred with a starter and sealed; you add cold water and drink it through bamboo straws, passing the jar round during guozhuang dancing. Horse tea — the square brick tea once carried two packets to a horse — is boiled hard for twenty minutes and tastes smoky, mellow and slightly burnt.
Where to eat
The best in town
The best kitchen in Rilong: a properly appointed Chinese dining room with Sichuan and Cantonese chefs, plus Jiarong and Qiang specialities — hand-grabbed mutton, butter tea, barley wine. A quiet lobby bar and a performance hall with Tibetan and Qiang song and dance in the evening.
Local dishes
The place for the dishes this valley actually eats: gastrodia young chicken, hand-grabbed mutton, beef short ribs, Jiarong sour-vegetable noodle squares, wild fungi, and a tripe-and-offal soup. Simple room, real ingredients.
Hotpot
A hotpot place doing the two things the altitude makes you want: a bubbling pot and wild mushrooms. Roast lamb as well. Good for a cold night when you have come off the mountain wet.
Grills
Steamed beef and mutton with rice flour, cured old bacon, fish from the upper reaches, wild mushrooms, and roast lamb, rabbit and chicken off the grill. The widest menu on the street and the one to aim for if your group cannot agree.
Where to stay
The best room in town
The finest hotel here: an elegant Chinese restaurant, a bar, and a multi-function hall with Tibetan and Qiang architecture and a folk song-and-dance evening. The one place to stay if you want a proper bed before or after a climb rather than another night on a thin mattress.
The climbers' hostel
The only youth hostel in Siguniang, run by people with serious climbing and travel experience. There is a Tibetan tea bar and a Tibetan sitting room, and they arrange trekking and crossing advice, introduce high-mountain guides and sort horses. If you do not know what you are doing, go here first.
Walkers' guesthouse
At the centre of Changping Village, right at the mouth of Changping Valley: a restaurant, a bar, trinkets, a courtyard, and free outdoor films and documentaries in the lobby. The owner has been on the Chinese outdoor forums for over a decade, has driven and cycled to Tibet and Everest base camp, and wrote a book about it. Free, genuinely useful trip advice comes with the bed.
Tibetan home
A typical Jiarong Tibetan house — clean, tidy, and a real way to see how people here live rather than how visitors are housed. The cheapest proper bed in town and the one that feels most like the place.
Where climbers end up
Part bar, part base camp: run by a Chengdu rock musician who moved to the mountain, and it functions as the material and spiritual supply depot for climbers. Live music, and the room where you will hear the current conditions on Da Feng before you hear them from anyone official.
Getting around
The only public transport: Chengdu Chadianzi Station (028-87506610) sends several coaches to Xiaojin County at about 06:20 every morning, and they drop you at Rilong on the way. Six to eight hours, ¥123 in a standard coach and ¥135 in a better one. Buy a day ahead — that 06:20 departure is all there is.
Most people either find a local driver or share a car with other travellers. It is the same road — Chengdu–Dujiangyan–Yingxiu–Wolong–Balang Pass–Rilong, 286 km — but five to six hours instead of eight, and you can stop at Mao Bi Liang and the Balang barbecue stalls.
Possible, and the road is better than its reputation: mostly grade-one concrete or asphalt apart from the rough Dujiangyan–Yingxiu section. But the Balang stretch is tight-cornered and steeply graded, and there is snow in winter and spring. Take it seriously or take a driver who does.
Rilong is small enough to walk end to end, and that is the local transport plan. Changping Valley's mouth is 15–20 minutes on foot, Haizi Valley about 20 minutes. Shuangqiao is far enough to want the local bus — ¥3.
From Rilong there are direct buses back to Chengdu, or you can go to Xiaojin County and take one from there: three departures daily to Chengdu at 06:00, 06:20 and 06:40 for ¥133, one to Wenchuan at 07:00 for ¥90, and four to Barkam at 08:30, 10:00, 13:30 and 14:30 for ¥40.
Shopping
The valley's best-value buy. Matsutake, morel and other fungi gathered above 4,000 m, sold in Rilong fresher and cheaper than anywhere in the lowlands — and dried or bottled, they travel. Buy from a stall that will let you smell it.
A composite-family plant sold in Rilong and in Shuangqiao Valley at about ¥10 a bundle of five to ten heads. Used in local medicine for yang, menstruation, sinews and wind, and as a cooling, blood-toning herb. Cheap enough to be worth a gamble, and traditional enough to be a real local product.
Rilong is under-developed and unhyped, and that shows in its produce list: pollution-free yak, sea buckthorn, apples, walnuts, Sichuan pepper, pears, Siguniang bottled spring water and wild edible fungi. Straightforward green food from a valley that has not been tarted up.
Angelica, ginseng, gastrodia, cordyceps, fritillaria, snow lotus, and the local infusions — matsutake wine, cordyceps wine, cherry wine. Alongside them, thangka paintings, Qiang and Tibetan embroidery, and Jiarong gold and silver work. Everything here needs an eye; the valley's own advice is that what is missing is not goods but the ability to tell good from bad.
Practical
There is no food for sale past the valley mouths — buy sausages, dried yak, water and noodles in Rilong before you go in. And give yourself the acclimatisation day: the extra night is not a luxury, it is the difference between summiting and turning back.
| Valley tickets | Changping ¥70 / ¥50 · Shuangqiao ¥80 / ¥50 · Haizi ¥60 / ¥40 (peak / off-season) |
|---|---|
| Free-entry days | Haizi free around the mountain-worship festival and 7–9 June; women free 7–9 March; serving military free 1 August; over-60s free on Double Ninth |
| Horse hire | Changping to Dead Tree Shoal is fixed at ¥50; further in costs more. Agree the route and the price before mounting |
| Climbing | Da Feng ¥60 permit, plus a medical certificate and a licensed guide. 3 days minimum |
| Bus from Chengdu | Chadianzi 028-87506610, about 06:20 daily to Xiaojin, stops at Rilong, 6–8 h, ¥123 / ¥135 |
| Road | 286 km via Dujiangyan, Yingxiu, Wolong and 4,500 m Balang Pass; 5–6 h by car |
| Altitude | Rilong ~3,200 m · Muluozi 3,760 m · Haizi lakes ~4,200 m · Da Feng camp 4,000–4,500 m · summit 5,025 m |
| Climate | Dry, cold winters, cool summers, violent day-night swings; rain concentrated in May; fierce sun year round |
| Money | Xiaojin County has only an Agricultural Bank (9:00–17:00, 0837-2782414) and a rural credit co-operative. Bring cash |
| Medical | Xiaojin County People's Hospital, 20 West Street, Meixing, 0837-2782255 · Ngawa Prefectural People's Hospital, Barkam, 0837-2822698 |
Background
The mountains stand where Xiaojin County meets Wenchuan, the highest summit of the Qionglai range on the eastern rim of the Hengduan Mountains, second in Sichuan only to Gongga. The story that names them is a hard one: four beautiful, kind daughters whose parents were killed by a demon that was eating the village fought it to protect what peace the people had, and died doing it — and became four clean, upright snow peaks. The Tibetans of the valley made them a holy mountain.
The other reason people come is the climbing. Siguniang is the closest big snow mountain to a Chinese metropolis, and the four summits form a ladder of difficulty few ranges anywhere can match: Da Feng at 5,025 m for beginners, Er Feng at 5,276 m for experienced amateurs, San Feng at 5,355 m for equipped mountaineers, and Yaomei Feng at 6,250 m, whose routes draw the best alpinists in the world. As one local writer put it: if you have not felt your lungs tighten in thin air, or had the glare off snow strike your eyes, or felt life growing lighter as the temperature drops, you do not yet know what the word climbing means.
This is Jiarong Tibetan land — the Jiarong being the Tibetan population of the Qionglai and Daxue ranges, distinct in language, dress and architecture from the Amdo and Khampa to the west. Their signature is the stone watchtower, and the finest group of them in the region stands at Wori in Xiaojin, more than 360 towers laid out as a walled town on a grid of three cross streets and nine vertical ones — fortification and domestic life built into the same walls.
The calendar follows the herding year. The mountain-worship gathering falls on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, when families go up to the grassland at Chaoshan Ping, face the peaks and burn juniper. The Flower Viewing Festival — Ruo Mu Niu in Tibetan, simply meaning going to look at the flowers — falls on the eighteenth day of the sixth lunar month, when villages troop out to pitch tents in the meadows and forest. The Qiang year begins on the first day of the tenth lunar month, a harvest festival called the gathering wine, when families stay home and steam buckwheat three-cornered dumplings filled with meat and tofu.
The approach is the lesson: 286 km from Chengdu, most of it good concrete or asphalt, climbing from 500 m through Dujiangyan and Yingxiu, through the Wolong panda reserve, and over Balang Pass at about 4,500 m before dropping to Rilong at 3,200 m. The vegetation changes as you climb — broadleaf, then conifer, then alpine meadow — and above three or four thousand metres the road runs in cloud.
That vertical range is the whole character of the place. Xiaojin's best-preserved old growth, with golden monkeys and takin, sits an hour south at Jiajin Mountain. Miyaluo, over the ridge in Li County, is 3,688 sq km at ninety per cent vegetation cover and turns entirely red in autumn — three thousand three hundred gullies, three thousand three hundred ridges, and red leaves in every one of them. Snow mountain, hot spring, forest, red leaves, Tibetan and Qiang culture: the region sells itself as a red dream corridor, and it is not overselling.
Travel with them
Qi Qi
Part of the in-depth Great Jiuzhaigou travel series: a book that walks the prefecture rather than ticking it off — over mountains, through water, past the poetry and the mystery, with someone who knows where the road actually goes.
Tan Weiwei
A song written about these four peaks by a Sichuan singer, and one of the few modern Chinese songs that treats a mountain as something you have a relationship with rather than a view. Play it on the bus out, when the peaks are behind you in the mirror.
The questions visitors ask us most about Mount Siguniang, answered plainly.
Prices and practical details are reviewed every month by our Beijing team and updated the day a rule changes.
Changping, if you only have one. It is 29 km of gorge and forest on a boardwalk or on horseback, with the Four Girls visible most of the way and Muluozi meadow at 3,760 m as the turnaround. Shuangqiao is the easy half-day: a shuttle to the end and back, twenty-odd sights, and you never see the Four Girls from it. Haizi is the serious one — a full day on foot or horse, and the only one that puts you on the mountain.
There is no airport and no railway. Take the bus from Chengdu Chadianzi Station (028-87506610): several coaches leave for Xiaojin County at about 06:20 daily and drop you at Rilong, 6–8 hours for ¥123 in a standard coach or ¥135 in a better one. Buy a day ahead — it is the only departure. Or share a car and drive via Dujiangyan, Yingxiu, Wolong and the 4,500 m Balang Pass, 286 km in about 5–6 hours.
Yes, genuinely. The Siguniang horses are famously placid — they are used to carrying visitors and many barely trot — and if you are nervous a handler walks the reins. Children ride without trouble. Agree the route and the price before you mount, and use the horse for the long flat stretches rather than for anything steep.
Rilong is about 3,200 m and most people feel something on the first night — a headache, broken sleep, breathlessness on stairs. Do not do heavy exercise, keep warm, skip alcohol, eat fruit and vegetables, and sleep as well as you can. Bring altitude medication if you know you react badly. The point of an extra day here is altitude, not distance.
For Da Feng, yes — a licensed guide, a medical certificate and a ¥60 climbing permit are all required. The route is non-technical, but it crosses snow and steep ground and there is no phone signal. Er Feng suits fit, experienced hikers; San Feng and Yaomei Feng need full technical gear and real mountaineering experience. None of them should be attempted without a guide and a permit.
Typical high plateau: cold winters, cool summers, cold mornings and evenings with warm middays, dry most of the year, rain concentrated in the May rainy season, and violent day-to-night swings. July and August are the local spring, with wildflowers; September and October have the clearest skies. Sunlight is fierce at altitude year round — sunscreen, sunglasses and a buff are not optional.
Changping is ¥70 in peak season and ¥50 off-season; Shuangqiao ¥80 and ¥50; Haizi ¥60 and ¥40. Horses are extra and quoted per section — the standard ride to Dead Tree Shoal in Changping is fixed at ¥50. There are periodic discounts: free entry to Haizi Valley around the mountain-worship festival and on 7–9 June, free entry for all women on 7–9 March, free entry for serving military on 1 August, and free entry for over-60s on the Double Ninth Festival.
Plan this trip
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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.
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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