City guide · Zhejiang
A volcano that weathering turned into scenery — 500-odd sights of peak, cave and waterfall across eight scenic areas.
Reviewed by our Beijing team Updated 2026-10-10
The short version
City guide
Photographs from the coast, and what other travellers wrote afterwards.
The Grand Dragon Waterfall scenic area is a valley — go in along the path on the right and come out on the left. What Dalongqiu is famous for is how the view changes with every step: the same rock is a different thing from a different angle. The day I went it was wet and humid, which only added to the feeling of being somewhere enchanted. I rather wanted to get lost in it.
'Go, Your Yandang Mountain', a traveller's note
The cable car is fine — not fast, not slow, and not that high either; even A-mei, who is afraid of heights, could manage it, so there is really nothing to be frightened of. The whole point of Fang Cave is the plank walk pinned into the cliff, plus its strange assortment of caves and peaks. We had no guide, and on the empty path we were glad just to run into a few other walkers. In the end we read the signs and used our imaginations, and enjoyed ourselves anyway.
'Yandang Mountain Travelogue', a traveller's note
Yandang Mountain was a volcano before it was a mountain, and that is the whole reason nothing here looks like anywhere else. A hundred and twenty million years ago, in the Cretaceous, a rhyolite eruption laid down the rock; a hundred million years of weathering have since carved it into peaks, pillars, blocks, caves and cliffs on a scale ordinary ranges simply do not manage. Geologists call it a museum of sculpted landforms, and in 2005 it was made one of China's world geoparks. The scenic area covers 450 sq km.
It rises in Yueqing on the southern Zhejiang coast, part of it spilling into Yongjia county and Wenling city — which is why Chinese travellers speak of north, middle, south, west and east Yandang as five separate ranges, even though the place everyone means is Beiyandang, the northern one, inside Yueqing. Within it are eight scenic areas and more than 500 named sights, and three are the reason people come: Lingfeng, Lingyan and the Grand Dragon Waterfall, together the three wonders of Yandang.
What keeps it from being only scenery is the weight of writing on the rock. Yandang is one of the three mountains of the classic formula — Huangshan, Lushan and Yandang — and the literary record goes back as far as the formula does. Xu Xiake, the great Ming traveller, climbed it at twenty-eight and is said to have hauled himself up a cliff on a strip of cloth; Shen Kuo wrote about it in his Dream Pool Essays; Xie Lingyun is supposed to have invented his hiking clogs here; Kang Youwei left more than twenty works after an 1924 visit. The Qing poet Jiang Taoshu summed it up in a couplet: to describe the dragon pool is hard to put brush to paper; not to have seen Yandang is to have lived in vain.
Yandang Mountain
Seven things that are worth rearranging a day for.
Highlights
The east gate of the mountain and the reason it is famous. Walk it by day for the Guanyin and Beidou caves and the Hezhang peak; come back after dark, when lights pick the same ridges out as cut-paper shapes. The local verdict is that the day view is worth looking at and the night view is ravishing.
Where Lingfeng is chiselled and gorgeous, Lingyan is majestic and grand — the old temple below, the Pingsia cliff behind, the Tianzhu and Zhanqi crags facing each other across the valley. The draw is the flying-figure acrobatics on a cable high over the gorge, at 10:30 in the morning and again in the afternoon.
The longest waterfall in China, dropping roughly 200 m in a single fall. It is seasonal: after a summer thunderstorm it is a white dragon, loud enough to feel a hundred metres away; in a lean winter it is a thread, and the prize then is the rainbow hanging in the spray.
The first cave-heaven of Yandang, with nine tiers of timber gallery built into a natural cavern so neatly that building and rock read as one. For a few minutes a day the sun reaches the hall on the cave floor, and decades of incense hang in the shaft. It is where people come to ask for the family.
Yandang has a dozen-odd places called gates; this is the most striking, two cliffs 200 m high standing only a few metres apart. The height of the walls against the width of the gap is genuinely dizzying — some visitors cannot stay long. The Fentou and Songpo streams play the soft half of the composition.
The outlying sights, and the ones that justify hiring a car: the plank walk pinned into a sheer wall at Fang Cave, a Daoist temple wedged between cliff and chasm at Yangjiao, and the reed lake at 990 m on the Yan Lake ridge, where the geese used to roost and which Xu Xiake called the home of the wild geese.
Suggested routes
Built around the filming locations of 'The Return of the Condor Heroes' and the fastest way to see all three wonders.
Start at Lingyan for the Condor Heroes locations: Duanchang Cliff, the entrance to the Living Dead Tomb, the summit of Mount Zhongnan and the gate of the Ten Thousand Beasts Manor. Stay for the original attraction, the flying-figure acrobatics across the gorge, and allow time for the sky-window cave, the dragon-nose water and the Little Dragon Waterfall.
After lunch move on to the Grand Dragon Waterfall, where the novel's pool below Duanchang Cliff sits under the real 200 m drop; take the Scissor Peak and the Zhaojun Leaving the Pass rocks on the way. Come back after dinner for the Lingfeng dreamscape night view — the rhino watching the moon, the lovers peak, the eagle folding its wings.
Stops: LingyanDuanchang CliffGrand Dragon WaterfallScissor PeakLingfeng night view
Do Lingfeng properly in daylight: the Guohe three sights, the Hezhang peak, Guanyin Cave with its nine galleries and the inscriptions. Then take the Three-Stage Waterfall, where the water falls over three separate cliffs — the middle stage is the one people call the finest sight in Yandang — along with the orchid pavilion and the general-embracing-seal rock.
Spend the afternoon at Xiansheng Gate, the first gate under heaven, then look in on the Ming-dynasty memorial archways at Nange, the Shifo cave and the Bashful Waterfall on the way out.
Stops: Lingfeng day viewGuanyin CaveThree-Stage WaterfallXiansheng GateNange archways
Mist out to sea, then leisure itself — waterfalls first, the high ridge and the outer sights later.
Spend the morning in the Grand Dragon Waterfall valley: Scissor Peak, Zhaojun Leaving the Pass, the high-wire bicycle show and the fall itself. Enter by the right-hand path and leave by the left — the shifting silhouette is the point.
Eat early and be at Lingfeng for dusk, when the lamps come up and the peaks turn into the husband-and-wife pair, the eagle folding its wings and the rhino watching the moon.
Stops: Grand Dragon WaterfallScissor PeakLingfeng night view
After breakfast walk Lingfeng by day — the Guohe three sights, Hezhang peak, Guanyin Cave, the inscriptions and the Chaoyang cave — then the Three-Stage Waterfall for the orchid pavilion, the general-embracing-seal rock and the bashful maiden.
In the afternoon take Xiansheng Gate, the first gate under heaven, with the Bashful Waterfall and the Shifo cave.
Stops: LingfengThree-Stage WaterfallXiansheng Gate
After breakfast, walk Lingyan properly: the temple, the Little Dragon Waterfall, the Reclining Dragon valley and the flying-figure show, which is the one thing here you cannot see anywhere else. Have lunch and start the journey home.
If you have an extra half-day, charter a car out to Fang Cave for the plank walk and the cable car, or up to Yan Lake for the sunrise and the cloud sea.
Stops: Lingyan templeLittle Dragon WaterfallFlying-figure show
Sights
The east gate
Photographers set up here more than anywhere else on the mountain. The ridge climbs along the Mingyu stream between peaks stacked so tightly they seem to fold into one another, and the two great caves — Guanyin and Beidou — plus the Hezhang peak are the reason to walk it. Guanyin Cave is the first cave-heaven of Yandang: nine tiers of gallery built into the rock, sunlight reaching the hall on the cave floor for only a few minutes a day, incense hanging in the shaft from decades of burning. The whole scenic area also takes in Guohe Bridge, the White Cloud nunnery and the Chaoyang cave.
Tip The day and night sessions are sold separately and the night one costs ¥30 more. Do the night view once — it is the single most famous thing on the mountain, and it only takes about an hour.
The flying figures
The Yuan writer Li Xiaoguang put the difference in one line: for chiselled, gorgeous beauty nothing beats Lingfeng; for majestic, massive grandeur nothing beats Lingyan. The old Lingyan temple sits at the centre with the Pingsia cliff — brilliant as brocade — behind it and the Tianzhu and Zhanqi crags facing each other, walls of rock a thousand feet up. Lingfeng makes the imagination race; Lingyan makes it quiet. Hidden away in the folds are the sky-window cave, the dragon-nose water, the Jade Maiden peak and the twin-pearl falls, and the place is called profound precisely because it keeps its best things out of sight.
Tip Time the day around the flying-figure show rather than the other way round — it is a cliff-face acrobatics act on a cable, and there is nothing else like it in China.
The longest drop in China
A valley with a wide mouth and a stream beside it, and a fall that changes character with the season and the weather. When the summer thunderstorm has just passed it is an untamed white dragon — the spray like thunder and snow, the roar loud enough to feel a hundred metres off, the droplets still catching you tens of metres away. In the thin days of winter it shrinks, and if you are lucky with the sun a rainbow flickers in it like a necklace. The name is deliberate: qiu means pool, and it is the pool at the foot, not the fall, that makes it a dragon rather than just another pu.
Tip Walk in on the right-hand path and out on the left — the whole point of the place is how the rock changes shape as you move under it.
Three cliffs, three falls
Wedged between Lingfeng to the east and Lingyan to the west, and covering 3 sq km, this is the valley where the stream throws itself over three successive cliffs to make an upper, middle and lower fall. The middle one is the finest — the Qing verdict is that it is the first great sight of Yandang — a half-round cavern with the water coming straight off the roof of it, and when the volume is up it is genuinely spectacular. Locals say the hollow that holds it is a cooled volcanic vent, fire and water making a wonder between them.
Tip The narrow Chuyue valley just alongside is worth the detour: it cradles the so-called first screen under heaven, the Tiecheng wall, and shows you the side of Yandang that is about hiding things rather than showing them off.
The first gate under heaven
Yandang has a dozen-odd sights called gates, and this is the best of them: two cliffs rising 200 m and standing only a few metres apart. The disproportion between the height of the walls and the width of the gap is what stops people — some get dizzy and cannot stay. The two streams, Fentou and Songpo, run the soft counter-melody to all that vertical rock, and the two halves of the composition set each other off.
Tip The western part of the area has a run of sights with the character for immortal in their names. The Sanshui rock has a style of its own among Yandang's waterfalls, and the Nange archways are one of the few pieces of human, rather than natural, history on the mountain.
The plank walk
West of Lingyan, a stretch of more than a hundred metres of plank walk pinned into a sheer cliff, with three dripping springs inside the cave whose water you can drink, and terraced fields hacked out of the slope below. The cable car up is slow, low enough that even travellers who dislike heights manage it, and the view down from the walkway is the reason you came.
Tip The plank walk is the attraction here — everything else is a bonus. Go on a clear day, because the whole point is looking down.
The outer ring
Three further-out sights for anyone with a car. Yangjiao Cave sits in the south-east face of Fang Mountain, named for the peak behind it or for the horn shape of the opening depending on which version you hear; the three wonders here are the Sword Peak, the Gourd Rock and the cave itself, and there is a Daoist temple, the Yuchan Palace, built inside it, with cliff in front and a very long drop behind. Yan Lake is on the ridge top at 990 m — once, the records say, ten li across and never dry, reeds thick on it and the autumn geese coming to roost, which is how the mountain got its name; it has silted up to a small pond now, but the sunrise over the East China Sea and the cloud sea from the ridge are still the best thing in Yandang. Xianqiao is the country of the immortal Prince Jin, who is said to have flown here on a crane: the Fairy Bridge, the Fairy Pavilion, the Immortal's Cave, the Flute-Playing Peak, the Cinnabar Stove Rock and the Stone Chessboard are all named after him. The bridge is 38 m long, about 7 m wide and over 10 m high.
Tip Yan Lake is the one to plan a whole morning around: the tea grown on that ridge is the Yandang Mao Feng the province is known for, and a clear dawn gives you the sea below the cloud.
Film locations
Return of the Condor Heroes
The day circuit doubles as the show's outdoor set — the outer corridor shots, the Hezhang peak standing in for the Chongyang Palace, whose great hall is supposed to rise nine storeys and seven inside the rock, and the real sights of Guanyin Cave and the inscriptions. It is the easiest place to see why the location scouts came here.
The vow
This is the cliff Xiaolongnü is said to have thrown herself from, and where she and Yang Guo swear to meet again in sixteen years. The couplet that goes with it — sighing at heartbreak on the heartbreak cliff, weeping one's gut out at the bottom of the passionless valley — is quoted at every turn in the scenic area, and the cliff itself is signed as a filming location.
Return of the Condor Heroes
The Grand Dragon Waterfall carries the second cluster of Condor locations: the pool at the foot of Duanchang Cliff, plus the real sights of the fall itself and the Zhaojun Leaving the Pass rock. Stand at the bottom on a wet day and the melodrama of the novel makes a certain amount of sense.
Return of the Condor Heroes
The third cluster: the Passionless Valley inn, the cave, the mouth of the Passionless Valley — alongside the real Ming-dynasty archways at Nange, the Shifo cave and the Bashful Waterfall. Of all the locations, this is the one where the landscape does the most work for the story.
Food
The local canon, fixed in the Qing by Lao Dayu in his 'Unrecorded Tales of the Ou River': Yanming tea, the Guanyin bamboo, the Venus fern, the mountain songbird and the sweetfish. Four of the five are things you look at rather than eat, which tells you something about how this province thinks about a menu.
Golden, fine-scaled and without the muddy note that puts people off freshwater fish — which is why it is the one to drink with. Lao Dayu recorded that it is born in early spring and grows an inch a month, reaches a foot by winter, then runs down to the tide to spawn and dies there. It is found only in the streams of Yandang, and the best come out of the Shimen pool.
The dish of the eight that people order twice. The flesh is fine and tender, the broth thick and clean, the whole thing fresh and delicate rather than rich. It is a summer and autumn dish and a genuinely good reason to sit down.
The mountain's canonical set: minced chicken with sweetfish, dragon-coiling-pearl, Yandang stone frog, potato and game casserole, beautiful yellow croaker, clam and tofu soup, emerald shrimp, and plain-braised sea crab. Every restaurant in town claims to do all eight; order by what is in season and what is swimming.
Hare and potato, simmered long and slow until the colour goes dark red and the smell gets into everything. One of the eight, and the sort of dish the hills do better than the coast.
Made from mung-bean and sweet-potato starch, thick as a chopstick and faintly green, and best fried. The rule is no cabbage, no spinach — too much water and it ruins both the taste and the look — but celery, oyster, razor clam and shredded egg instead.
Dried vermicelli simmered with trotter or bone, then finished in the bowl with egg strands, celery, dried shrimp, seaweed, oyster, vinegar, soy and seasoning, plus a little chilli paste if you like it hot. A wedding, a funeral, any banquet in Yandang involves a plate of fried vermicelli — it is not optional.
The mountain gets the fame, but Yandang sits on the coast and the seafood is the other half of the menu. One rule worth repeating: eat in the town, not inside the scenic area. The difference in the bill is real.
Where to eat
Best value
Inside the four-star Yandangshan Villa on Xiaoxia Road. Very good value, mostly seafood, unremarkable room, decent service. If you want a proper sit-down meal without the tourist premium, start here.
Try the sweetfish
Two floors: the ground floor handles the tour groups, the first floor is private rooms, and the staff will happily take independent travellers upstairs. The food is good and the sweetfish is the thing to order.
Big plates
Generous portions, good flavours, good service, and the seafood is fresh with thick, sweet flesh. The sort of place where you order four dishes for three people and still take something home.
Where the locals go
A lot of Yueqing people eat here, which is the recommendation that matters. The room is done out in an old-fashioned style and the kitchen is broad rather than deep — the roast yellow croaker, the boiled fish, the loofah with fried dough sticks and the red-bean ice all come recommended.
The big dinner
Expensive, but the menu is complete and it is not just country cooking. If you want one proper multi-person dinner rather than a string of roadside meals, this is the respectable choice.
Where to stay
Good value
The most central address on the mountain, right next to the Xianglingtou pedestrian shopping street — food, shopping and transport all on the doorstep, and it is where the restaurants cluster. The hotel runs a free pick-up from the station.
By Lingfeng
Clean and tidy, and only a few steps from the Lingfeng scenic area, which makes the night view a five-minute errand. Free pick-up from both the Yandangshan coach station and the high-speed rail station, and the hotel also sells rafting packages.
Quiet rooms
Inside the scenic area, clean, and more modern than most of its neighbours, with a food street close by. Ask for a room on the hill side — the staff say you hear birds and see the mist come up in the early morning.
On the walking street
In the middle of the scenic area, well fitted out and well placed — ten minutes on foot to Lingfeng, and the pedestrian street outside is the liveliest shopping in Yandang after dark. A green sightseeing bus stops at the end of the street and calls at every sight from Lingfeng to the Grand Dragon Waterfall.
Comfort
Four-star, close to the sights, in good surroundings, clean and with genuinely good service — about the best the mountain has. A large step up in price from the guesthouses, and worth it if you are walking hard for three days.
The local trick
The Lingfeng night view is one of the three wonders, and one way to see it is to sleep on the mountain: pitch on the hill by the Jiangjun Cave road, or by the forest-farm buildings, and walk the peaks after dark. It costs nothing, it saves the ¥30 night ticket, and you get the sunrise and the mist into the bargain.
Shopping
A fired green tea, also sold as Longqiu tea, Yandang Mao Feng or Yandang cloud-mist, and picked only between Clear and Bright and Grain Rain. It is made from the first fat bud with one leaf or three, and comes out emerald, pungent in the nose and clean and mild in the cup. It has been counted among the five treasures since the Ming.
A slender bamboo about a metre tall, grown for looking at rather than eating. It likes warmth, moisture and half shade, hates strong sun and waterlogged roots, and wants rich, loose, well-drained soil — and it must not go below freezing in winter. Its fine leaves hang like a phoenix tail, and the weight of them bends the thin canes over, which is why it has the name it has.
A medicinal fern that likes dark, damp places out of the sun — look for it under big trees or on the walls of old houses. It grows one to two feet tall, and in deep winter golden spots come out on the backs of the leaves, in two rows facing each other, which is where it gets its name. Its roots coil like bamboo roots, only finer, and it stays green through the winter.
The fish of these waters is good fresh and good dried: shark fin, dried eel, fish maw, fish skin, cuttlefish, shrimp, dried shrimp, kelp, nori and fish floss. It travels well, keeps well, and makes a plausible gift for anyone who did not come with you.
In Yandang town, and the obvious place to buy the local specialities in one go. One caution that comes up repeatedly in traveller accounts: the restaurants and shops here are known to price for tourists, so treat the first figure as an opening bid and haggle.
The most complete and best shopping centre in Yueqing city, on Qingyuan Road — though because Yueqing's spending power is not high, there are fewer big-name brands than you might expect. Worth an hour if you have run out of things to do in the town.
Getting there
This is now the obvious way in. The Ningbo–Taizhou–Wenzhou high-speed line passes through Yandang Mountain and stops there, and from the platform it is only ten-odd minutes by road to Xianglingtou, the tourist hub at the heart of the scenic area. Everything else — air, coach — is a fallback by comparison.
Wenzhou Yongqiang airport lies 80 km south, linked by first-class road, under two hours away and about ¥250–300 by chartered car. Taizhou Huangyan airport is only 60 km north, under an hour and about ¥200 chartered — and fares from Huangyan are generally cheaper than from Wenzhou. Huangyan flies daily to Guangzhou at 12:50, to Shanghai Pudong at 19:15, and to Beijing at 10:20 on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays, with other services to Chengdu, Chongqing, Fuzhou, Hefei, Kunming, Nanchang, Shenzhen, Taiyuan, Wuhan, Xiamen and Xi'an. Wenzhou's airport bus runs to the CAAC ticket office in town in about 35 minutes, and eight direct coach lines now reach Rui'an, Yueqing, Pingyang, Cangnan, Lishui, Qingtian, Fuding and Wenling.
From Hangzhou, the Yandangshan tourist bus station sits beside the Yandang Hotel at Xianglingtou, with direct high-speed coaches to and from Hangzhou East coach station at 08:30 and 14:00 — 350 km, about five hours, ¥85. From Shanghai, the Zhixin terminal at 249 Zhijiang West Road runs a direct coach at 14:00 taking over seven hours, returning from Yandangshan at 17:10; ¥130 in low season, ¥150 in high. There is also a sleeper from Shanghai to Yueqing leaving 22:30 from 233 Minli Road by the Hanzhong Road metro station, ¥130, which drops you at the National Road 104 junction in Yandang town around 04:00. From Ningbo it is 220 km and about four hours, with very frequent departures, getting off at Yandang town (Baixi) on National Road 104. From Wenzhou, the New South coach station opposite the railway station runs air-conditioned tourist buses at 07:30, 09:30, 10:30, 13:30 and 15:30 for ¥27.
In peak season green minibuses serve the main sights — the two Lings and one Dragon — leaving once ten people have gathered, and very cheaply: the run from the Yandang town (Baixi) junction on National Road 104 in the far east to the Grand Dragon Waterfall in the far west costs just ¥6.50. In the low season there are too few passengers for the fares to cover the tunnel toll and parking charges, so the buses effectively become taxis and you charter: ¥80–100 for an afternoon, about ¥150 for a day, ¥260 or so for three days, and ¥150–200 for a day with a driver. Take water and dry food for the outlying sights, because there is almost nothing between them.
Practical
In summer bring insect repellent and cooling balm; the dining rooms here lean on seafood and mountain game, so carry something for your stomach.
| Lingfeng | ¥40 by day, ¥80 for the night session — sold separately, 08:00–18:00 |
|---|---|
| Lingyan | ¥20, 08:00–18:00; flying-figure show at 10:30, plus 15:30 Mon–Thu or 14:00 and 16:00 Fri–Sun |
| Grand Dragon Waterfall | ¥40; best on a clear day straight after rain, May–June or August–September |
| Three-Stage Waterfall | ¥15, 08:00–18:00; reached by scenic bus or a 10–20 minute walk from Xianglingtou |
| Outer sights | Xiansheng Gate ¥15, Fang Cave ¥30 (cable car ¥60), Yangjiao Cave ¥15, Yan Lake ¥5, Xianqiao ¥10 |
| Student cards | Bring yours — it is worth half price at the main sights |
| Scam one: restaurants | Eat at busy, central places with friendly owners. Quiet out-of-the-way restaurants have been reported for inflated bills and for refusing to let guests leave until they pay. |
| Scam two: temple incense | Do not take incense handed to you at a temple gate. At the small temple by the Grand Dragon Waterfall and inside Fang Cave, free incense has ended in demands for a set sum — one party reported ¥200. |
| Phones | Yandangshan is in Yueqing, area code 0577. Visitor centre 62241549; tourism hotline 62178888; complaints 62243651; police 110 or 62243139; medical 120 or 62243409. |
Background
Yandang is a Cretaceous rhyolite volcano on the Pacific rim, on the edge of the East China Sea in Zhejiang. It records how a Mesozoic volcano was born and evolved, and it displays the deep valleys and peak forests that a hundred million years of geology have made of it — which is why it is called a museum of sculpted landforms. The scenic area covers 450 sq km, with more than 500 sights spread across eight scenic areas, known for strange peaks and rocks, old caves and stone chambers, and flying waterfalls and springs. It was made one of China's world geoparks in 2005.
There was a lake on the summit, thick with reeds, the reeds matted into a marsh, and the wild geese flying south used to roost there — hence yan, goose, and dang, marsh. The name has stuck since the range was first opened up in the Northern and Southern dynasties; it grew through the Tang and peaked in the Song. Tradition also makes it the seat of the arhat Nuoju, one of the five hundred disciples of Sakyamuni.
Of the three mountains and five sacred peaks, the three are Huangshan, Lushan and Yandang, and the literature follows the rank. Xu Xiake came at twenty-eight, wrote the Yandang Mountain travelogue, and is said to have got himself up a cliff face on nothing but a strip of cloth while snowbound monks watched in disbelief. Shen Kuo described it in his Dream Pool Essays and Fang Xiaoru in his Notes on the Zhongshan Thatched Hall; the calligraphers Cai Xiang and Fan Chengda and the dramatist Tang Xianzu left poems and wall inscriptions. Xie Lingyun is credited with inventing his hiking clogs here; Kang Youwei produced more than twenty works after a 1924 visit; Mao Dun wrote a poem on the Greeting Monk rock and Su Shi two poems on a painting of the mountain. Jiang Taoshu's couplet is the one everybody quotes: hard to put brush to paper describing the dragon pool; a life without Yandang is a life wasted.
Yueqing's own art forms are small and stubborn. Da huagu, the flower-drum, is called the one flower of Yueqing folk art, and its songs go: the melon vine trails long and longer, the flower-drum girl is your mother; by day she teaches you the drum, by night she teaches you to sew. The fine-line paper cuts of Siqian in Xiangyang come from a craft tradition more than five hundred years old, practised now by some two thousand people in the town, shipped to the United States, Canada, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, and worth over a hundred million yuan a year; Xiangyang was named a folk-art town of Zhejiang in 1998 and of China in 2000. And the Nanyue stilts, known to every woman and child there, date from the late Qing: in 1907 the Wu family of Xingwan village organised the village to learn the art, and seven young men took to walking on metre-long bamboo poles with a small wooden step bound at the middle.
Travel with them
Directed by Kong Sheng
The rise and fall of one ordinary Wenzhou family, written by Gao Mantang and starring Li Liqun, Chi Peng, Zhang Yi and Yin Tao — thirty-six episodes that use a grassroots start-up story to carry the whole arc of three decades of reform. It explains the merchant culture of this coast better than any guidebook, and the mountain sits in the middle of the region it describes.
Revised by Jiang Shunan; annotated by Lu Liyang and Zhan Wangmei
Jiang Shunan was a well-known traveller of the Republican period who did more than anyone to develop Yandang: he protected the old sites and relics, improved the roads, invited figures such as Kang Youwei up to see it, and printed photograph albums, maps and guidebooks. His revised gazetteer is still useful to anyone building the world geopark today.
Yang Hongjian
The argument is the familiar one — that Wenzhou people are the Jews of China — but the book is really about a way of thinking and behaving: that they are born traders. As one Wenzhou netwriter put it, what we do does not seem strange to us; it is only in other people's eyes that it looks different. Useful background for the southern end of the province.
Sung by He Wei
The theme song of a Wenzhou television news programme, and now known to every household in the city. Its stated ambition: you can find Wenzhou people almost anywhere in the world and hear Wenzhou dialect almost anywhere — so let Wenzhou songs be sung everywhere too.
The questions visitors ask us most about Yandang Mountain, answered plainly.
Prices and practical details are reviewed every month by our Beijing team and updated the day a rule changes.
Two days is the minimum and three is better. Two days does Lingyan and the Grand Dragon Waterfall on day one plus the Lingfeng night view, then Lingfeng by day, the Three-Stage Waterfall and Xiansheng Gate on day two. A third day buys Lingyan properly, the sky-window cave and dragon-nose water — or pushes out to Fang Cave, Yangjiao Cave and Yan Lake for the sunrise.
Spring, summer and autumn, and for the waterfall specifically a clear day straight after rain in May–June or August–September. The Grand Dragon Waterfall is drawn by water: after a summer storm it drops 200 m in one roaring white sheet, but in a dry spell it thins to a trickle. Pack for sun and rain both, and carry mosquito repellent and cooling balm in summer.
In peak season green minibuses cover the main sights cheaply — as little as ¥6.50 from the Yandang town junction on National Road 104 out to the Grand Dragon Waterfall. Out of season they stop running to timetable, and the outlying sights have poor public transport, so you charter: ¥80–100 for an afternoon, about ¥150 for a day, around ¥260 for three days.
Yes, and locals do it — though the night ticket costs only ¥30. You can camp on the Lingfeng hill by the Jiangjun Cave road, or by the forest-farm buildings, watch the night view after dark and skip the ticket; then walk Lingfeng properly in the morning and leave afterwards. If you would rather sleep in a bed, pay the ¥30 once and be done with it.
Start with the sweetfish — golden, fine-scaled and good with a drink — then the stone frog, the best of the eight famous dishes, tender in a thick clean broth. Add mung-bean noodles fried with celery, oyster and egg, and a bowl of sweet-potato vermicelli soup. Eat in the town rather than inside the scenic area for better value.
It is in Yueqing, a county-level city administered by Wenzhou prefecture, with parts of the range in Yongjia county and Wenling. It sits 297 km from Hangzhou and 68 km from Wenzhou. Most visitors get to Wenzhou first and then find a coach or train up to Yandang town.
Yes — they are genuinely two different sights. The day is about the caves, the Hezhang peak and the detail in the rock; the night is pure silhouette, with a guide naming the shapes one by one. It is the single most famous thing in Yandang and takes about an hour. Independent travellers need not hire a guide: there are group guides everywhere with loudspeakers you can stand next to.
Three rules. Eat at busy, central places with friendly-looking owners rather than quiet out-of-the-way ones, where inflated bills and pressure to pay are a known problem. Never accept incense handed to you at a temple gate — at the small temple by the Grand Dragon Waterfall, and inside Fang Cave, free incense has ended in demands for a set sum; one party reported losing ¥200. And agree car or pedicab prices before you get in, then haggle; a helpful hotel owner can often find you a cheaper driver.
Plan this trip
The same places, with a driver, an English-speaking guide and the tickets already bought.
City guides
Dalian
City guide · 15 tours
The Northern Pearl — China's most romantic coastal city.
Shenyang
City guide · 12 tours
Where the Qing dynasty began — an imperial palace, a warlord's mansion and the cheapest good food in the northeast.
Changbai Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
A volcano on the North Korean border, a jade-green crater lake at 2,189 m, and hot springs on the way down.
Kunming
City guide · 12 tours
China's Spring City — a mild plateau capital of flowers, markets and the Stone Forest, with gulls on the lake in winter.
Dali
City guide · 12 tours
A walled Bai town between a 4,000 m mountain and a great lake — wind, flowers, snow and moon, and life at a slower speed.
Shuhe
City guide · 12 tours
The quiet version of Lijiang — a Tea Horse Road village of canals, stone bridges and slow afternoons, 4 km from the crowds.
Lijiang
City guide · 12 tours
A UNESCO Naxi old town of canals and cobbles beneath a 5,596 m snow mountain — the cultural heart of north-west Yunnan.
Xiamen
City guide · 12 tours
A subtropical island city of temples, fishing-village lanes and the best street food in Fujian — with the car-free islet of Gulangyu a 20-minute ferry away.
Gulangyu
City guide · 12 tours
A car-free island of colonial villas, pianos and cats, twenty minutes off Xiamen — and the one place where the trick is simply to stay the night.
Fuzhou
City guide · 12 tours
A 2,200-year-old capital of banyan trees and mountains-within-the-city, where the Ming lanes of Sanfang Qixiang meet the dockyard that built China's modern navy.
Lugu Lake
City guide · 12 tours
A 2,680 m lake on the Yunnan–Sichuan border, home to China's last matrilineal people, pig-trough canoes and a great deal of doing nothing.
Xishuangbanna
City guide · 12 tours
China's tropical south — rainforest, wild elephants, Dai villages and the Mekong, wrapped around the gateway city of Jinghong.
Shangri-La
City guide · 12 tours
A Tibetan town at 3,300 m in Yunnan's Diqing prefecture — monasteries, grassland, prayer wheels and cold thin air.
Nanchang
City guide · 12 tours
Jiangxi's 'hero city' on the Gan River — one great Tang pavilion, a 160-metre Ferris wheel, and the best claypot soup you will eat in China.
Hefei
City guide · 12 tours
Anhui's 2,000-year-old capital: the hometown of China's model judge, a moat-turned-garden ring, and the fast rail gateway to Huangshan.
Hongcun
City guide · 12 tours
A 900-year-old Hui village laid out as an ox, with water running to every door and a mirror-still crescent pond at its heart.
Wuhan
City guide · 12 tours
Three towns, two rivers and the best breakfast in China — a huge, blunt river city of bridges, lakes and cheap, brilliant street food.
Changsha
City guide · 12 tours
Hunan's loud, young capital: a 3,000-year-old city that eats chilli-hot food, stays up all night and treats foot massage as a civic duty.
Fenghuang Ancient Town
City guide · 12 tours
The stilt-house river town of Shen Congwen's 'Border Town' — glowing lanterns, stepping stones and the best two nights in western Hunan.
Lushan
City guide · 12 tours
A cloud-wrapped granite mountain with a Victorian hill station on top, waterfalls in three tiers, and the mist that Su Shi said you could never see through.
Wuyuan
City guide · 12 tours
China's 'most beautiful countryside' — dozens of white-walled Huizhou villages strung along streams and terraced into the hills, and two weeks a year of gold.
Mount Heng (Hengshan, Hunan)
City guide · 12 tours
The South Great Peak: a pilgrimage mountain of 72 summits where the temples run all the way to the top, and the sunrise over the cloud sea is the whole point.
Huangshan
City guide · 12 tours
Yellow Mountain: 82 granite peaks of twisted pines and grotesque rock, a sea of cloud that changes by the hour, and hot springs at the foot.
Wudang Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
The Taoist first mountain of China — a gilded bronze hall on a 1,612 m summit, temples hung off cliff faces, and the birthplace of tai chi.
Luoyang
City guide · 12 tours
Thirteen dynasties, 100,000 Buddhas carved into a river cliff, China's first Buddhist temple — and a whole city that turns peony-pink every April.
Yuntai Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
A UNESCO geopark in Henan where red-stone gorges squeeze a river to a slot, a 314 m waterfall drops in one plunge, and every path leads to another pool.
Rizhao
City guide · 12 tours
A low-key Shandong beach town where the sun rises straight out of the Yellow Sea, the sand runs 60 km and a seafood dinner costs less than a coffee in Shanghai.
Yantai
City guide · 12 tours
A northern Shandong port of fairy-tale cliffs, wine cellars and long golden beaches — where emperors once hunted the elixir of life and China's wine industry still begins.
Lianyungang
City guide · 12 tours
A working Jiangsu port with a myth in the middle of it — the Flower-Fruit Mountain of Journey to the West, a sea causeway to a big island beach, and some of the cheapest seafood on the coast.
Sanqing Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
A vertical forest of granite pillars in Jiangxi — the Python Out of the Mountain, the Goddess of the East Sea, two cable cars and a cliff-hugging walkway at 1,660 metres.
Tianjin
City guide · 12 tours
Beijing's port city next door — a river of 24 bridges, 2,000 colonial villas, and the best street breakfast in northern China.
Datong
City guide · 12 tours
A frontier capital of carved Buddhas — the Yungang Grottoes, a temple pinned to a cliff, and the oldest wooden tower in China.
Taiyuan
City guide · 12 tours
Shanxi's provincial capital and noodle heartland — the spring of Jinci, two Ming pagodas, and a museum that explains the whole province.
Pingyao
City guide · 12 tours
China's best-preserved ancient walled town — a Ming wall, the first Chinese bank, and two temples of painted clay just outside the gates.
Wutai Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
China's foremost Buddhist mountain — fifty-plus temples in one valley, crowned by five flat-topped peaks up to 3,058 m.
Hulunbuir
City guide · 12 tours
China's finest grassland — a 263,000 km² sweep of steppe, birch forest and border river, best driven with the windows down.
The Forbidden City
City guide · 12 tours
Beijing's 600-year imperial palace — 8,700 rooms behind a 72-hectare wall, and the largest surviving wooden palace complex on earth.
Sanya
City guide · 12 tours
China's only true winter-sun coast — four very different bays, a coral island and a 108 m sea Buddha, all at 18° north.
Haikou
City guide · 12 tours
Hainan's capital is the island's living city — 600-year-old arcade streets, a volcanic village, and a morning-tea-to-midnight food culture.
Beihai
City guide · 12 tours
24 km of fine white sand on one side, a volcanic island of coral and lava on the other — plus a 19th-century arcade old street in between.
Nanning
City guide · 12 tours
Guangxi's green capital is a gateway to Detian Falls, Beihai and Vietnam — and a genuinely excellent food city if you let it slow you down.
Guangxi
City guide · 12 tours
One autonomous region, a dozen landscapes — limestone peaks and rice terraces in the north, a Vietnam border and a warm gulf coast in the south.
Huizhou
City guide · 12 tours
A free West Lake, a Taoist mountain and 200 km of white-sand coast — the Pearl River Delta's most underrated weekend.
Beidaihe
City guide · 12 tours
Northern China's classic beach escape — one sunrise headland, 10 km of calm swimming water, and a bird flyway overhead twice a year.
Shanhaiguan
City guide · 12 tours
The town where the Great Wall stops being a rumour of mountains and walks into the Bohai Sea.
Baiyangdian
City guide · 12 tours
The biggest freshwater lake on the North China Plain — and almost none of it can be reached except by boat.
Qinhuangdao
City guide · 12 tours
126 km of Bohai coast in one municipality — a working port, two famous resorts, and the only desert dunes that meet this sea.
Yesanpo
City guide · 12 tours
Gorge country where the Taihang and Yan ranges collide — 52.5 km of canyon walls, a cave that spits fish, and a river to fall off.
Zhuhai
City guide · 12 tours
The delta's slow city: a 28 km promenade, 146 islands, oysters fattened where the river meets the sea.
Wuyi Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
Nine bends of clear water, red sandstone cliffs, and the tea that made a mountain's name.
Jiuzhaigou
City guide · 12 tours
108 mineral-blue lakes in one 55 km valley — the place that ruins water everywhere else for you.
Mount Siguniang
City guide · 12 tours
Four snow peaks, three valleys, and the friendliest 5,000 m mountain in China to stand on top of.
Hailuogou
City guide · 12 tours
A glacier that comes down to 2,850 m, hot springs in the forest, and Gongga Shan filling the sky above both.
Daocheng Yading
City guide · 12 tours
Three 6,000 m sacred peaks, glacial lakes at 4,600 m and twenty hours of road — the hardest, highest payoff in Sichuan.
Shunan Bamboo Sea
City guide · 12 tours
Seventy thousand mu of bamboo over twenty-eight hills, a red sandstone corridor under a closed green roof, and a banquet made entirely of bamboo.
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.
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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