Every sight worth the detour

A 1.5 km Song-plan shopping street of Huizhou shopfronts, and the gateway town for Huangshan and the villages.

The Buddhist sacred mountain of Ksitigarbha, with 90 working temples and several mummified monks on display.

A bagua-planned Ming village and a row of seven Qing memorial archways, both nearly empty of visitors.

The Qing court's lakeside retreat: a 700-metre painted corridor, a marble boat, and Kunming Lake frozen solid for skating in January.

Ruins of the European-style palaces burned by Anglo-French troops in 1860, left deliberately unrestored as a national memory.

440,000 m² of paving between the Forbidden City's gate and Mao's mausoleum. Passport and advance booking required to enter.

A Bauhaus-designed East German electronics factory turned into China's best-known contemporary gallery quarter.

The surviving grey-brick lane grid around Shichahai and Nanluoguxiang, best explored by bicycle at dusk.

Thirteen Ming emperors under a ring of hills, approached by a 7 km spirit road of stone officials and beasts.

The 7.8 km line from Yongdingmen to the Bell Tower, inscribed by UNESCO in 2024 as a single urban composition.

Three natural limestone bridges and the Furong Cave, used as a location in Transformers and Curse of the Golden Flower.

50,000 figures from the 9th–13th centuries, culminating in a 31-metre reclining Buddha. The last great phase of Chinese cave art.

Marco Polo's Zayton, the greatest port in the medieval world, with mosques, Hindu carvings and Manichaean remains side by side.

A preserved quarter of whitewashed Ming and Qing scholar-official houses in the middle of a modern provincial capital.

A Ming coastal fortress and the Hui'an women, whose distinctive headscarf-and-bare-midriff working dress is still worn.

Stone fishing villages built from granite blocks, blue-tear bioluminescence in spring, and China's closest point to Taiwan.

Seaweed racks, bamboo poles and fishing boats on tidal flats — one of Asia's most sought-after landscape photography locations.

One of the six great Gelugpa monasteries, with the world's longest prayer-wheel corridor and a large monastic population.

194 caves of painted clay sculpture on a haystack-shaped cliff, reached by vertigo-inducing external walkways.

Grottoes reached only by boat across the Yellow River reservoir, with a 27-metre Tang Maitreya.

A Tibetan village in a natural limestone amphitheatre — 'stone box' — with terraced barley and serious trekking.

1,800 fortified watchtowers built by returning overseas Chinese, mixing Greek, Roman, Islamic and Chinese styles in paddy fields.

Ming walls, a pontoon bridge that opens each afternoon, and the Teochew cooking that Hong Kong's best restaurants are built on.

The mountain that gave its name to the Danxia landform — red sandstone cliffs and towers above a green river.

Fishing villages in 1980, 17.5 million people now. Huaqiangbei electronics market, Dafen oil-painting village, and OCT-LOFT.

Asia's largest transnational waterfall, straddling the Vietnamese border, with bamboo rafts poling up to the boundary marker.

China's youngest volcanic island, with black lava cliffs, coral beaches and a 19th-century French Gothic church.

A 900-year-old town of stone lanes and banyan roots among karst peaks, still barely touched by tourism.

Forest hot springs above the Longji terraces, a good soft landing after two days of walking the ridges.

24 km of fine white sand on the Gulf of Tonkin, with the arcaded Beihai Old Street behind it.

Turquoise pools, tiered waterfalls and a 1836 stone bridge in a karst forest — the prettiest short walk in Guizhou.

Chambers up to 150 metres high with stalagmites the size of buildings. Arguably the finest show cave in Asia.

A 2,336 m quartzite pillar with two temples on top, reached by 8,888 steps or a cable car, above a cloud sea.

Red rock, bamboo sea and a curtain waterfall, in the corner of Guizhou where Maotai liquor is distilled.

China's tropical resort coast at 18°N — palm beaches, duty-free malls, and rainforest and Li minority villages inland.

Arcaded colonial shophouse streets and, half an hour inland, a geopark of 40 dormant volcanic craters.

The Qing summer capital: a 5.6 km² walled park ringed by outlying temples copying Tibetan and Mongolian architecture.

Where the Great Wall meets the Bohai Sea at Old Dragon's Head — the eastern full stop of the Ming wall.

A small town with four Tang and Song pagodas and the Longxing Temple's 21-metre bronze Guanyin.

North China's largest freshwater wetland, a maze of reed channels punted by boat, now beside the Xiong'an new city.

China's northernmost point at 53°N, where winter hits −45°C and the aurora is occasionally visible in summer.

Five lakes dammed by lava from eruptions in 1719–21, with cinder cones, mineral springs and black basalt fields.

Reed marsh holding a large share of the world's remaining wild red-crowned cranes. Daily flight releases for visitors.

The Chan Buddhist monastery that gave the world kung fu, with a Pagoda Forest of 240 monk tombs. Heavily commercialised.

The Northern Song capital, buried under Yellow River silt and partly rebuilt, with an excellent night market and an iron pagoda from 1049.

The last Shang capital and the site where oracle-bone script — the ancestor of written Chinese — was excavated.

A red sandstone geopark of slot canyons and a 314-metre waterfall, spectacular and extremely popular.

Red cliffs and the Guoliang tunnel road, hand-carved through a mountain by thirteen villagers over five years.

The Big Buddha, Tai O's stilt village, and car-free Cheung Chau and Lamma, all under an hour from Central.

Hexagonal volcanic rock columns along the Sai Kung coast, reached by boat from one of Asia's densest cities.

Old-growth forest reserve with golden snub-nosed monkeys, alpine meadows, and China's most persistent wild-man legend.

The Daoist counterpart to Shaolin and the home of tai chi, with Ming palace-temples strung up to a bronze hall on the summit.

Three cities on the Yangtze and Han: the Yellow Crane Tower, a Republican-era waterfront, and hot-dry noodles for breakfast.

A 108 km karst canyon with a free-standing 150-metre stone pillar, in Tujia minority country west of Yichang.

Home of Lady Dai — a 2,100-year-old Han body preserved so well her joints still flex — and the Mawangdui silk manuscripts.

The southern peak of the Daoist five, wooded and temple-strewn, and much gentler than Hua or Tai.

A Tujia town built directly over a waterfall — stilt houses on the lip of the drop. Two hours from Zhangjiajie.

Tibetan-Buddhist Mongol temples in the city and yurt stays on the Xilamuren and Hulunbuir grasslands in summer.

The world's tallest stationary dunes — up to 500 metres — with spring-fed lakes between them and a lone desert monastery.

Ancient desert poplars that turn brilliant gold for about three weeks each October. A serious pilgrimage for Chinese photographers.

A million hectares of unploughed steppe on the Russian border — Mongol herders, summer naadam festivals and endless horizon.

A Grand Canal salt-merchant city with a narrow willow-lined lake, a five-pavilion bridge, and the best breakfast dim sum in the north.

The two original canal towns near Suzhou — stone bridges, whitewashed gables and Ming merchant houses on the water.

Source of the eroded limestone in every classical garden, plus an 88-metre bronze Buddha at Lingshan.

Rock-cut royal tombs of the Chu kings with jade burial suits and a pit of miniature terracotta soldiers.

An abandoned Ming stele, still attached to the bedrock, that would have weighed 31,000 tonnes had anyone worked out how to move it.

Huizhou-style villages among rapeseed fields that turn brilliant yellow in late March — the most photographed spring in China.

A cloud-wrapped summer hill station of European villas, waterfalls, and 1,500 years of poetry about not seeing the mountain for the mist.

The porcelain capital for a thousand years, with imperial kiln excavations and a thriving young ceramics scene.

Granite pillars and cliff-edge boardwalks in a Daoist range, less crowded and nearly as beautiful as Huangshan.

The birthplace of religious Daoism, with red Danxia cliffs and 2,600-year-old hanging coffins winched into caves.

Warm water from a dam upstream keeps the Songhua open in −25°C air, coating the riverbank willows in thick rime frost.

The Manchu court's palace before they took Beijing in 1644, mixing Manchu, Mongol and Han architecture.

A border city facing North Korea across the river, with a bombed-out bridge that stops halfway and boat trips along the frontier.

Four centuries of Portuguese rule left baroque churches, pastel de nata and the Ruins of St Paul's — plus the world's largest casino economy.

1,776 km from Beijing to Hangzhou, dug from the 5th century BC and still carrying freight. Best seen at Yangzhou, Suzhou or Huai'an.

Where the Tengger desert meets the Yellow River: dune sledging, sheepskin-raft crossings and reed-bed birdlife.

Nine eroded earthen mausoleums of a kingdom Genghis Khan erased, standing alone under the Helan Mountains.

Salt flats and wind-carved yardang badlands in the Qaidam basin, including the 'Emerald Lake' potash ponds.

A Kham Tibetan town at 3,700 m rebuilt after the 2010 earthquake, with the largest mani stone pile in the world.

A Han emperor's tomb shown from glass walkways over the open pits — thousands of small nude figurines, and far quieter than the Terracotta Army.

The most dangerous of the sacred five: granite spires, chain-assisted ridges and the notorious plank walk bolted to a vertical face.

A crypt sealed in 874 and reopened in 1987, containing a finger bone of the Buddha and the finest Tang gold and glass ever found.

The cave headquarters of the Communist Party from 1936 to 1948, and the endpoint of the Long March. Deep loess country.

A German concession town of red roofs and a Bavarian brewery founded in 1903, with beaches and the country's best-known beer.

Confucius's home town: the temple, the family mansion, and a forest cemetery where his descendants have been buried for 2,500 years.

A Song pavilion on a sea cliff, traditionally the place from which the Eight Immortals crossed the sea. Mirages are genuinely recorded here.

A Daoist granite range rising straight out of the Yellow Sea beside Qingdao, with temples and spring water famous enough to name a beer.

An island chain in the Bohai Strait with seal colonies, sea cliffs and quiet fishing harbours.

The easiest canal town — 40 minutes from central Shanghai on Metro Line 17, with a 72-metre Ming stone bridge.

A basilica on Shanghai's only hill, and beside it the Shimao Wonderland hotel built down the face of a flooded quarry.

The first of the four Buddhist sacred mountains, with 47 working monasteries including two rare Tang timber halls.

Song-dynasty halls near Taiyuan with 43 painted clay attendant figures that are among China's finest sculpture.

A Qing river port of stone warehouses on the loess bank, with cave dwellings above and almost no tourism.

The Yellow River funnelled from 300 metres wide to 50 in a churning ochre cataract. Best in September flood.

Four peaks to 6,250 m four hours from Chengdu, with three trekking valleys and the best alpine scenery in eastern Tibet.

Three sacred snow peaks above turquoise lakes at 4,600 m — the 'last Shangri-La', and a serious altitude commitment.

A Tibetan monastery town on the Gansu border with sky burial sites, grassland and a very different pace.

A glacier tongue descending to 2,850 m below the 7,556 m Gongga Shan, with hot springs at its foot.

A three-hour valley of larch, lakes and snow peaks that turns spectacular in late October, and far quieter than Jiuzhaigou.

Bronze masks with protruding eyes and a 4-metre bronze tree from a Bronze Age culture with no written record and no obvious parallels.

Chengdu's Shu-culture gold sun-bird and the Three Kingdoms shrine to Zhuge Liang, next to Jinli street.

Two square kilometres of British, French, German and Italian concession villas, 30 minutes from Beijing by bullet train.

Tibet's low, green corner at 3,000 m — peach blossom in late March and the deepest canyon on earth.

A sacred salt lake at 4,718 m under the Nyenchen Tanglha range. Day-trippable from Lhasa, but the altitude is real.

Sacred to four religions and never climbed. The 52 km kora takes three days over a 5,630 m pass.

A grey-walled fortress monastery holding a library of 84,000 scrolls, some sealed in a wall for centuries.

154 m below sea level, 48°C in summer: the ruined cities of Jiaohe and Gaochang, Buddhist caves, and 5,000 km of underground karez irrigation.

Siberian larch and birch around a milky-blue lake in the Altai, with Tuvan villages. Golden and spectacular in late September.

An alpine lake at 2,070 m and the Ili valley's lavender fields and Kazakh grasslands, at their best in June.

A glacial lake below the 5,445 m Bogda Peak, an hour from the regional capital, with Kazakh yurt stays.

Uyghur-era Buddhist caves in a red desert gorge, their murals largely removed to Berlin and destroyed in 1945.

A limestone pinnacle field 80 km from the 'spring city', plus Dianchi Lake and its wintering black-headed gulls.

The Bai kingdom's old capital between a 4,000-metre range and a long blue lake, with three Tang pagodas and easy cycling.

Kawagarbo, 6,740 m, sacred and never climbed — a wall of thirteen peaks seen from Feilai Si at dawn.

Tropical Dai country on the Mekong: rainforest, wild elephants, Theravada temples and the April water-splashing festival.

Eroded earth pillars in a dry valley, at their strangest in low evening light. Almost no visitors.

A 300 km gorge on the Salween with Lisu and Nu villages, Catholic churches from French missionaries, and zipline river crossings.

Karst peaks rising from lotus-covered lakes, punted by boat in July and August. Yi minority villages between them.

An island sacred to Guanyin, the bodhisattva of compassion — monasteries, beaches and a 33-metre seaside statue.

The quietest and grandest canal town: silk-merchant mansions with imported Belgian glass and private libraries.

Lu Xun's home town, black-awning canal boats, and the yellow rice wine that has been brewed here for 2,500 years.

A volcanic geopark of spires, sea caves and a 190-metre waterfall, with a nightly acrobatic show on a cliff face.

1,078 forested islands in a 1959 reservoir, with two intact Ming towns preserved 30 metres underwater.

A 5,300-year-old walled city with hydraulic works and extraordinary jade, pushing Chinese urban history back a millennium.