The North

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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