City guide · Gansu
A desert oasis where Buddhist cave art survived a thousand years and a crescent lake refused to dry up.
Reviewed by our Beijing team Updated 2026-10-10
The short version
City guide
Photographs from the coast, and what other travellers wrote afterwards.
A stretch of Gobi desert, a stretch of oasis, and Crescent Lake — that's all it takes to be this beautiful. We rode camels, looked at the long caravan of other camel riders ahead of us, and for a moment felt we had traveled back a few thousand years to a Silk Road trading party.
Adam_k, 'March, Wandering Among Miracles (Dunhuang and Tibet)'
Just imagine: on a vast gravel plain, a small road heading toward the horizon. Around you nothing but yellow sand, but in your heart there is an oasis — and on that oasis there is a Loulan girl with sand on her face. The road stops being boring.
Adam_k, 'Gansu: Along the Silk Road, All the Way to Dunhuang'
You arrive on a flat, dusty road and the desert arrives with you. For the last hour there is nothing but gravel plain, camel thorn, and a horizon that never quite resolves. Then the oasis appears — a green band of poplars and irrigated fields, and behind them the low grey cliff at Mogao where someone, around 366 AD, looked at a hillside and decided to carve a Buddha into it.
Each cave at Mogao is a sealed room with its own climate, its own century, its own painter's hand. A guide unlocks a door, you step into the dark, and a flashlight beam swings across a wall of flying apsaras in mineral blue and malachite green that has not faded in 1,200 years. No photographs are allowed inside, and after the first cave you understand why: your eyes need the whole dark to adjust, and the paintings deserve the undivided attention.
After the caves, the desert takes over. You climb the ridge at Mingsha Shan in the late afternoon, the sand squeaking underfoot, and look down at Crescent Lake — a sliver of water and reeds held in the crook of a dune for two thousand years. At night you eat lamb skewers and apricot juice in Shazhou Night Market, surrounded by jade sellers and Uyghur noodle cooks, and the whole Silk Road suddenly feels less like history and more like dinner.
Dunhuang
Seven things that are worth rearranging a day for.
Highlights
Mogao is the largest and longest-running Buddhist cave complex on earth: 492 decorated caves cut into a cliff 25km southeast of town, filled with murals and painted clay figures spanning the 4th to the 14th century. The nine-storey wooden facade over the 35.5m seated Buddha is the image everyone carries home.
Crescent Lake has sat in the crook of the Mingsha dunes for some two thousand years, fed by groundwater, and the sand that slides down the dune behind it makes a low booming drone. Ride a camel out at 5pm, then climb the ridge for the sunset — the whole dune field turns amber.
Yumen Pass and Yangguan were the two western doorways of the Han empire, and the Tang poets who wrote about them had mostly never been there. What survives is a small square mud fort and a beacon tower on open gravel — all the more affecting for how little is left.
The Yardang landforms near the Xinjiang border are a natural sculpture park of clay ridges and gullies, best at sunset when the shadows go long and strange. Erosion eats into them every year, so what you photograph is genuinely disappearing.
Shazhou Night Market runs along Yangguan East Road with a craft street, a snack street and a tea terrace under a carved archway. It is touristy, yes, but the apricot juice, the lamb skewers and the night-light cups are the genuine local product.
Itineraries
Front-loads the caves while you still have fresh eyes, then spreads the desert and the western ruins across two afternoons. Works well if you are arriving by overnight train and leaving on a late flight.
Book your Mogao slot online before you arrive — tickets are capped daily and the 160 CNY peak-season ticket sells out days ahead in July and August. Go in the morning: the cave mouths face east and the first sunlight goes straight in.
Stops: Mogao CavesLeiyin TempleMingsha ShanCrescent LakeShazhou Night Market
This is a 160km run each way with no useful public transport, so join a group tour or hire a car for the day. Yumen Pass and the Han Wall are sold as a 40 CNY combined ticket and it is charged whether you want it or not if you are heading to the Yardangs.
Stops: Dunhuang Old Town film setWestern Thousand Buddha CavesYumen PassHan Great WallYardang 'Ghost City'
Keep the last day light. The city museum is free and holds the Han bamboo slips and Tang manuscripts that give the caves their context; the pagoda is 15 CNY and 2km out of town, easy by bike.
Stops: Baima PagodaDunhuang MuseumThree Danger MountainShazhou Market
Adds a Western Jin tomb, spreads the desert over two visits — once for sunrise, once for sunset — and leaves room for a long lunch. Better if you are travelling with older family or in winter.
The Western Jin tomb is 1,700 years old — two centuries older than Mogao — and sits out on the gravel plain. Small, painted and rarely crowded.
Stops: Mogao CavesWestern Jin TombDunhuang Night Market
Sunrise on the dunes is quieter and cooler than sunset. Come back at 5pm for the camel ride and the light; entry is 120 CNY and covers both visits on the same day ticket only, so buy two if you really want both.
Stops: Mingsha Shan sunriseCrescent LakeCamel rideSand sleddingShazhou Night Market
Same loop as the art-first itinerary but start at 8am rather than 7am and skip the film set if you are short on time. The Yardang shuttle inside the park costs an extra 30 CNY on top of the 50 CNY entry.
Stops: Western Thousand Buddha CavesYumen PassYardang 'Ghost City'Han Great Wall
Sights
UNESCO World Heritage
The reason you came. A cliff face of painted caves 25km southeast of Dunhuang, with a guided 8-cave circuit that takes about two hours. Photography is banned inside and bags must be left at the gate — no torches either, the guides carry their own so the pigments take less light damage.
Tip Book online days ahead in summer. Aim for the first entry slot — the east-facing caves catch direct morning sun, and you will be ahead of the coach groups.
Desert
A dune field 5km south of the city wrapped around a crescent-shaped spring that has not dried up in two thousand years. Camel rides, sand sledding and dune buggies all happen here; the sand makes a low humming sound when it slides.
Tip Go at sunrise or after 5pm. Between 9am and 4pm the sand is genuinely painful underfoot and the light is flat.
Han dynasty ruins
A small square rammed-earth fort on a gravel ridge 90km northwest of the city, plus stretches of the Han-era wall and a beacon tower nearby. It is a 40 CNY combined ticket with the wall, and it is charged automatically if you are continuing to the Yardangs.
Tip There is almost no shade and no shop. Carry two litres of water per person and a hat that will not blow off.
Geology
Wind-carved clay ridges and gullies at the Gansu-Xinjiang border, 160km from town, spread across a basin that looks like a ruined medieval city. The park runs a shuttle between the main viewpoints; the whole thing is at its best in the last hour of daylight.
Tip Take the 13:30 bus, not the morning one, so you arrive for sunset. Bring a buff or scarf — the wind here is relentless.
Caves
A smaller cave complex 35km west of Dunhuang, cut into the cliff above the Dang River, with 16 surviving caves of which 9 are open. The painting is the same lineage as Mogao and often earlier; because visitor numbers are low you can actually ask your guide questions.
Tip Pair it with the western line rather than making a separate trip — it is directly on the road to Yumen Pass.
Food
The dish Dunhuang is famous for and the fourth of the city's "Eight Great Oddities" — you will not find it anywhere else. The noodles are pulled thin as dragon whiskers and long as gold thread, springy enough to stretch without breaking; the donkey meat is sold by weight and piled on top. A plate of plain yellow noodles costs under CNY 10, and every table at Shunzhang orders the meat too.
Ranked third of the Eight Great Oddities: noodles served in a tangy fermented vegetable broth, usually made with mustard greens. Sour, lightly spicy and clean-tasting — Dunhuang people eat it all summer because it cuts the heat and wakes up an appetite flattened by 38°C afternoons.
A hand-made wheat noodle dish and the highest compliment a Dunhuang host can pay a guest. Xi'an claims saozi noodles, but Dunhuang has been serving its own version for just as long — a bowl of it wipes out the fatigue of a morning spent climbing the Mogao cliff.
Made with fat, well-fed wethers raised locally, which is why the broth tastes so much sweeter than what you get down south. Hot broth is poured over sliced cooked lamb and cubes of cold jelly noodle; ginger and spices go in first. Locals drink it in winter to warm the stomach and shake off the cold.
A pastry invented at the Dunhuang Hotel from an old folk recipe. Bright gold, puffed up light as gauze and studded with tiny pearl-like bubbles — hence the name. It is deep-fried, but in fresh vegetable oil, which makes it a slightly less guilty pleasure than it looks.
Where to eat
Century-old noodle house
Reportedly the most famous old brand in Dunhuang for donkey meat and yellow noodles, and the one locals name when you ask. Watch the master pull the noodles — every move is deliberate and quick enough to make you dizzy. The yellow noodles have a solid reputation, but the donkey meat is the real star; the shop says every table orders a plate.
Night market grazing
The snack zone inside Shazhou Night Market on Yangguan East Road, and the single best place to eat your way through Gansu. On offer: clear-broth beef noodles known as "China's number one noodle", hand-pulled saozi noodles, pao you gao that melts on contact, flaky yousu pancakes, smooth qingzhen liangpi and cold jelly, and sour-hot buckwheat noodles. Cheap, and the alleys around it are just as lively.
Local specialties, sit-down
A cluster of kitchens with serious chefs: Dunhuang-style lamb offal, Xingyue Halal Restaurant, Mohammed Restaurant, Lanzhou Pangjie Casserole. The city has hundreds of mid- and high-end restaurants serving Sichuan, Cantonese and Hangzhou cooking alongside the northwestern staples, so nobody in your group has to compromise.
Quieter, mixed menu
When the night market noise gets too much, this stretch has a run of Chinese and Western restaurants at moderate prices and reliable cooking. It is the easy fallback if you have children or an early start the next morning.
Where to stay
Best view in town
Sitting under Mingsha Shan on Dunhuang-Yueya Road, at the old Silk Road's most important throat of land and on the way to every major sight. Modern facilities, full air conditioning and communications, but you also get the nostalgia. The terrace looks straight out at the singing dunes — and it is the most expensive hotel in Dunhuang for exactly that reason.
Backpacker classic
Right in the city centre next to the long-distance bus station, train station links and the airport road, with the commercial street, famous-food plaza and Shazhou Night Market all within a short walk and the Fengqing City entertainment strip next door. Quiet inside despite the location — a genuine travellers' and backpackers' base.
Central and convenient
In the heart of Dunhuang, north of the government square, with easy runs east to the railway station and airport. The design leans heavily Han-Tang: Mogao reliefs, Dunhuang painted sculpture and calligraphy throughout, plus a multipurpose performance hall, VIP rooms, meeting rooms and a chess-and-cards room. Good for business travellers and groups as much as tourists.
Getting around
Dunhuang Airport (DNH) sits about 15 km east of the city in Mogao Town, with fixed routes to Lanzhou, Xi'an, Beijing, Urumqi and Chengdu. It's the fastest way in if you're short on time, but flights are limited and pricey in peak season — book early for July to October.
Two stations serve Dunhuang: Dunhuang Station, 13 km east of town, and Liuyuan Station, 130 km away on the main Lanzhou–Xinjiang line. Liuyuan has far more services, so most travelers arrive there and transfer by road. Dunhuang Station is closer and simpler if your route lines up.
Long-distance buses link Dunhuang with Jiayuan, Lanzhou, Xi'an, Hami, Turpan, Urumqi and Golmud. The bus station has moved to 1 km east of town; buses 8 and 12 reach it, or walk 20 minutes. Roads to every major sight except Yumen Pass are straight, wide asphalt.
City buses run eight routes; routes 1–4 cost CNY 1 flat. Route 3 is the one you'll use most — it goes to Mingsha Shan and Crescent Lake in 20 minutes for CNY 1. Route 8 runs to the Mogao Caves for CNY 8 in 30 minutes. Taxis are cheap and easy within town.
Shopping
Small replicas of the Mogao Caves' painted sculptures, hand-finished and each one different — Buddha and bodhisattva figures mostly. Well made, genuinely local, and the obvious gift for anyone with an interest in Buddhist art. Buy from the workshop stalls around Shazhou Market rather than the airport.
Carved from Qilian Mountain jade, cool to the touch, faintly glowing in the dark and famously heat- and cold-resistant. It's the classic Dunhuang drinking vessel. Test authenticity with a magnet — real ones stick. Sold along Yangguan East Road and in the Shazhou Market.
Local dates run up to 45 g each, glossy and red-black when ripe, sweet and dense. The Dunhuang specialty is jiuzao — dates stirred with liquor and sealed in clay jars until winter or spring, when they come out as fresh as the day they were picked, tasting of fruit and alcohol at once.
Not something you can carry home easily, but eat as much as you can while you're here. The 'shell' variety can weigh 5 kg at the small end and 15–20 kg at the big end, thin-skinned and thick-fleshed. Skip it and you've missed one of the reasons locals are smug about their oasis.
Shazhou Market (also called Shazhou Night Market) sells Dunhuang silk rugs, replica murals and painted figures alongside the food stalls, and prices are negotiable. Be careful with gorgeously packaged mural rubbings — many are near-perfect fakes. Inspect before you buy, and bargain hard; the first price is rarely the real one.
Most of it clusters around the Flying Apsaras statue in the city center: Feitian Mall, Tianma Mall, Shazhou Market, Nanguan General Market and Jifangzhai. The Dunhuang Commercial Pedestrian Street on Mingshan Road has the liveliest night scene and the best range of local specialties.
Practical info
If you want a structured trip rather than a DIY one, our Dunhuang tours and Dunhuang private tour packages handle the Mogao Caves reservation, the west-line charter and the guide in one booking — worth it in peak season, when Mogao tickets sell out days ahead and west-line transport is the hardest part of the trip to arrange on your own.
| Best months | May to October. Dunhuang swings hard between seasons — November to April is cold and often dusty, and winter temperatures can drop below -24°C. The sites stay open year-round; low season halves most ticket prices and lets you bargain on add-ons, but many shops and stalls shut and shopping gets difficult. |
|---|---|
| Money and tickets | Mogao Caves: CNY 160 peak / CNY 80 low season (1 Nov–30 Apr); foreign visitors CNY 180; student card half price. Mingsha Shan and Crescent Lake: CNY 120 combined, students half. Yangguan: CNY 50, plus CNY 40–240 for horse riding by distance and CNY 10 for the shuttle. Yardang: CNY 50 plus CNY 30 for the park shuttle. Yumen Pass: CNY 40 combined with the Han Great Wall. West Thousand Buddha Caves: CNY 40. White Horse Pagoda: CNY 15. Dunhuang Museum: free. |
| Opening hours | Mogao Caves: 08:00–17:30 peak, 09:00–17:00 low season; no tickets sold after 16:00 peak / 15:00 low. Dunhuang Museum: Tuesday to Sunday 09:00–17:30, closed Mondays. Mingsha Shan, Crescent Lake, Yangguan, Yumen Pass, Yardang and White Horse Pagoda: open around the clock. Sanwei Shan: 08:00–18:00. |
| Altitude | Dunhuang sits at 1,139 m. Altitude sickness is generally defined above 3,000 m, so at 1,000–2,000 m you should be fine — take it easy if you're traveling with elderly companions. |
| Weather and packing | Average annual temperature is 9.3°C, with summer highs of 38°C. UV in the desert is brutal: sunscreen everywhere, light-colored long sleeves, a hat. Carry a plastic bag for phones and cameras — sand gets into everything. Desert nights are cold, so bring layers even in summer. |
| Health and safety | Never go into the deep desert alone — hire a guide, and carry a GPS and a working phone. Bring a small medicine kit: eye drops, antiseptic, cold medicine. Drink bottled water, go easy on street food at first, and wear proper walking shoes; the distances between sights are long. |
| Emergency numbers | Dunhuang Tourism Bureau 0937-8822234. Dunhuang Municipal Hospital, Yangguan East Road 20, 0937-8859088. Dunhuang TCM Hospital, Shazhou South Road 6, 0937-8825831. Dunhuang Post Office, Yangguan Middle Road 1, 0937-8822986. Dunhuang Tourism Service Center, Xinjian Road 8, 0937-8851578. |
Background
Dunhuang was the westernmost of the four commanderies Emperor Wu of Han set up along the Hexi Corridor after Huo Qubing drove the Xiongnu out of the region in the 2nd century BC. Because the Silk Road split into its northern and southern branches right here — the south road through Yangguan, the north road through Yumen Pass — the town became the mandatory gateway between the Central Plains and everything west of it: Xinjiang, Central Asia, Persia, India, Arabia and eventually Europe. Monks, envoys, merchants and soldiers all passed through the same narrow strip of oasis.
The Mogao Caves opened in AD 366, when a monk named Yuezun looked up at the cliff opposite Sanwei Mountain, saw it glowing gold in the evening light, and dug the first cave. For the next thousand years, roughly a thousand more caves followed, funded by whoever had money to spare — local officials, merchant guilds, Uyghur and Tibetan patrons, even a few emperors. Then the sea routes took over, the Ming emperor closed Jiayuguan, and Dunhuang fell off the map entirely until the Qing court dragged it back into the empire under Kangxi.
In 1900 a Taoist caretaker named Wang Yuanlu was clearing sand from a corridor when he found a sealed chamber behind a wall: Cave 17, packed with some 50,000 manuscripts, silk paintings and printed scrolls dating from the 4th to the 11th century, including the world's oldest dated printed book, the Diamond Sutra of 868. It is the single greatest archaeological find in Chinese history, and it left the country in crates. Aurel Stein, Paul Pelliot, Sergei Oldenburg and Langdon Warner all bought or carried off bundles over the next two decades; the bulk now sits in London, Paris, St Petersburg and Tokyo, which is why Dunhuang studies is a genuinely international field.
Walk into the museum at the Mogao visitor centre before you see the caves themselves and you will understand what was lost — and why local guides still get visibly annoyed about it. The murals that stayed, though, are extraordinary: 45,000 square metres of painting and 2,400 sculptures across the 492 decorated caves, spanning ten dynasties. The flying apsaras, the musical ensembles, the donors' portraits, the blue-and-green landscapes — this is a visual record of a thousand years of Eurasian exchange, painted on a cliff in the desert.
Dunhuang sits at 1,139 metres, which is nowhere near altitude-sickness territory, so don't worry about that. What will get you is the dryness and the swing in temperature. The annual average is 9.3°C, July averages 24.9°C with extremes past 40°C, January averages -9.3°C and has hit -28.5°C, and the yearly rainfall is 39.9 mm against 2,490 mm of evaporation — twenty-five times more water leaves the ground than falls on it. Bring lip balm, eye drops and more water than feels reasonable.
The best window to visit is May through October. November to April is cold and sometimes sandstorm-prone, though it is also when ticket prices halve at most sights and you can negotiate on camel rides and dune buggies — things that are flatly impossible in peak season. The trade-off: in deep winter many shops and larger stores simply shut, so the town is quiet to the point of empty. If you want the caves without the crush and don't mind a coat, late October or early November is the sweet spot.
Watch & read
Directed by Tsui Hark, with Jet Li, Zhou Xun and Chen Kun
Tsui Hark's 3D wuxia remake of the Dragon Gate Inn legend was shot largely in the Dunhuang desert, and it uses the landscape the way it deserves: black sandstorms swallowing horsemen, the dune fields doubling as a battlefield, Mingsha and Crescent Lake appearing as themselves. Watch it before you go and the 160-kilometre drive out to the Yardang formations will feel like walking into a set. It is not a subtle film, but the scenery is genuinely the star.
Chen Shunchen (Chen Sun-shen), Japanese-Taiwanese historical novelist
Chen travelled to Dunhuang in the 1970s and wrote this blend of history, travel and educated speculation, and it is the book that sent a generation of Japanese readers west along the Silk Road — the same wave of enthusiasm that made Dunhuang a household name in Japan. Read it on the train from Lanzhou and the names in the guidebooks start meaning something. For something denser, Chai Jianhong's Dunhuang Studies and Dunhuang Culture collects essays on the manuscripts, the cave art and the academic discipline itself.
F.I.R. (2004); Dao Lang
F.I.R.'s 'Crescent Bay' is a pop-classical track written about Crescent Lake and the fact that it is slowly drying up — it is the reason a lot of Chinese visitors under forty know the name at all. Dao Lang's 'Great Dunhuang' takes the opposite approach, a sprawling, deliberately old-fashioned ballad built around a golden Buddhist canon and camel bells on the wind, with lyrics that name-check the sutras directly. Queue both for the drive out to the dunes.
The questions visitors ask us most about Dunhuang, answered plainly.
Prices and practical details are reviewed every month by our Beijing team and updated the day a rule changes.
May to October. July and August hit 38°C in the desert and Mogao books out weeks ahead, so late May, June, and September are the sweet spot. November to April is cold (down to -24°C) and the western-line bus has no afternoon departure, but Mogao tickets drop to CNY 80 and the crowds vanish.
Three days covers the essentials: one day for Mogao and the dunes, one long day for the western line (Yumen Pass, Han Great Wall, Yardang Ghost City), and a half day for the Western Thousand Buddha Caves, White Horse Pagoda, and the museum. Add a fourth day if you want to push on to Jiayuguan by train (about 5 hours).
Yes — book online at the official Mogao website as soon as your dates are fixed. High season (May-Oct) tickets sell out days ahead because daily visitor numbers are capped to protect the murals. Bring your passport; entry is by timed slot, and no cameras or tripods are allowed inside any cave.
No. Dunhuang sits at 1,139 meters, well below the 3,000-meter threshold where altitude sickness typically starts. Older travelers and anyone with heart or lung conditions should still take it easy on the first day, but you will not need Diamox or acclimatization days here.
Afternoon, unless you are coming specifically for sunrise. The dunes open all day, but sand temperatures climb fast — by 9 or 10am it is already blistering, and there is no shade. Arrive around 5 or 6pm instead, ride a camel, sand-sled, and stay for sunset; the sand cools and the light turns gold.
Sunscreen for every exposed inch, a wide-brimmed hat, sunglasses, a light long-sleeve shirt for UV protection, and a zip bag for your phone and camera — fine sand gets into everything. Bring a refillable water bottle, lip balm, and a light jacket for evenings, when the temperature drops sharply. Comfortable closed shoes beat sandals; you will be walking on loose sand.
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Huizhou
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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.
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.
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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