City guide · Sichuan
The mountain where Daoism was organised, and the one Chengdu escapes to when the basin turns into an oven.
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 green in front of my eyes is the Min River, the glance back in a dream is old Qingcheng business. Seeing the Way in one flower and one leaf, you have to hide the awkward and the crude inside the full and the wanting; meeting nature in one movement and one stillness, you take a whole mountain into a mustard seed.
A traveller's note, Dujiangyan: The Journey in Pursuit of Freedom
The moment you go in through the gate you understand what Qingcheng, quietest under heaven, means. The little pavilions are thick with moss, green everywhere, and in light rain the cool air goes right down into your chest. All you feel standing there is peace and ease.
A traveller's note, Falling for Chengdu: Eight Days
Qingcheng Mountain lies 10 km south-west of the Dujiangyan works and has been famous for one quality since antiquity: quiet. It is a World Heritage site, it is written into the histories as the ancestral mountain and ancestral court of the Way of the Celestial Masters, and dozens of its halls are still standing and still in use, holding old objects and the hand-work of modern masters. Celestial Masters have come here to pay respects to the ancestral court for generation after generation, which is why the mountain is best described as a Daoist museum that happens to be a thousand years long and still alive.
Walk in through the gate and you understand within minutes what the phrase Qingcheng, quietest under heaven, is about: little pavilions furry with moss, green pressed in on every side, and in light rain an air that goes cool and clean all the way down into your lungs. Palaces and halls are all but hidden in the dense old trees; the railings are bound with thick hempen rope gone green with age, and the rope tells you what the weather here does to things. A thousand years of Daoist practice settles on you without anybody saying a word.
The mountain is really two. The front is the Daoist route: Jianfu Palace at the foot, the Natural Picture Pavilion partway up, the Tianshi Cave where Zhang Daoling taught, Shangqing Palace with its carved Laozi, and the Laojun Pavilion on the summit ridge, with a cable car and a ferry across Yuecheng Lake to take the worst of the climb out. The back is a wetter, wilder valley: the Tai'an old town at its foot, the Wulong ravine, the Baiyun caves, and a waterfall system that drops 40-odd metres in three linked pools.
Whichever half you take, the climate is doing half the work. Qingcheng sits in the middle-northern stretch of the famous Rain Screen of West China on the western edge of the Sichuan basin: mild, damp, green in every season, with moss and running water everywhere. People come for the quiet that is in the name. In the halls, and in the mist between the peaks, it is still there.
Qingcheng Mountain
Seven things that are worth rearranging a day for.
Highlights
This is where the school was organised. Zhang Daoling came here in AD 143, thatched a hut and taught, and Qingcheng became the ancestral court of the Celestial Masters — every Celestial Master since has come up here to pay respects. The halls along the front-mountain path are not reconstructions of a religion; they are a religion still being practised, with the incense lit and the monks in residence.
Qingcheng is famous for one word: you, meaning deep quiet. Halls hidden in dense old trees, handrails bound in hempen rope gone green with moss, streams running somewhere below you all the time, and mist moving between 36 peaks. In light rain, on a quiet Tuesday, it is the most convincing version of that word you will find anywhere in Sichuan.
The half locals prefer. An 8 km ravine called Wulong — Five Dragons — a waterfall system dropping more than 40 metres through three linked pools, the Baiyun cave group high on a cliff, and a crystal cave formed ten to thirty million years ago. Wetter, greener and wilder than the front, with farmhouses and tea stalls the whole way along.
Shangqing Palace keeps a statue of Laozi and a woodblock of the five thousand characters of the Dao De Jing; Jianfu Palace holds the 394-character couplet known as the one marvel of Qingcheng; and the mountain has kept the work of modern painters who came up here to paint, including the years Xu Beihong spent in a room at the Tianshi Cave.
The town at the foot of the back mountain, once a staging post on the road from the Chengdu plain west into the Jinchuan country and a trading town rich on the traffic. Now it is where you sleep, eat farmhouse cooking and start the walk, with a Buddhist temple of the same name closing off its far end.
The mountain sits at about 15.2°C annual mean on the wet western rim of the basin, and when Chengdu is unbearable in July and August this place is green and cool with the water running. That is why the city treats Qingcheng as its summer escape, and why summer weekends are the ones to book ahead.
Suggested routes
The temple line from the gate to the summit ridge — the reason Qingcheng is on the World Heritage list.
In at the front gate to Yilewo, then the ¥5 ferry across Yuecheng Lake and the cable car up. From the top station it is a short climb to Lingyun Villa and Shangqing Palace, on the slope about 500 m below the summit, and then on up to the Laojun Pavilion on the first peak of Qingcheng.
Come back down the same way to Shangqing Palace, and then take the descending line instead: Chaoyang Cave, the Zushi Hall, the Tianshi Cave, the Fifth Cave-Heaven, Ningcui Bridge and the Shanyin Pavilion.
Stops: Jianfu PalaceYuecheng LakeShangqing PalaceLaojun Pavilion
The last leg is the prettiest: down to the Natural Picture Pavilion, a ten-cornered double-eaved kiosk from the Guangxu years wedged between two closing peaks, then on to Yilewo and out of the front gate.
Ride up and walk down. The upper stretch is crowded and the scenery along it is unremarkable; the lower, walking stretch is where the mountain looks like a painting.
Stops: Tianshi CaveNatural Picture PavilionFront gate
The water line: a ravine, a cave group, a waterfall system, and the ferry and cable car out.
Start at Tai'an old town and take the Wulong route in: Wulongfang, the Jinwawa pool, then the 8 km Wulong ravine — the Five Dragons ravine, once called the Barbarian River gully — up to Youyi village.
From Youyi village climb on to the Nine Monks Cave, the Baiyun Temple and its cave group high in the cliff, then the Natural Bridge and the Fairy's Dressing Pool.
Stops: Tai'an old townWulong ravineYouyi villageBaiyun caves
Down through the Twin Springs Water Curtain Cave, then across the Cuiying Lake on the ¥2 ferry — 2 yuan for the prettiest two minutes of the day — and on past the Hundred-Zhang Bridge and the Jade Maiden Pool.
Finish at the lower station of the Jinli cable car at Feiquanfang, or walk the last stretch out to Tai'an for dinner and a bed.
Stops: Twin Springs Water Curtain CaveCuiying LakeJade Maiden Pool
The loop Chengdu does: the Daoist mountain one day, the irrigation works the next.
Front mountain in the morning: gate, Yuecheng Lake ferry, cable car, Shangqing Palace, Laojun Pavilion, then the walking descent past the Tianshi Cave to the Natural Picture Pavilion and out.
Take the bus round to the back mountain and walk in from Tai'an as far as Youyi village, the Nine Monks Cave and the Twin Springs Water Curtain Cave, then down to the Jinli cable car. Sleep in a Tai'an farmhouse.
Stops: Front mountainTianshi CaveBack mountainTai'an old town
Ten kilometres to Dujiangyan: bus 101A from the front gate to the Nanqiao stop, or the intercity train for ¥5. Walk the three works — fish-mouth, Flying Sand Weir, Bottle-Neck — then up the escalator to Yulei Tower.
Afternoon in the rebuilt Guanxian old town and the evening on the Nanqiao night-beer strip, then the last train back to Chengdu.
Stops: Dujiangyan worksYulei TowerGuanxian old town
Front mountain
Palace at the foot
Sitting at the foot of Zhangren peak, first built in AD 730 in the eighteenth year of Kaiyuan, rebuilt again and again since, and now down to two halls and three courts. Three great halls enshrine the famous Daoists and the various gods, and the 394-character couplet on the pillars inside is called the one marvel of Qingcheng.
Tip Start here and take the steps at an old man's pace. The whole front mountain is staircases, and the ones who sprint the first 200 of them are the ones sitting down at the third hall.
Pavilion
A ten-cornered, double-eaved kiosk built in the Guangxu years of the Qing (1875–1909), standing on the ridge of Pailaigang on Longju Mountain, between Jianfu Palace and the Tianshi Cave. Two peaks close in on either side; the kiosk stands among grey cliffs and dense green, and anyone arriving feels they have walked into a picture — which is exactly where the name comes from.
Tip This is the spot that gives the walk its reputation, and it is the reason to walk down rather than ride. Late afternoon light through the two closing peaks is the shot.
The heart of the mountain
The cave-shrine of the Celestial Master and the reason Qingcheng matters: Zhang Daoling is said to have taught here, and behind the main Sanqing Hall stand the Huangdi shrine and the cave itself. The present halls are late Qing, large and finely carved, with valuable objects and very old trees around them. In the summer of 1943 Xu Beihong stayed here in a room of his own and painted illustrations to the Nine Songs of Qu Yuan, among them the two famous ones.
Tip Go in and sit. This is a working temple rather than a display, and it is quietest in the middle of the afternoon when the groups have moved on.
Palace and summit
Shangqing Palace stands on the slope about 500 m below the summit, and the present buildings date from the Tongzhi years of the Qing; the three characters over the gate were written by Chiang Kai-shek. Inside is a statue of Laozi, the founder, with a woodblock of the five thousand characters of the Dao De Jing, plus the Magu Pool, the Mandarin Duck Well and other old traces. Above it, the Laojun Pavilion holds the first peak of Qingcheng.
Tip The summit pavilion is the best view on the mountain, and the most exposed. Carry a layer even in summer, and check what is open before you climb the last stretch.
Lake and cable car
A small, bright lake set between Zhangren and Qinglong peaks, named for the mountain beside it — the Ghost City Hill below Zhangren, also called Yuecheng Hill, where legend says the immortals of old went to hide. The water is clear and bright enough to justify the old line about a mountain needing a hermit and a lake needing a dragon. A ¥5 ferry crosses it to the cable car station.
Tip Ride up, walk down. The cable car skips a long, steep, crowded stretch, and the walking descent past the Tianshi Cave and the Natural Picture is the better half of the mountain.
On the way
Between the set pieces the front mountain is a staircase of small Daoist stops: the Chaoyang Cave, the Zushi Hall, the Fifth Cave-Heaven, the Ningcui Bridge and the Shanyin Pavilion, strung below the Tianshi Cave on the way back to Yilewo and the gate. None of them is a must-see and all of them are the reason the walk feels like a pilgrimage rather than a hike.
Tip Take this line down even if you rode the cable car up. It is the half of the mountain that people describe afterwards.
Back mountain
Ravine · 8 km
Once called the Barbarian River gully and renamed for the five dragons said to hide in it, this is the spine of the back mountain: 8 km of gorge with the path running beside the water the whole way, past the Wulongfang, the Jinwawa pool and up to Youyi village. There are two ways in — up from Tai'an through the Wulong bridge, or down from above by the Feiquan gully and the Baiyun caves.
Tip If you only walk one thing on the back mountain, walk this. Allow half a day and start early — the light in the gorge goes by mid-afternoon.
Waterfalls
Three linked pools carved by the falling water, and three silver cascades dropping more than 40 metres in total: the upper, middle and lower falls, tipping off the cliff above Yongquan Cave into the top pool and breaking into spray as they go, which is what puts the mist into the name. In sunlight the spray throws rainbows.
Tip The rock around the pools is slick, and the spray means you will be wet anyway. Footwear with grip, and a rain shell rather than an umbrella.
Cave group
The highest point on the back-mountain hot line, the Baiyun cave group is reached along cliff faces and through old trees and bamboo, with birds and spring water in your ears the whole way. The Tang poet Jia Dao wrote about it: long wandering among the respected and the old, asking this one about the famous peaks — half way through the fifth month, watching the waterfall, inside the white cloud of Qingcheng.
Tip This is the steepest, quietest corner of the mountain. Skip it if the rock is wet — the path down is the difficult part, not the climb up.
Cave
In the cliff halfway up the Three Cave Waters gully, 1.5 km from Tai'an Temple, a conglomerate travertine cave formed ten to thirty million years ago under very particular geology. There is a river inside it and the cave runs on three levels, which is rare enough that geologists make the trip for it. Cool, wet, and lit like a fairground, which is part of the charm.
Tip Bring something warm: it is genuinely cold inside, and you come out of it into mountain air feeling about ten degrees overdressed.
Lake and ferry
The small lake on the way down, crossed by a ¥2 ferry — two yuan for the best two minutes on the mountain — then the Hundred-Zhang Bridge and the Jade Maiden Pool, and out to the lower station of the Jinli cable car at Feiquanfang. The whole descending line is water: pools, springs and the sound of it, the entire way.
Tip Take the ferry even if you could walk round. It is two yuan, and it is the photograph everybody takes of this mountain.
Old town
Ringed by the quiet of the back mountain, Tai'an is the first sight of the back mountain and the place everybody stays. It has always been a town on a road: once the key post on the route from the Chengdu plain west into the greater and lesser Jinchuan, known in the old days as Huaping Laozelu, a Wei River garrison under the Tang, renamed Tai'an after the old Tai'an Temple behind it. A market town for the traffic between Chengdu, Maowen and Jinchuan for centuries.
Tip The most honest way to do the back mountain is to sleep here: walk in the morning, eat farmhouse cooking at night, and skip the drive back to Chengdu in the dark.
Food
The dish the mountain is known for. Ginkgo with chicken: the broth is clean and savoury and not in the least greasy, and it counts as food therapy as much as dinner. Almost every restaurant in Qingcheng does it, and it is the one thing you should eat here before you leave.
Old la rou, thoroughly Sichuan: the whole craft has rules, right down to how the pig is broken down, because some people want the small cuts, others the ribs, the trotters or the head, and each part is cured differently. Fragrant enough that people describe it as leaving the smell on your lips. Meat-eaters should not miss it.
The back-mountain farmhouses do what the mountain gives them: wild greens picked that morning, freshwater fish out of the streams, and whatever is in season, cooked plainly and served in quantity. Half the reason people drive up here on a Saturday is this table rather than the walk.
Common all over Chengdu but made properly here: corn, black rice and plain versions, white with a yellow tinge, moist and soft with real spring to them, light rather than heavy, sweet with a faint sour edge. The method is what makes them, and the method is local.
The mountain's four, and the edible souvenir list: the kiwi-fruit rice wine brewed by Daoist method with Qingcheng spring water; the tribute tea fired through eleven steps and sent to court for centuries; the Daoist pickles, which answer a thousand years of Daoist dietary thinking in one saucer; and the ginkgo-and-chicken soup, the local restorative. Buy the tea and the wine; eat the other two.
Where to eat
The famous one
Dujiangyan chicken is not to be argued with, and the road up to Qingcheng is lined with chicken signs; the one everybody names is Luo's, opposite the Neusoft software park, a house that goes back to the Daoguang years. Eat the chicken dipped in the chilli sauce or plain, and it is good either way.
Fly-by-night
An absurdly good hole-in-the-wall near the town's public health centre, and nothing to look at. You sit, you order, and everything is home cooking — blood curd, tofu pudding, cold chicken, fried chicken giblets, fried liver and kidney, steamed aubergine, folded-ear plant, cold tofu skin — and then you start eating and your chopsticks stop taking instructions from your brain.
Local institution
If it is the fine, tender version of blood curd you are after, this place on the Shagou River bridge at Zhongxing town is the answer, and it is usually heaving. It is one of the things people come to Qingcheng specifically to eat.
Home-style Sichuan
Plain cooking, close to the scenic area, a decent room and a friendly owner: the catfish, the spare ribs and the cold chicken are all worth ordering. It is the table you want after eight hours on stone steps, and it is five minutes from the gate.
Where to stay
Five-star, at the front gate
Right by the front mountain gate, a five-star house with convenient transport, good scenery and properly attentive service. The base if you want to be first into the mountain in the morning and you do not want to think about logistics at all.
Mid-range, near the station
At the foot of the mountain with a good position and the view to match, and only 1 km from the Dujiangyan high-speed station. The sensible compromise: close enough to both the mountain and the train that you can do either on a whim.
Back-mountain farmhouse
In the Hongyan new village holiday area of Tai'an old town, about 500 m from the back-mountain entrance: old-fashioned on the outside, thoroughly modern and fully equipped inside. Farmhouse prices that move with the season, and the walk starts from the door.
Back-mountain, by the bridge
Beside the old bridge in Tai'an old town, right up against the quiet of the mountain: old trees overhead, green in every direction. The sort of place people book for walking, for looking at things, and — as the house itself puts it — for growing old in.
Back-mountain, opposite the temple
An all-round farmhouse courtyard in Tai'an old town, directly opposite Tai'an Temple, with the back-mountain trails starting a few minutes' walk away. A little more money, a little more room, and the temple bell for an alarm clock.
Getting around
The easy way up. Chengdu North or Chengdu West to Qingchengshan station takes about an hour for ¥15, with the first train out at about 07:01 and the last at about 20:17, and returns from 08:02 to 21:07. Local buses meet the trains and run up to the front gate. Dujiangyan and Qingchengshan are themselves one stop and ¥5 apart on the same line, which is what makes the two-day loop work.
Xinnanmen station in Chengdu runs direct to the front mountain from 09:30 for ¥21. Chadianzi and Ximen stations serve Dujiangyan, from ¥16 and ¥11 respectively, from where you change. From Shuangliu airport there are six coaches a day to Dujiangyan at ¥24, booked 24 hours ahead, and the airport rail link plus the intercity train is usually faster. In season a shuttle also runs from outside the Wuhou Shrine, hourly from 08:00 to 20:00.
Two toll-free routes out of Chengdu, both ending at the front-mountain car park: the Chengqing express route via the Wenjiang exit, Furong Avenue, Tianxiang Road, Wenyu Road, Shou'an and Guannan Road to Qingchengshan town; or the same route reached via Guanghua Avenue and Wenjiang's Nanxun and Fengxi roads. On a summer Saturday, leave early — the car park is the reason people take the train.
Route 101 links the Qingcheng Mountain scenic area with the Dujiangyan passenger centre, first bus 06:30 and last 19:30, about 30 minutes — and you can also catch it at the Lidui gate of the Dujiangyan scenic area. From the Qingchengshan rail station, buses run on to the front gate, and there are direct minibuses from the station to the back mountain. From Dujiangyan, route 101A from outside the scenic area goes to the rail station, where you change for the back-mountain bus.
Dujiangyan taxis are mostly Santana, Jetta and Sprint: ¥5 for the first kilometre, then ¥1.6 by day and ¥1.9 at night. Useful for the station to the gate hop, or for getting out to the back mountain at Tai'an when you cannot be bothered with the change of bus — and cheap enough that it is the obvious answer for two or three people travelling together.
Practical
Pick one half per day. The front is temples, history and an awful lot of stone steps; the back is water, gorges and walking. Trying both in a day means a long slog and a lot of missed turns — and with Dujiangyan 10 km away for ¥180 on a combined ticket, there is no reason to.
| Front mountain | ¥90 · cable car ¥35 one way / ¥60 return · Yuecheng Lake boat ¥5 |
|---|---|
| Back mountain | ¥20 · Jinli cable car ¥30 one way / ¥55 return · Cuiying Lake ferry ¥2 · crystal cave ¥10 · Baiyun caves ¥5 |
| Combined ticket | Dujiangyan + Qingcheng Mountain ¥180 — 10 km apart, worth two days |
| Hours | 8:00–18:00 |
| Half price | Full-time students up to bachelor's degree · ages 60–69 · minors over 6 and under 18 ·Daoist initiation certificate holders beyond one visit a month |
| Free | Serving military and military-academy students · Chengdu senior card · 70 and over · disabled and disabled veterans · children under 6 or under 1.3 m · on your birthday, with ID |
| Festivals | Mountain-climbing festival March–May · Daoist Culture Festival in September, with events at Qingyang Palace, Heming Mountain and Laojun Mountain |
| Climate | Subtropical humid; annual mean about 15.2°C · hottest month extreme 34.2°C · coldest −7.1°C · spring swings hardest |
| Phones | Scenic area 400-1151-222 · Sichuan tourism complaints 028-96927 · www.djy517.com · Qingchengshan scenic area hospital, Xiangnan Road |
| Banks | Agricultural Bank and Chengdu Rural Commercial Bank in Qingchengshan town, both with ATMs; everything else is in Dujiangyan city · the mountain post office has closed |
Tips
The local advice for the front mountain is unambiguous: take the cable car up and walk down. The ascending route is crowded and the scenery along it is nothing special, while the descending line past the Tianshi Cave and the Natural Picture is where the mountain earns its reputation.
Spring is the season with the widest swing here — warm enough at midday to think summer has arrived, and cold enough at night, with the wind up, to think it is winter. Layers, and something waterproof, whatever the forecast says.
Take as little as possible up the mountain; every extra kilo is felt on the staircases. Loose, comfortable clothes and proper trainers or walking shoes, not sandals — the paths are stone, often wet, and frequently steep.
Stay on the marked route and do not go into closed sections; protect the relics and be careful with fire in the forest. Parts of the mountain were damaged in the earthquake and some of the stelae are cracked, and some halls are still being restored — which is a reason to watch your step, not to go exploring.
It is not short of beds around either half, but the back-mountain farmhouses are cheaper than the front and they are what Chengdu people book. Staying in Tai'an lets you walk in at first light and eat at the farmhouse afterwards, instead of driving back down in the dark.
There are plenty of rooms around the mountain, but the big holidays do fill up, and summer weekends are when Chengdu arrives en masse. If you are coming in July, August or a public holiday, book the bed before you book anything else.
Background
In the second year of Han'an in the Eastern Han — AD 143 — Zhang Ling, the Celestial Master and the organiser of Daoism, came to Qingcheng Mountain and chose it for its depth and its green, thatched a hut and began teaching. From that point the mountain was the place Daoism came from, and it was ranked by the tradition as the Fifth Grotto-Heaven. At the end of the Tang the great Daoist Du Guangting arrived and married the Celestial Masters' tradition to the Shangqing teachings, which promised ascent to the Shangqing heaven, higher than the old Taiqing. He served the Former Shu kingdom as a senior minister, was ennobled, and spent his last thirty years on this mountain writing.
Under the Ming, the Daoism transmitted here belonged to the Longmen branch of the Complete Perfection school, which asked its adepts to leave home, live in a monastery, stay unmarried and eat no meat, and developed a whole discipline of quiet sitting. Monks in residence meant halls and groves maintained, which is one reason the mountain looks the way it does. War at the end of the Ming scattered them; in the eighth year of the Kangxi emperor, Chen Qingjue, a Longmen monk from Wudang, came to run the mountain and put it right again. What is transmitted on Qingcheng today is the Dantai Bidong lineage of the Longmen branch.
The first is a description: the mountain's 36 peaks — yin and yang, arranged in a ring — stand with sharp ridges and steep cliffs, and the green closes in on all four sides so that the whole mass looks like a walled town. Hence Qingcheng, the green city. The second is a story about a spelling mistake, and it is not a legend: the mountain was originally called Qingcheng with the water radical, after the old saying that the Clear Capital and the Purple Tenuity are where the Celestial Emperor lives.
Buddhism grew fast under the Tang and the two religions quarrelled over the mountain until the case reached the emperor. Emperor Xuanzong, who followed the Dao, ruled in person: the temples go back to the Daoists, the monasteries stay outside the mountain. But the edict was written with the wrong character, dropping the water radical, and the name became Qingcheng — green city. The mountain still keeps the full text of the Tang imperial edict on a stele to prove it.
Qingcheng sits in the middle and northern stretch of the Rain Screen of West China, on the western edge of the Sichuan basin, and the climate is mild, humid and subtropical: an annual mean of about 15.2°C, an extreme of 34.2°C in the hottest month and −7.1°C in the coldest. Spring is the season that moves most — warm enough at noon to feel like summer is here, and cold enough by night, with the wind coming up the mountain, to feel like winter.
That damp, mild air is what produces the thing the mountain is famous for: old trees, moss on the railings, water running somewhere below you wherever you stand, and the mist that settles between the 36 peaks. It is also what makes the paths slippery in winter and the stone steps tiring in summer, and it is why the mountain has been the obvious place for Chengdu to go when the basin becomes unbearable.
Travel with them
Edited by Wang Chunwu
The new gazetteer: history, relics, religion, famous visitors, poetry and the present state of the mountain, in one volume. Read it and you will understand the place considerably better — and the odds are you will like Qingcheng more, and be more thoroughly taken in by it, than before you started.
Zhang Kongshan
The music has a long history: when Zhang Ling founded the school at the start of the second century there were already ritual forms and fixed tones. What you can hear today has been through more than 1,800 years of north-south exchange and the merging of different schools' liturgies, which is why it carries a breadth that feels more like Chinese music generally than like one temple.
The Good Sisters (Hao Meimei)
The band's cover of the old classic, which sounds like an ink-wash landscape and never once falls into the vulgar: distant and unhurried, better than the world above, until people and plants seem drunk together and the mind goes flying off with the immortals.
The questions visitors ask us most about Qingcheng Mountain, answered plainly.
Prices and practical details are reviewed every month by our Beijing team and updated the day a rule changes.
It depends what you came for. The front mountain is the Daoist route — Jianfu Palace, the Tianshi Cave, Shangqing Palace and the summit — which is the reason the mountain matters, with more crowds and more stone steps. The back mountain is a wetter, wilder valley of gorges, caves and waterfalls, quieter and more of a walk, and the one Chengdu families choose for a slow weekend. With one day, first-timers usually do the front; walkers usually prefer the back.
The intercity train is easiest: Chengdu North or Chengdu West to Qingchengshan station takes about an hour for ¥15, roughly 07:01 to 20:17 outbound and 08:02 to 21:07 back, with local buses on to the front gate. Xinnanmen station also runs direct coaches to the front mountain from 09:30 for ¥21. If you are already at Dujiangyan, bus 101 takes about 30 minutes, or hop the intercity line one stop for ¥5.
April to October, and every season has its own version. July and August are the classic months — cool and green up here while Chengdu bakes, which is why the city treats it as its summer escape. March to May brings the mountain-climbing festival, and September the Daoist Culture Festival, with the main venue here and events at Qingyang Palace, Heming Mountain and Laojun Mountain. Winter is misty, cheap and very quiet; the moss and the halls look their best, but a lot of the path is slippery.
On the front mountain it is worth it: ¥35 one way or ¥60 return, crossing via Yuecheng Lake, and it removes a long, steep, crowded stretch of steps. The local trick is to ride up and walk down, because the descent is the better walk. The back mountain has the Jinli cable car at ¥30 one way or ¥55 return, from Feiquanfang to Shisuntang. Either way, expect real climbing beyond the cable car — to the Laojun Pavilion at the front, to the falls at the back.
One day covers one half properly. The front mountain takes most of a day: Jianfu Palace, the climb past the Natural Picture Pavilion, the ferry and cable car, Tianshi Cave, Shangqing Palace and the Laojun Pavilion. The back mountain also takes a day, walking the Wulong ravine and the falls out of Tai'an. With two days do one each, and add Dujiangyan, 10 km away, for a third. Front and back in a single day is a slog with a lot of missed turns.
Dujiangyan and the old town of Guanxian are 10 km away, and they pair with Qingcheng in one ticket for ¥180. Around the back mountain there is Tai'an old town and the Puzhao Temple; a little further out are the Hongkou nature reserve with its rafting, Longchi forest park and Lingyan Mountain. Most people do Qingcheng and Dujiangyan as a two-day loop out of Chengdu.
Yes, especially with Dujiangyan, since the combined ticket is ¥180 and the two are 10 km apart — the best two-day trip out of Chengdu. Qingcheng is the birthplace of Daoism rather than a dramatic scenic peak, so come for halls, forest, mist and the famous quiet rather than for big views. If you want a walking mountain, do the back; if you want the history, do the front.
Very — there is no shortage of places around either half, though you should book for the big holidays. The front mountain has a five-star hotel by the gate and comfortable mid-range options within a kilometre or so of the high-speed station. The back mountain is all farmhouses, mostly around Tai'an old town, they are cheaper than the front, and they are what Chengdu locals book.
Plan this trip
The same places, with a driver, an English-speaking guide and the tickets already bought.
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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.
Qingdao
City guide · 12 tours
Red-tiled roofs, cold beer and a granite mountain that walks straight into the sea — the easiest good time on the Yellow Sea.
Mount Tai
City guide · 12 tours
1,545 metres, 6,290 stone steps and three thousand years of emperors — the one mountain in China that is also a document.
Jinan
City guide · 12 tours
A provincial capital with 700 springs under the pavement — people still queue at the spouts to fill their kettles.
Weihai
City guide · 12 tours
1,000 km of clean coast, a free bathing beach, the island where the Beiyang Fleet died — and thousands of wild swans every winter.
Qufu
City guide · 12 tours
One family, two thousand years of steles, and a ¥150 pass that covers the lot — the easiest serious day trip in Shandong.
Penglai
City guide · 12 tours
China's immortals' coast — a Song-dynasty naval harbour you can walk for free, a mythology nobody ever found, and the ferry to 32 islands.
Changdao
City guide · 12 tours
32 islands, one causeway, a ¥150 land pass, tens of thousands of gulls and nowhere you can drive — the place where everything happens by boat.
Nanjing
City guide · 12 tours
Capital of six dynasties, capital of the Republic, and the city that eats more duck than anywhere else on earth.
Suzhou
City guide · 12 tours
Two thousand five hundred years of canals, sixty surviving gardens, and a city that shuts its gates at half past five.
Zhouzhuang
City guide · 12 tours
Nine hundred years, fourteen bridges, one ticket — and a town that only makes sense before eight in the morning.
Tongli
City guide · 12 tours
Fifteen canals, seven islets, forty-nine bridges — and a town that still gets up at dawn because it lives here.
Wuxi
City guide · 12 tours
Taihu on one side, a Grand Buddha on the next hill, and ribs sweet enough to argue about — the most underrated city on the Yangtze delta.
Yangzhou
City guide · 12 tours
A city built by salt merchants who had more money than restraint — gardens, a narrow lake, and the best breakfast in China.
Zhenjiang
City guide · 12 tours
Three hills, one ferry landing, and an unreasonable share of Chinese literature — the Yangtze city people drive past.
Changzhou
City guide · 12 tours
A 2,500-year-old canal city that built a dinosaur park and refuses to apologise for it.
Wuzhen
City guide · 12 tours
A town that is two towns: the older, quieter East Zone and the lit-up West Zone you sleep inside.
Xitang
City guide · 12 tours
Nine canals, 122 lanes, one long roofed corridor — and a town that still works for a living.
Hangzhou
City guide · 12 tours
A lake in the middle of a city, a tea village in the hills, and two thousand years of getting the mood right.
Xixi Wetland
City guide · 12 tours
Ten square kilometres of marsh inside Hangzhou, and the only way into half of it is a boat.
Ningbo
City guide · 12 tours
A 7,000-year-old port with Asia's oldest private library, a free waterfront 20 years older than Shanghai's, and the best seafood before the islands.
Mount Putuo
City guide · 12 tours
A Buddhist island with no cars, three great temples and a ¥10 lunch that is the point of the place.
Qiandao Lake
City guide · 12 tours
A thousand islands that did not exist sixty years ago, and the cleanest big-lake water in China.
Shaoxing
City guide · 12 tours
Two and a half thousand years of water-town China, and Lu Xun's house is free.
Zhoushan
City guide · 12 tours
1,390 islands, one road bridge in, and a harbour that lands more fish than almost anywhere on earth.
Hengdian
City guide · 12 tours
A backlot the size of a town, where the palaces are copies and the film crews are real.
Yandang Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
A volcano that weathering turned into scenery — 500-odd sights of peak, cave and waterfall across eight scenic areas.
Zhejiang
City guide · 12 tours
One small, mountainous, absurdly rich province that holds a lake, two canal towns, a Buddhist island and a dead volcano.
Hong Kong Outlying Islands
City guide · 12 tours
Two hundred-odd islands, half an hour of ferry from the financial district, and not a car on three of them.
Hong Kong Shopping
City guide · 12 tours
A duty-free port where the tag starts lower, two citywide sale seasons knock a third off, and every mall sits on an MTR exit.
Macao
City guide · 12 tours
Four hundred years of Portuguese streets, a fake Venice under a painted sky, and the best egg tart in Asia.
Urumqi
City guide · 12 tours
The city furthest from the sea, with a snow range on its doorstep and dinner starting at nine.
Hong Kong SAR, China
City guide · 11 tours
A harbour skyline you already know by heart, dim sum trolleys at dawn, and 260 islands an hour from the neon.
Taiwan, China
City guide · 11 tours
Night-market alleys, high-mountain railways, and a coastline that changes character every hundred kilometres.
Qinghai Lake
City guide · 12 tours
A 4,400 sq km inland sea at 3,200 m, ringed by rapeseed gold, prayer flags and the best cycling road in China.
Mount Emei
City guide · 11 tours
A 3,099-metre Buddhist summit you can reach by cable car before lunch — and a mountain full of monkeys that will absolutely rob you.
Beijing
City guide · 11 tours
Six centuries of imperial red walls, a Great Wall you can climb before lunch, and the best roast duck on earth.
Taipei
City guide · 11 tours
A 24-hour bookstore, a night market that never stops sizzling, and a city that apologises when you bump into it.
North Xinjiang
City guide · 11 tours
Alpine lakes the colour of poured enamel, a village of log cabins under birch trees, and the last tear the Atlantic ever sheds.
Lanzhou
City guide · 11 tours
A city split in half by the Yellow River, where beef noodles are a breakfast ritual and the Silk Road still runs through the streets.
Mount Hua
City guide · 11 tours
Five granite peaks, one plank road bolted to a cliff face, and a sunrise that justifies the 2am start.
Dunhuang
City guide · 11 tours
A desert oasis where Buddhist cave art survived a thousand years and a crescent lake refused to dry up.
Gannan
City guide · 11 tours
433 kilometres of the Yellow River's first bend, a 3.5 km prayer-wheel circuit, and Tibetan grasslands almost nobody has commercialised yet.
Sichuan–Tibet Highway
City guide · 11 tours
2,142 kilometres of cliff-edge switchbacks, four of China's most beautiful mountains, and a road the Tibetans walk on their knees.
Kangding
City guide · 11 tours
The town that gave Asia its most famous love song, a 7,556m sacred peak on its doorstep, and the last real Tibetan town before the road climbs to Lhasa.
Lhasa
City guide · 12 tours
A city of prayer wheels and butter lamps at 3,700 metres, where the sun shines 3,000 hours a year and the world's highest palace watches over it all.
Nyingchi
City guide · 11 tours
Tibet's greenest corner — peach blossom valleys, a 7,782 m peak that hides from almost everyone, and the world's deepest canyon.
Namtso
City guide · 11 tours
A 1,920-square-kilometre sheet of impossible blue at 4,718 metres, ringed by snow peaks and prayer flags.
Chongqing
City guide · 12 tours
A vertical city of fog, cable cars and cliff-side stilt houses, where the火锅 never stops boiling and the night skyline outshines Hong Kong.
Qiandongnan
City guide · 11 tours
A thousand Miao households stacked up a mountainside, drum towers and wind-rain bridges in Dong villages, and a 600-year-old Ming garrison town on the road to Guiyang.
Libo
City guide · 11 tours
Emerald rivers threading through karst peaks, a 600-metre forest growing out of a riverbed, and China's largest wild plum grove.
Guiyang
City guide · 11 tours
China's summer capital at 1,100 metres, where the nights run on sour fish soup, street-side barbecue and mahjong that never quite stops.
Zhenyuan
City guide · 11 tours
A 2,000-year-old river town where the Wuyang River carves an S through the mountains and every lane hides a story.
Huangguoshu
City guide · 11 tours
Asia's biggest waterfall, and the only one on earth you can walk behind, above and around — plus 600-year-old Ming dynasty villages a short drive away.
Harbin
City guide · 11 tours
Minus 30 degrees, a frozen river you can walk across, and a cathedral built by Russians who never went home.
Yunnan
City guide · 11 tours
Snow mountains, tropical rainforest, twenty-five minorities and a plate of rice noodles — all in one province.
Shanghai
City guide · 11 tours
A 1920s waterfront of colonial banks facing a science-fiction skyline, soup dumplings you eat with a straw, and 20 million people moving like clockwork.
Zhangjiajie
City guide · 11 tours
Three thousand sandstone pillars straight out of Avatar, a glass skywalk bolted to a cliff, and a cable car that leaves from downtown.
Guangzhou
City guide · 11 tours
A 2,200-year-old trading port where dim sum is a religion, colonial islands sit beside 600-metre towers, and the food never stops.
Guilin
City guide · 11 tours
Karst peaks rising straight out of a green river, rice terraces carved into mountainsides, and the best bowl of noodles you'll eat in China.
Shenzhen
City guide · 11 tours
A fishing village that became a megacity in forty years — and it still has 500-year-old banyans, empty beaches and dim sum worth the border crossing.
Chengdu
City guide · 11 tours
A 3,000-year-old city where the schedule is tea, mahjong and hotpot — and the pandas are just the opening act.
Xinjiang
City guide · 11 tours
Snow peaks, grassland, desert and oasis — one-sixth of China, and the longest road you will ever ride.
Xi'an
City guide · 14 tours
Thirteen dynasties of emperors, a terracotta army buried for 2,200 years, and a walled city you can cycle in 100 minutes.
Qinghai
City guide · 11 tours
China's high-altitude blue heart: a salt lake you can walk on, a 3,200-metre sea, and yak butter tea at the roof of the world.
Tibet
City guide · 11 tours
A plateau the size of Western Europe where the sky starts at your feet, prayer flags carry the wind, and the roads run past 8,000-metre peaks.
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