03
Landscapes
Nature
Seas of cloud, karst, coloured pools and sandstone pillars. In China the landscape is not a backdrop. It is the point of the journey.
In this volume
9 pieces
Landscapes · Guilin / Yangshuo, Guangxi
Li River
The river walks the hills into reflections
Landscapes · Huangshan, Anhui
Huangshan
The mountain is bone, the cloud is cloth
Landscapes · Zhangjiajie, Hunan
Zhangjiajie
Sandstone pillars that stand the horizon up
Landscapes · Aba, Sichuan
Jiuzhaigou
Water that turned minerals into colour
Landscape
The Five Great Mountains
Fixed as a set by the Han dynasty, and unchanged since
Landscape
The Four Sacred Buddhist Mountains
Established as pilgrimage sites from the Tang dynasty onward
Landscape
The Yangtze and the Three Gorges
Cruises run roughly March to November
Landscape
The Yellow River
Landscape
Changbaishan — Heaven Lake
Peak summer for the lake; the crater is often cloud-locked
Two expectations worth resetting before anything here is booked. A famous Chinese mountain is a staircase rather than a trail — stone steps most of the way, a cable car for the part you skip, and a hotel at the top — so the question is knees and hours, not route-finding. And these are managed sites: Jiuzhaigou caps daily entry and sells timed tickets, and the week either side of a public holiday is effectively a different park from the holiday itself. What is on this page is what a first trip can actually reach; the harder corners of the country are a conversation rather than a page.