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Laolongtou (老龙头), the “Old Dragon’s Head,” is the only place on Earth where the Great Wall plunges straight into the sea — a stone dragon head dipping into the Bohai…

Longyangxia (龙羊峡) is the surprise of the Qinghai stretch of the Yellow River: a canyon so deep and a reservoir so still that the water turns an improbable turquoise, bracketed…

Xiaolangdi (小浪底) is the engineering showpiece of the middle Yellow River, a 154-meter concrete dam that holds back one of the largest sediment-trapping reservoirs in the world — and for…

Shuidonggou (水洞沟) is the only place in China where you can stand on a 30,000-year-old Paleolithic living floor and then climb a Ming-dynasty Great Wall fortress within a ten-minute walk…

West of Yinchuan, where the Ningxia plain ends and the Helan Mountains rise like a wall against the Mongolian steppe, a story cut in stone has been waiting for three…

Ninety minutes west of Chengdu, in the dripping green hills above Ya’an city, the Bifengxia panda base pairs two things most travelers book separately: a serious giant panda research center…

About 130 km west of Chengdu, where the Sichuan basin gives way to the folded peaks of the Qionglai mountains, the Wolong panda reserve protects one of the densest wild…

If China has a serious skiing reputation, it starts in Yabuli. Tucked into the Zhangguangcai range of Shangzhi city, about 193 km southeast of Harbin in Heilongjiang, the Yabuli ski…

Some 70 kilometers southwest of Dunhuang, where the Hexi Corridor finally runs dry and the edge of the Taklamakan begins, the Yangguan pass survives as a low earth-colored monument to…

Pingle Ancient Town sits in the Qionglai hills about 90 km southwest of Chengdu, and it has been here since the Qin dynasty — more than 2,000 years. What draws…