Set on a broad plain where the Yarlung Tsangpo curves through Shannan, Tibet, China, Samye Monastery is traditionally held to be the first Buddhist monastery built on Tibetan soil. Founded…
Carved into the cliffs above the Muzat River about 70 kilometers northwest of Baicheng county, the Kizil Grottoes are the oldest and largest Buddhist cave complex in Xinjiang, China. Excavated…
Anhui is better known for Huangshan and the ancient villages of the south, so most foreign travelers never hear of its largest lake. Chaohu (巢湖), a broad freshwater lake an…
The great cave-temples of China — Yungang, Longmen, Dunhuang — draw the crowds and the guidebook praise. But there is a smaller, quieter cluster in southern Hebei that art historians…
When people talk about Gansu, they usually mean the Hexi Corridor — the desert road to Dunhuang. But the far south of the province, in Longnan, holds a different landscape…
Most visitors to Chengdu know the pandas and the spicy food. Far fewer know that, less than twenty years ago, construction workers digging foundations here uncovered a Bronze Age city…
Most foreign visitors to Zhejiang head straight for the West Lake in Hangzhou and never learn that the province holds one of the most important Buddhist sites in East Asia….
Mount Heng, known as Nanyue or the Southern Sacred Mountain, is the southernmost of China’s five sacred peaks and the most devoted to living worship. It rises in the Nanyue…
Jigong Mountain, or Jigong Shan, is the old foreign summer resort that time forgot. Straddling the Henan-Hubei border above the city of Xinyang, it was built a century ago by…
Dinghu Mountain, or Dinghu Shan, is the green escape that Guangdong residents have relied on for decades. It rises just northeast of Zhaoqing in western Guangdong and protects one of…