Attractions

Most trip notes describe Kanas as “a pretty lake up north.” On the ground it is a 24-km glacial ribbon tucked into the Altai mountains of Xinjiang, China, fed by…

Four hours west of Chengdu’s teahouses, the road climbs over a 4,500-meter pass and drops into a different world: glaciated granite peaks, yak meadows, and Tibetan villages strung along a…

Every winter, almost the entire world population of Siberian cranes — several thousand critically endangered white birds that breed in Arctic Russia — funnels down to one place: the mudflats…

Most write-ups treat Jiuzhaigou as one place. On the ground it’s three: a Y-shaped system of valleys in northern Sichuan where the Shuzheng, Rize and Zechawa branches each have their…

Imagine a forest where every tree is a limestone blade, some rising 30 meters, packed so tightly that paths squeeze between them like alleys in an old city. That is…

Southern Guizhou hides one of China’s greenest corners: a maze of cone-shaped karst hills wrapped in subtropical forest, threaded by rivers so clear they look dyed. Libo County is the…

Halfway up a 1,519-meter mountain in Hunan, a hole punches clean through the rock — Tianmen Cave, the “Heaven’s Gate,” 131 meters tall and visible from downtown Zhangjiajie on a…

Mount Wutai is less a mountain than a high-altitude valley ringed by five flat-topped summits — wutai literally means “five terraces” — and packed with more than 50 active monasteries….

Mount Emei does not do subtle. The highest of China’s four sacred Buddhist mountains tops out at 3,099 meters, where a 48-meter golden statue of Samantabhadra rides four elephants above…

Huashan has a reputation problem — in the best possible way. Search for it online and you’ll find the infamous plank walk: wooden boards bolted to a sheer granite face,…