1. Wulingyuan National Park — Zhangjiajie’s Precipitous Pillars

Wulingyuan is usually the only one of China’s national parks to make it to a top-in-the-world list. It features some awesome towering geology, alongside rich wildlife. Zhangjiajie National Forest Park makes up most of it, alongside Suoxiyu Nature Reserve. Its inspiration for the floating rocks in Avatar has added to its fame.

●Popular activities: hiking, mountain climbing, photography, rafting, and Halleluyah Mountain dreams?!
● Access: From Zhangjiajie take a bus or private transport 1 hour north to Wulingyuan. From there hike or take local transport on park roads.
●Suitable for: able hikers, with enough to tire the fitter and more adventurous

●Best time(s) to visit: October is the best month, with cooler temperatures and fall foliage; but for summer activities like rafting go in the early summer to beat the rain.
●Popularity: Expect crowding at the major view points at peak times, otherwise there’s moderate to low visitor concentration.
●Facilities: two cableways, an elevator, and electric cart; farm houses and small tourist shops provide food and snacks inside the park
●Accommodation: The best hotels are in Zhangjiajie, otherwise there are some good hotels in Suoxiyu and the west gate, but farmers’ guesthouses inside the park can be quite rudimentary.
●Days needed for a classic tour: 3 days are needed to see the main attractions in the park.

2. Jiuzhaigou National Park — Multicolored Mountain Lakes

Jiuzhaigou (‘Nine-Village Valley’) National Park is known for its colorful lakes in high-altitude valleys, with waterfalls, snowy peaks, forested slopes, and Tibetan villages. It’s a classic national park.

●Popular activities: Hiking, photography, marveling at lakes and reflected mountains
●Access: flight or 8-hour bus ride from Chengdu; then 50 km of good park roads are plied by buses and hikers
●Suitable for: All who can tolerate mountain bus journeys will enjoy it. Altitudes over 3,000 m in the upper valleys shouldn’t trouble very fit hikers; others should be prepared to take it easy.
●Best time(s) to visit: The fall colors reflected in the lakes is when the park is at its prettiest. Winter is harsh there and travel is unadvisable.
●Popularity: Avoiding the Chinese holiday crowds (especially Oct. 1–7), when the park in overrun, it is still difficult to get away from tourists at the main speak times.
●Facilities: good valley roads, guest houses, and Tibetan-family-run shops/eateries
●Accommodation: better hotels outside the park gate; much simpler guest houses inside
●Days needed for a classic tour: 2+ days to hike the main sights, 1 day with transport

3. Guilin Li River National Park, Guangxi — Karst Landscapes

More of a scenic area, with not much of a national park feel, the Li River National Park has no entrance and fee to get in. It covers the 80-km (50-mile) stretch of river between Guilin and Yangshuo, bounded by classic sheer karst hills, which have inspired many a poem and ink painting.

●Top features: Nine Horse Fresco Hill, Yellow Cloth Shoal, 20-Yuan-Bill Hill, Xingping Ancient Town
●Popular activities: cruises, hiking, photography, hill climbing
●Access: from Guilin, take a Li River cruise, or visit villages along the river by mountain/rural roads
●Suitable for: Anyone can take a cruise or vehicle to see this amazing limestone and water scenery.
●Best time(s) to visit: summer for misty peak views after the rain; fall for drier, cooler weather
●Popularity: Immensely popular, dozens of tour boats ply the river daily, but you can find quieter villages and hills to enjoy relative peace
●Facilities: Cruise boats serve buffet lunches, bamboo rafts offer another way to see the river; Guilin and Yangshuo offer everything from Western food to local specialties, while farmer restaurants along the river provide simple local fare.
●Accommodation: hotels in Guilin and Yangshuo are the mainstay with all price ranges, though more modest lodging is offered in Xingping and other riverside resorts
●Days needed for a classic tour: 1 day for the main sights + 1/2 days to explore Guilin and Yangshuo

4.  Huangshan National Park — the Legendary Yellow Mountains

Surrounded in myths of ancient immortals, the Yellow Mountains have some bizarrely charming geomorphology. Compact and complex, this National Park has it all in a small area. There are peaks to climb, gorges to hike, and ethereal sights to see.

●Top features: the seas of clouds, bizarre rocks like ‘Monkey Watching the Sea’, and strange pines like Welcoming Guest Pine
●Popular activities: trekking the mountain paths, photography, gazing out over the swirling mists and island-like peaks, getting up before dawn to see the sun rise
●Access: 3 hours by coach from Hangzhou or 1 hour from Huangshan to the main gate; there are taxis in the park to take you to the cableways, but from there it’s by foot on narrow concrete paths and steps.
●Suitable for: Avoiding the steepest climbs and the long hikes, most of the top sights are accessible even by those of low fitness.
●Best time(s) to visit: Summer is best for weather, but crowded; winter beautiful and peaceful, but treacherous underfoot and closed in places. The intermediate seasons offer a compromise.
●Popularity: Crowds peak in the summer, when the narrowest of passes become queuing places, as lines of tourists march up and down alternately, and Welcoming Guest Pine becomes clogged with hundreds trying to snap themselves in front of it.
●Facilities: Three cableways, including Asia’s longest telpher, and a monorail provide access from every side. The mountainside is well-signed, and there are plentiful (though expensive) restaurants and shops. There’s a hot-spring spa at the mountain foot.
●Accommodation: The mountain-top hotels offer everything from 4* to dorms, all at least twice the price of those at the mountain bottom. An overnight stay is recommended to catch the dawn and to save time going up and down.
●Days needed for a classic tour: Typically 2 days are spent on the mountain (though 3 or 4 days are needed to see everything)

5. Lijiang Yulong Xueshan National Park — with Tiger Leaping Gorge

Yulong Xueshan (‘Jade Dragon Snow Mountain’ 5,596m or 18,360 ft) National Park includes popular hiking route Tiger Leaping Gorge on its west side. The mountain has glaciers and a small ski resort, and the Yangtze thunders north in the gorge, one of the deepest and most spectacular in the world.

●Popular activities: hiking, photography; viewing glaciers, yaks, and snowy peaks, imagining tigers leaping the cataract?!
●Access: The gate is 15 km north of central Lijiang. Trams go up to 4,500 m (14,800 ft) where the glacier park is and to other mountain sights. Take the G214 to 40 km (25 mi) north of Lijiang to access 30-km-long Tiger Leaping Gorge.
●Suitable for: The gorge hike is strenuous but enjoyable for those of normal fitness. A trip up the mountain, especially with physical exertion, should be viewed with caution, due to altitude sickness, especially at Glacier Park.
●Best time(s) to visit: from February to June is the best time to visit the snow mountain.
●Popularity: you can visit Yunnan all year round, but avoid the Chinese holiday crowds (especially Oct. 1–7).
●Facilities: Tiger Leaping Gorge is well-developed for hiking tourists with plenty of shops and hostels. Trams, oxygen, and the usual range of day-visit facilities are available on Yulong Mountain.
●Accommodation: good hostels on the gorge hiking route, and plenty of hotels in Lijiang
●Days needed for a classic tour: The Tiger Leaping Gorge hike is best done over two days. Take one day to explore Jade Dragon Mountain.

Is a local guide really going to add that much value to my trip? Maybe I should just save the money and explore on my own…or hop on one of those big bus tours to get a quick overview of the city.

The choice is yours. We all have different travel styles, and some destinations and situations call for different approaches. But if you’ve never hired a private guide, you owe it to yourself to try it. But be warned, once you’ve explored with a local guide, you’re going to want to do it on every trip. Seriously.

Five reasons to hire a local guide

1. You’re short on time. Sure we all wish we had endless vacation days to soak up that Tuscan sun. But for the times you’ve only got a day or two in Florence (or Tokyo, or Buenos Aires or New York) a guide will make that time expand like magic. You’ll see more and learn more in a few hours than you would in several days of exploring on your own.

2. You want instant access to a local expert. Local guides can provide a crash course in whatever subject you’re interested in: art, history, food, architecture, photography, politics…their job is to know the answers to all your questions – and also the answers to all the things you never thought to ask in the first place.


3. You like to make new friends. Your guide is more than a walking, talking Encyclopedia Britannica. They’re a lot of fun too! They live their lives in the city you’re visiting, and love to engage in conversation about what that’s like. With your local, private guide you’ll never feel like you’re “on tour” – you’ll feel like you’re spending time with a new friend.


4. You want to feel at home in a new city. Meeting up with a guide on your first day is a great way to start feeling comfortable in a new destination. You’ll get oriented to how to get around, learn about local customs, plus get great recommendations for how to spend the rest of your time there.


5. You like the thought of being in your travel photos for once! This is a small point…but many of our travelers love it! With a local guide at your side, you’ve got someone there to snap that great photo of your entire family in front of Eiffel Tower, so no one's left on the wrong side of the lens. Just don’t forget to get a couple photos with your new friend too.

1. The Roof of the World — Transcendent Tibet

From space or for an explorer the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and its surrounding mountain ranges, known as the Roof of the World, must be the most impressive thing about China. Remote, pristine, and transcendent, this is the destination of dreams.

The Roof of the World has a ll the world's highest 100+ peaks, including Everest and everything over 7,000 meters, and many other highest things, e.g. the highest railway and temple (Rongbuk), and the largest, deepest canyon — Yarlung Tsangpo. It is the largest highland plateau, remotest place outside the polar regions, and source of more big rivers than anywhere else (Yangtze, Yellow, Tsangpo-Brahmaputra, Ganges, Mekong, Salween, Indus, …).

(The Roof of the World, though technically a multi-country wonder, with e.g. Mount Everest actually being in Nepal, is included as a Chinese wonder as no other country has such a great claim on it.)

2.  Chinese — The World's Most Complex and Largest Language

The Chinese language (Mandarin) has the most native users in the world today (1.3+ billion), and worldwide interest in learning it is growing.

The Chinese written language, i.e. Chinese characters, is one of the oldest (about 4,000 years old), and the only pictographic/ideographic language in modern use, with 100,000+ characters, but only 3–4,000 required for functional literacy.

Characters (汉字hanzi) convey meaning often through symbolic units, quite unlike phonetic written languages. Profound and elegant, they lend themselves to beautiful calligraphy and poetic phrase and idiom.

3.  The Unification of China — "Qin-a" — by Emperor Qin

Who could not be enchanted by First Emperor Qin's vision of "peace through unity of a nation", as portrayed in the film Hero. Qin's vision paved the way for what is now the largest nation in the world.

First Emperor Qin's empire (221–206 BC) was short-lived, but his accomplishments were great, and his impact long-lasting. Han, longest ruling dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD) and namesake of the Chinese (majority) people, 汉族 Hanzu, and language, 汉语 Hanyu, i.e. Mandarin, wouldn't have ruled over a unified China if it weren't for Qin (pronounced "chin"), whose namesake is China, and neither would subsequent dynasties and governments.

The Greek, Roman, Muslim, Mongol, and British Empires were all bigger than Qin's, but none of them now remain bigger than China, now or then. The pyramids are bigger than Qin's tomb, and so is the Taj Mahal, but no mausoleum has anything as remarkable in detail and meaning as the Terracotta Army, representing Qin's army, who conquered to unite.

4.  The Great Wall of China — the Original Wonder Wall

Nothing remotely like the Great Wall of China exists. It is the greatest human construction project ever, in terms of man hours and lives expended, and it is by far the world's longest wall.

The Qin-Han Great Wall (another part of Emperor Qin's vision) ran 5,000 km from North Korea almost to Xinjiang. The linking of the walls of the Zhao, Yan, and Qin states resulted in a longer and more northerly Great Wall than the current Ming Wall.

5.  The Yangtze Dams — a Massive Harnessing of Nature

The Yangtze Hydroelectric and Flood Control Project eclipses all comparable engineering feats. Once an annual cause of flooding, destruction, and loss of life, the taming of the Yangtze has turned a dangerous river into a major transport artery, electricity producer, and source of tourist revenue.

Envisioned by Sun Yat-sen in 1919, the Gezhou Dam wasn't completed until 1988, stabilizing the Yangtze for the construction of the Three Gorges Dam upstream (virtually complete in 2012). The world's largest hydroelectric plant produces 10% of China's electricity! The two dams allow massive cargo ships 2,400 km (1,500 miles) inland, all the way to Chongqing.

6.  China's Last 35 Years of Development — Simply Awesome

In 1978 Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms awoke the "Sleeping Giant", and China's phenomenal economic growth (sustained at around 10% for 30 years) is only just seeing signs of slowing down.

During the last 35 years China's construction has increased to the point of using nearly half the world's steel and concrete output; an unprecedented 350+ million people have become urbanized, and even more have been liberated from poverty. China's development into the "factory of the world" has captured the largest slice of the global supply chain. See more on Developing China.

7.  Chinese Culture— Last, But by No Means Least

This final wonder is a broad category covering the huge cultural contribution China has brought to the world: Chinese tea, Chinese food, architecture and landscaping, fengshui, Daoism, TCM, festivals and customs, kung fu, tai chi, Chinese opera, Chinese music, …