• Beijing’s Forbidden City
• The Great Wall of China
• Xi’an’s Terracotta Army
• Ancient Pingyao

Northern China contains many of the country’s most iconic sights. Visitors can lose themselves for hours among the labyrinthine passageways and lavish pavilions of Beijing’s former Ming and Qing Imperial Palace, the Forbidden City. Also to the north is the mighty Great Wall of China, built to protect imperial rule. Various sections can easily be reached as day trips from the capital. The former capital of Xi’an offers the eerie ranks of the first emperor’s Terracotta Army and the surrounding countryside is littered with Tang dynasty tombs. Shanxi also has most of China’s oldest wooden buildings such as those in Datong and Wutai Shan, and the best-preserved walled city of all at Pingyao.

• Booming Shanghai
• Suzhou’s gardens
• Ming-era Tunxi and Shexian
• Hangzhou’s West Lake

Zhejiang is now China’s richest province, and it is along the coastline that much of the country’s wealth can be found, in former treaty ports such as Ningbo and Wenzhou. Shanghai, the “Paris of the East” in the 1920s, is once again mainland China’s brightest and most booming city. Its old concession-era buildings, renewed as restaurants and bars, now face a forest of cranes and sci-fi towers in the new Pudong district. Nearby are the gentler charms of Suzhou’s gardens. Inland are the humble Ming-era houses and the striking whitewashed mansions of the wealthy merchants of Tunxi, Shexian, Hongcun, and Xidi. West Lake, is particularly scenic and is China’s most famous lake.

• Hong Kong
• Xiamen’s colonial mansions
• Multi-cultural Quanzhou
• Yongding’s earthern tulou 

Much of the interest of the southeast lies in the impact of foreigners. Orderly, cosmopolitan, and formerly British Hong Kong is everything the mainland cities aspire to be, and its seaside Manhattan-with-mountains skyline is one of the world’s most spectacular. The pre-revolution foreign community of Xiamen left behind elaborate European mansions, while hundreds of years earlier communities of Catholics and Muslims left a surprising assortment of religious monuments at Quanzhou. In the region’s mountainous interior, the giant earthen fortresses (tulou)  of the Hakka people at Yongding were villages in their own right: home to hundreds of people and livestock.

• Guangxi’s limestone peaks
• Towns of Dali and Lijiang
• Natural bridges of Sanjiang

China’s scenic southwest enjoys mild weather and is home to a wide variety of ethnic minority peoples, known for their lively festivals and extraordinary architecture. The toothy limestone peaks of Guangxi are one of China’s most famous attractions, and the cruise between them along the Li River from Guilin is a popular day trip. The well-preserved Yunnan mountain towns of Dali and Lijiang have winding lanes lined by streams. Around Guangxi’s Sanjiang are timber drum towers and covered bridges like elongated temples.

• Concession-era architecture of Dalian and Harbin
• Qing palaces of Shenyang
• Waterfalls of Changbai Shan

The northeast offers respite from China’s scorching summer heat. The architecture of Dalian and Harbin, dating back to periods of Russian and Japanese occupation, is some of the country’s best-preserved. Shenyang still houses a Qing palace complex, and the last emperor Pu Yi, ruled a Japanese-controlled Manchuria from a palace in Changchun. Volcanic Changbai Shan offers views of the waters of Tian Chi (Heaven’s Lake), which straddles the border with North Korea.

• Mogao Caves
• Taklamakan Desert oases
• Tibetan monasteries

Many of the great trade routes with Central Asia and beyond once passed through the region, leaving elaborate Buddhist monuments. The greatest of these is the Mogao Caves at Dunhuang where fresco-lined caves re-cord the passage of Buddhism into China and the ebb and flow of power in the region. The oases around the Taklamakan Desert  include Turpan, with its substantial vineyards; Kuqa with its warren of adobe housing, and rapidly changing Kashgar with its mosque and Sunday livestock market. The Tibetan monasteries of Xining and Xiahe offer a more accessible alternative to Tibet, and the rebuilt fort at Jiayuguan marks the end of the brick-clad Ming-era Great Wall.

• Rail journey to Lhasa
• Lhasa’s Potala Palace
• Everest Base Camp

The new rail route to Lhasa is now China’s most spectacular rail journey, and the world’s highest. The highlands of the Tibetan plateau still have areas off-limits to foreigners, and the special permits needed hint at the territory’s history as a hermit, forbidden kingdom. The slab-sided Potala Palace towers over Lhasa and is an awe-inspiring sight. The side trip to Everest Base Camp from the Friendship Highway to Nepal offers unbeatable views of Everest and other peaks over 26,000 ft (8,000 m).