Discover China: The Great Wall, Grottoes and Landscapes

The Great Wall stretches for more than 20,000 kilometres, from Shanhaiguan in Hebei Province in the east to Jiayuguan in Gansu Province in the west. China’s destinations offer a range of historical and landscape highlights. Alongside buildings and collections, grottoes, mountains, forests and waterscapes shape the country’s character. When choosing a destination, consider whether you are particularly interested in architectural history, Buddhist art or striking natural formations.

The Great Wall and imperial history

The main body of the Great Wall includes walls, horse paths, watchtowers, shelters, fortresses and passes. The scale and variety of these structures give the wall a complex character: it is more than a single line of fortification. For a look at imperial China, the Forbidden City offers a different focus. Built between 1406 and 1420, it was the site of the enthronement of 14 Ming emperors and ten Qing emperors over the following 505 years. It is considered an outstanding model for the development of ancient Chinese palaces and offers insights into the social development of late imperial China, particularly its ritual and court culture.

The imperial collections are also part of this historical theme: the imperial palaces of the Ming and Qing dynasties preserve more than one million valuable royal collection items, objects used by the royal family and extensive archival materials. At Mount Taishan, natural landscapes meet traditional ceremonies. The mountain covers 25,000 hectares and rises 1,545 metres above the surrounding plateau. Records note twelve imperial ceremonies there honouring Heaven and Earth, around 1,800 stone tablets and inscriptions, and 22 temples. A different architectural focus is the Ancient Building Complex in the Wudang Mountains: 53 ancient buildings and nine architectural sites remain there today. The complex was established as a Taoist centre; its buildings illustrate architecture from the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties.

Grottoes and historical connections

The Mogao Grottoes connect Buddhist art with the history of the Silk Road. The site was first established in 366 AD and preserves 492 caves, around 45,000 square metres of murals and more than 2,000 painted sculptures. Its art represents the period from the 4th to the 14th century. The grottoes also lie at a strategic point on the Silk Road, where trade relations and religious, cultural and intellectual influences converged. The Longmen Grottoes span a different period: more than 2,300 grottoes contain 110,000 Buddhist figures and artworks, over 80 stupas and 2,800 inscribed tablets. They were created between the Northern Wei dynasty and the Song dynasty, which lasted from 960 to 1279.

The network of Silk Roads between Chang’an and the Tianshan region offers a broader perspective. A 5,000-kilometre section extends from Chang’an or Luoyang in China to the Zhetysu region of Central Asia. The corridor’s 33 component sites include trading settlements, Buddhist cave temples, ancient roads, post stations, passes, signal towers, fortifications, tombs and religious buildings. Together, these places show that travel interests can focus not only on individual buildings, but also on art, religious history and historic routes.

Rock landscapes and habitats

Wulingyuan in Hunan Province is characterised by more than 3,000 slender quartz-sandstone pillars, many of them over 200 metres high. The area covers 26,400 hectares. Its landscapes include ravines and valleys with streams, pools and waterfalls, around 40 caves and two large natural bridges. Wulingyuan is also a habitat for endangered plant and animal species. Its combination of striking rock formations and other natural features sets it apart from historic buildings and cave sites.

The Jiuzhaigou Valley in northern Sichuan covers 72,000 hectares. Its landscapes include alpine mountains, coniferous forests, clear pools and lakes in shades of blue, green and purple, waterfalls, limestone terraces and caves. The valley is protected as a national park and national nature reserve, and provides a habitat for endangered plant and animal species, including the giant panda and the takin. A distinct protected-area focus is the Sichuan Giant Panda Sanctuaries: Wolong, Mount Siguniang and the Jiajin Mountains form the largest and most significant contiguous remaining habitat for giant pandas in China and worldwide. They encompass seven nature reserves and eleven scenic parks, covering a total of 924,500 hectares.

A designed landscape at West Lake

West Lake brings together its natural setting and landscape features shaped over centuries. It is surrounded on three sides by cloud-covered hills and on the fourth by the city of Hangzhou; temples, pagodas, pavilions, gardens and ornamental trees complete the scene. Its key man-made features include two causeways and three islands, created through repeated dredging between the 9th and 12th centuries. Since the Southern Song dynasty in the 13th century, ten poetically named scenic spots have been regarded as idealised classical landscapes. Visitors looking at nature and culture together will find a different focus here than at the grottoes, rock formations or imperial buildings.

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For the broader travel overview: Asia.