Every Scenic Spot in Jiangxi

Granite pillars wrapped in mist with Taoist temples — China’s answer to Patagonia, reached by cable car onto cliff plank-walks.

A constellation of whitewashed Hui-style villages — “China’s most beautiful countryside,” golden with rapeseed each spring.

The famous “shai qiu” sun-drying spectacle — chillies and corn on rooftop racks — above terraces that turn gold with spring rapeseed.

The grandest Hui-style architecture in Wuyuan — the former home of a Qing-dynasty official and the best craftsmanship in the county.

A stream runs straight through the village — small, intimate, the classic postcard Wuyuan.

Ancient camphor trees and a quieter, slower atmosphere than the headline villages.

Dreamy and mist-prone — the film location for the 1980s classic “Liaozhai.”

A covered Song-dynasty bridge over a wide river — one of Wuyuan’s most photographed spots.

A genuinely massive 1,600-year-old camphor tree — a single-tree attraction, but the tree is the draw.

Cliffside guesthouses and suspended walkways lit by thousands of lanterns — an engineered “Avatar” world that went viral on Douyin.

A neo-Hui resort built around “Meet Wuyuan,” a nightly water-and-light show — high production value, a comfortable base for the villages.

A compact, walkable Danxia landscape of red sandstone carved into surreal shapes — part of the UNESCO China Danxia listing, blissfully uncrowded.

A Daoist mountain retreat where an immortal once trained — the village below stages 20+ nightly performances and a mountain-gate ritual.

Canyon waterfalls and forests that turn technicolour in autumn — a quiet alternative when Sanqing is busy.

A cool mountain retreat of stone villas, drifting cloud seas and a 155m three-tier waterfall — the most written-about mountain in Chinese culture.

A vast reservoir scattered with 1,600+ forested islands — China’s quieter “Thousand Island Lake,” made for boat days.

China’s largest freshwater lake — and one of Asia’s great winter bird habitats, with Siberian cranes and white storks at Wucheng Bird Town.

A small hill at the confluence of Poyang Lake and the Yangtze, immortalised by the Song poet Su Dongpo in 1084.

A substantial karst cave system — stalactites, stalagmites and underground rivers, the classic limestone experience.

A colossal gilded Amitabha Buddha beside the temple where Pure Land Buddhism was founded sixteen centuries ago.

China’s only 5A ceramic-culture park — working traditional kilns and artisans demonstrating every stage of porcelain-making.

An old porcelain factory reborn as an arts district — galleries, studios, cafés and a weekend maker’s market where modern Jingdezhen lives.

The Ming–Qing imperial kiln site — an archaeological park you walk over on glass floors, beneath kiln-shaped brick vaults.

A porcelain-and-tea trading town in the hills — Hui-style architecture and stone lanes, quieter than the Wuyuan villages.

“Bizarre Stone Forest” — oddly shaped rock formations in a forested area, a fun half-day of variety.

One of the “Three Great Towers of Jiangnan,” immortalised by a Tang poet in 675 CE — best at sunset over the Gan River, lit at night.

A “Chinese Tutankhamun” — the tomb of a deposed Han emperor yielded 115kg of gold and the earliest known portrait of Confucius.

Three merged Ming–Qing villages of cobbled lanes and rice paddies — a solid Wuyuan alternative if you’re based in Nanchang.

A sacred birthplace of organised Daoism with 2,600-year-old cliff coffins and a bamboo-raft drift through a red-sandstone canyon.

“China’s No.1 Ancient Village” — 260+ Ming–Qing buildings on a single grid, deep in rural Fuzhou.

The hometown of Tang Xianzu — “China’s Shakespeare” — restored for opera performances, night markets and a memorial hall.

Arcade-lined old streets in rural Fuzhou — a low-key stop for vernacular architecture.

6,700 hectares of alpine meadow on a 1,918m ridge — campers pitch tents on the Golden Summit for the sea-of-cloud sunrise.

“Bright Moon Mountain” — selenium-rich hot springs at the base, a cliff-face glass skywalk and a fine alpine waterfall.

A millennium-old hot-spring town where locals and travellers soak their feet in selenium-rich pools along the streets.

Granite peak-forest scenery in Sanqing’s geological family — far less visited, no ticket queues.

The ancestral home of the Lingbao school of Daoism — a forested mountain of temples and few tourists.

Where a Tang Zen master codified the monastic rules that still govern Chan (Zen) monasteries today — historical weight, modest scenery.

A Buddhist mountain billed as the “No.1 Zen Forest of Jiangnan” — cable car to a temple complex and forest views.

A restored old town of Ming–Qing Ganxi residences and arcade lanes.

A Hakka fortified village — massive rectangular earthen compounds with corner watchtowers; the largest could house hundreds.

China’s largest Hakka rice terraces — water-mirrored in spring, golden in autumn, and almost unknown to foreign tourists.

Ninety-nine sandstone peaks rising abruptly from flat farmland, with steel walkways bolted to the cliff faces.

One of China’s best-preserved Song city walls — a 3.6km rampart, a floating-boat bridge and Qing shop-house lanes that still feel lived-in.

The source of the Dongjiang River — Hong Kong’s drinking-water supply — with forested trails and waterfalls.

“Little Penglai of Jiangnan” — Danxia cliffs and caves on the Fujian border, wrapped in immortal mythology.

A dramatic Danxia peak — steep red cliffs and a narrow ridge trail for the adventurous.

Deep canyons, red cliffs and waterfalls on the Jiangxi–Fujian border — almost no foreign visitors.

Where Mao established the first rural revolutionary base in 1927 — and, history aside, genuinely beautiful mountain scenery and waterfalls.

The “Cradle of the Republic” — capital of the Chinese Soviet from 1931–34, before the Long March.

The 1927 uprising that marks the founding of the People’s Liberation Army — a good museum in central Nanchang.

Nanchang’s central square and its towering uprising monument.