The Most Beautiful Mountains in the People's Republic of China
11 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful mountains in the People's Republic of China are Mount Kailash, Jade Dragon Snow Mountain and Mount Hua (Huashan). The list covers 11 mountains. Last updated 13 October 2026.
China's mountains span two worlds. In the west, the Tibetan Plateau and the deep north–south ranges of the Hengduan region carry glaciated giants above 7,000 metres, many of them sacred to Tibetan Buddhists. In the east, granite and sandstone peaks of more modest height were shaped by rain and frost into pillars and cliffs, and for two thousand years they have been climbed by emperors, Taoist hermits and poets. Ink painting and pilgrimage made these mountains part of Chinese culture long before anyone thought of them as scenery.
Mount Kailash in Tibet, a dark pyramid revered by four religions, has never been climbed; pilgrims walk around it instead. The Meili Snow Mountains, crowned by Kawagarbo, are equally sacred and also unclimbed. Mount Gongga is the highest peak in Sichuan, Namcha Barwa marks the eastern end of the Himalaya where the Yarlung Tsangpo bends around it, and Khan Tengri in the Tian Shan is famous for its marble summit pyramid that glows red at sunset.
Closer to the old heartland, Mount Hua is one of the Five Great Mountains, known for steep stairways cut into granite and Taoist temples on its peaks. Mount Sanqing, another Taoist mountain, is a forest of granite pillars, while Fanjingshan in Guizhou rises as a forested island of rare plants and monkeys. Tianmen Mountain is pierced by a huge natural arch, Mount Siguniang lines up four snowy summits, and Jade Dragon Snow Mountain rises above the old town of Lijiang.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mount Kailash | Summit | |
| 2 | Jade Dragon Snow Mountain | Mountain | |
| 3 | Mount Hua (Huashan) | Mountain | |
| 4 | Khan Tengri | Mountain | |
| 5 | Mount Sanqing | Mountain | ✓ |
| 6 | Mount Gongga | Mountain | |
| 7 | Tianmen Mountain | Mountain | |
| 8 | Fanjingshan | Mountain | |
| 9 | Mount Siguniang | Mountain | |
| 10 | Namcha Barwa | Mountain | |
| 11 | Meili Snow Mountains | Mountain |
01 Mount Kailash
People's Republic of China31.067° N 81.313° E
Image by ynwangjing from Pixabay The pilgrimage season from India runs roughly from June to September.
Did you know? Asked in 1936 by the climber Herbert Tichy whether Kailash could be climbed, a local official said only a sinless man could, by turning into a bird.
02 Jade Dragon Snow Mountain
People's Republic of China · 34.3 km from Lijiang27.098° N 100.175° E
Image by vic1108 from Pixabay The summit itself has been climbed only once. In 1938 the Australian mountaineer Marie Byles led an expedition that was turned back by bad weather; Shanzidou was finally reached on 8 May 1987 by the Americans Phil Peralta-Ramos and Eric Perlman, who worked up snow gullies and limestone walls under high avalanche danger. The botanist Joseph Rock spent years living near the mountain, writing about it and about the Naxi, and his work later drew Bruce Chatwin, whose essay brought a wave of travellers.
Did you know? For the Naxi the mountain is the embodiment of Sanduo, their protector god, honoured each year with a festival on the eighth day of the second lunar month.
03 Mount Hua (Huashan)
People's Republic of China34.483° N 110.083° E
Image by LabMike from Pixabay Much of Huashan's fame today comes from how it is climbed. The traditional route from the valley ascends by thousands of steps and narrow passages, and a few simple lodgings on the peaks let walkers stay overnight on the mountain. On the South Peak hangs the Plank Walk, a line of boards bolted to a vertical cliff face that ends at a tiny shrine in a hollow of the rock; it is an optional detour rather than part of the main route, and crossing it requires a safety harness.
Did you know? The mountain drew seekers of immortality, because rare medicinal plants grew on it and powerful drugs were said to be found there.
04 Khan Tengri
People's Republic of China42.211° N 80.175° E
Jaan Künnap · CC BY-SA 4.0 Non-climbers reach its foot by helicopter or trek up the Engilchek glacier. There are two base camps: the South Engilchek camp at about 4,000 m on the moraine, facing both Khan Tengri and Victory Peak, and a northern camp on the North Engilchek glacier, directly below the peak's north face. The peak also appears on the Kyrgyz 100-som banknote.
Did you know? A team of seven Kazakh climbers made the first winter ascent of Khan Tengri on 7 February 1992.
05 Mount Sanqing
People's Republic of China28.952° N 118.052° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Image by Afra_Jiang from Pixabay The forests are rich: more than 2,300 plant species grow on the mountain, which served as a refuge for plants and animals during the Ice Age, and among its wildlife are Tibetan macaques and pangolins.
Did you know? According to tradition, the alchemist Ge Hong worked on the mountain in the Eastern Jin dynasty in the 4th century, and a well attributed to him is still shown.
06 Mount Gongga
People's Republic of China29.596° N 101.879° E
Kogo · CC BY-SA 3.0 Its height long fascinated outsiders. In 1929 the explorer Joseph Rock miscalculated it at more than 9,000 metres and cabled the National Geographic Society to announce the world's highest mountain, a claim he later scaled back. An expedition led by the Swiss geographer Eduard Imhof measured it at about 7,590 metres in 1930, and in 1932 a small American team surveyed it again; two of them, Terris Moore and Richard Burdsall, reached the summit by the northwest ridge. Their book, Men Against the Clouds, became a mountaineering classic. The most recent survey, in 2023, fixed the height at 7,508.9 metres.
Did you know? Surveyors suggested that the 2008 Sichuan earthquake and melting ice may have helped lower the summit height recorded in 2023.
07 Tianmen Mountain
People's Republic of China29.053° N 110.483° E
xiquinhosilva · CC BY 2.0 The mountain's sheer walls have drawn stunt performers for years. The French climber Alain Robert scaled the cliff below the arch without ropes in 2007, commemorated by a plaque; wingsuit pilots have flown through the cave, and the World Wingsuit League held its first championships here. Drivers have raced up Tongtian Avenue against the clock and in 2018 a car was driven up the 999 steps. For ordinary visitors the attraction is simpler: the views from the cliff paths over the forested ridges of the Wuling range and the city below.
Did you know? In December 1999 aerobatic pilots, among them Hungary's Péter Besenyei, flew small planes straight through the arch in a show broadcast live around the world.
08 Fanjingshan
People's Republic of China27.920° N 108.690° E
Mande5255881 · CC BY-SA 3.0 For the visitor the experience is a vertical one. A cableway climbs from the Yuao station on the Jiangkou side, after which some two thousand steps lead on to Mushroom Rock and the foot of the Golden Summit. Those who prefer to walk the old pilgrim route face many thousands of steps up the forested ridges, which is how the summit was reached for centuries.
Did you know? The Fanjingshan fir, which grows on no other mountain, was described by botanists only in 1984.
09 Mount Siguniang
People's Republic of China31.106° N 102.902° E
Image by finnesia from Pixabay The mountain sits in Ngawa Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture, on the border of Xiaojin and Wenchuan counties, and is surrounded by a national park of about 2,000 square kilometres. Three long valleys run up towards the peaks: Changping, Haizi and Shuangqiao, with meadows, forest, lakes and yak pastures beneath the glaciers. Since 2006 the area has been part of the Sichuan Giant Panda Sanctuaries World Heritage Site, which protects a core part of the giant panda's remaining wild habitat.
Did you know? With a topographic prominence of about 2,570 metres, Yaomei ranks among the world's ultra-prominent peaks.
10 Namcha Barwa
People's Republic of China29.631° N 95.055° E
Cherry933 · CC BY-SA 3.0 British surveyors fixed the peak's position in 1912, but the region stayed almost unvisited for decades. Chinese mountaineers began exploring routes in the 1980s without reaching the top, and after Batura Sar in the Karakoram was climbed in 1976, Namcha Barwa was considered the highest unclimbed independent mountain in the world. A joint Chinese-Japanese expedition reconnoitred it in 1990; a second reached 7,460 metres in 1991 but lost a member in an avalanche. On 30 October 1992 a third joint expedition, climbing the south ridge over the intermediate summit of Nai Peng, put eleven climbers on top. No further ascents have been recorded.
Did you know? China's National Geography magazine once ranked Namcha Barwa first among the ten most beautiful mountains in China.
11 Meili Snow Mountains
People's Republic of China28.438° N 98.683° E
Image by arthur___li from Pixabay What a visitor sees depends on patience and season. The classic view is from the terraces of Feilaisi, above the Mekong gorge near the county town of Deqin, where rows of white chortens and prayer flags frame the whole range; from October to May the chances of a clear sky are best, and on the rare dawns when the summits catch the first sun they turn gold above a valley still in shadow. The Mingyong Glacier pours down the east face towards the Mekong and ends unusually low, close to subtropical forest, though it has retreated markedly in recent decades. The village of Yubeng lies in a high valley directly beneath the peaks.
Did you know? The name Meili comes from the Tibetan Menri, mountains of medicinal herbs; a 1950s army mapping error stretched the name of a lower range to cover the whole massif.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful mountains in the People's Republic of China?
- On our list, Mount Kailash ranks first, followed by Jade Dragon Snow Mountain and Mount Hua (Huashan).
- What are the Five Great Mountains of China?
- They are Mount Tai in the east, Mount Hua in the west, Mount Heng in Hunan in the south, Mount Heng in Shanxi in the north and Mount Song in the centre. They have been places of imperial ritual and Taoist pilgrimage for more than two thousand years.
- Why has Kawagarbo never been climbed?
- Kawagarbo, the highest peak of the Meili Snow Mountains, is sacred to Tibetan Buddhists. Early attempts failed, including a 1991 Sino-Japanese expedition in which seventeen climbers died in an avalanche, and climbing it was later prohibited.
- What is Heaven's Gate on Tianmen Mountain?
- Heaven's Gate is a huge natural arch high in the cliffs of Tianmen Mountain near Zhangjiajie in Hunan. It is reached by a long stairway of 999 steps, a number associated with longevity in Chinese tradition.
- How many mountains are on this list in the People's Republic of China?
- The list covers 11 mountains.
- Which is the highest of the mountains in the People's Republic of China?
- Namcha Barwa (People's Republic of China) is the highest on this list, at 7,782 metres.