The Most Beautiful Places in the People's Republic of China
105 places · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in the People's Republic of China are Zhangye Danxia Geopark, Potala Palace and Jiuzhaigou Valley. The list covers 105 places. Last updated 14 October 2026.
China stretches from the Tibetan Plateau and the world's highest mountains down to subtropical karst and the coast, and few countries hold such a range of landforms: glaciated peaks, deep river gorges, sandstone pillar forests and travertine pools. On top of that lies one of the longest continuous civilisations, with imperial tombs, palaces and Buddhist monasteries built over more than two thousand years.
In the west, Mount Kailash is sacred to Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and followers of Bön, and is circled by pilgrims rather than climbed. The Potala Palace rises in tiers of white and red above Lhasa, and Yamdrok Lake curls its turquoise arms between mountains. In Yunnan, the Jinsha River squeezes through Tiger Leaping Gorge beneath Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, and in Sichuan the terraced pools of Huanglong shine yellow, green and blue in a mountain valley. Wulingyuan in Hunan raises thousands of sandstone pillars out of forest and cloud.
The historic and modern capitals add their own forms. The Terracotta Army near Xi'an stands in ranks of thousands of individually modelled soldiers buried with the first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, and the Forbidden City in Beijing was the walled palace of the Ming and Qing emperors for nearly five centuries. Beside it, the National Centre for the Performing Arts floats its titanium and glass dome in a lake. In Macau, the Ruins of St. Paul's leave only the carved stone façade of a Jesuit church, while the twisting Shanghai Tower climbs higher than any other building in the country.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Zhangye Danxia Geopark | Protected area | |
| 2 | Potala Palace | Palace | ✓ |
| 3 | Jiuzhaigou Valley | National park | ✓ |
| 4 | Wulingyuan | Protected area | ✓ |
| 5 | Honghe Hani Rice Terraces | Terraced fields | |
| 6 | Hanging Temple (Xuankong Temple) | Temple | |
| 7 | Li River | River | |
| 8 | Huangshan | Protected area | ✓ |
| 9 | Mount Kailash | Summit | |
| 10 | Terracotta Army | Archaeological site | ✓ |
| 11 | Ruins of St. Paul's | Ruins | ✓ |
| 12 | National Centre for the Performing Arts, Beijing | Opera house | |
| 13 | Forbidden City | Palace | ✓ |
| 14 | Tiger Leaping Gorge | Canyon | ✓ |
| 15 | Shanghai Tower | Skyscraper | |
| 16 | Huanglong | Protected area | ✓ |
| 17 | Jin Mao Tower | Skyscraper | |
| 18 | Jade Dragon Snow Mountain | Mountain | |
| 19 | Yamdrok Lake | Lake | |
| 20 | West Lake | Lake | ✓ |
| 21 | Temple of Heaven | Temple | ✓ |
| 22 | Mogao Caves | Cave | ✓ |
| 23 | Yonghe Temple | Palace | |
| 24 | Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope | Radio telescope | |
| 25 | Great Mosque of Xi'an | Mosque | |
| 26 | Three Pagodas of Chongsheng Temple | Pagoda | |
| 27 | Pagoda of Fogong Temple (Yingxian Wooden Pagoda) | Pagoda | |
| 28 | Canton Tower | Observation tower | |
| 29 | Mount Hua (Huashan) | Mountain | |
| 30 | Summer Palace, Beijing | Palace | ✓ |
01 Zhangye Danxia Geopark
People's Republic of China · 27.5 km from Zhangye38.916° N 100.133° E
Image by eltonjohn1973 from Pixabay In the foothills of the Qilian Mountains, on the old Silk Road corridor of Gansu province in north-west China, the hills are painted in stripes. Bands of red, orange, yellow, cream and grey-green run across ridges and gullies, folded and tilted so that each hill carries its own pattern.
Did you know? The term danxia, meaning vermilion sunglow, was coined in 1928 and borrowed from a third-century poem by Cao Pi.
02 Potala Palace
People's Republic of China · 2.2 km from Lhasa29.658° N 91.117° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by nrxfly from Pixabay The hill the palace stands on has been sacred longer than the palace itself. Tradition holds that in 637, Songtsen Gampo — the Tibetan king credited with unifying the plateau — built the first palace on this outcrop, known as Marpo Ri, or the Red Hill, to mark his marriage to the Chinese princess Wencheng.
Did you know? The palace is named after Mount Potalaka, the mythical mountain home of Avalokiteśvara, the bodhisattva of compassion.
03 Jiuzhaigou Valley
People's Republic of China33.200° N 103.900° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Image by HI-MXWG from Pixabay The name means, roughly, "valley of nine villages," after the Tibetan settlements scattered through it — villages that predate its 1978 designation as a protected scenic reserve by centuries.
Did you know? The protected area climbs from roughly 2,000 metres at the valley mouth to more than 4,700 metres at Mount Ganzigonggai.
04 Wulingyuan
People's Republic of China29.346° N 110.467° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Image by Vined from Pixabay Wulingyuan is a forest of stone. More than 3,000 pillars and peaks of quartz sandstone rise from the valleys of north-western Hunan, many of them over 200 metres tall. Between them run gorges, streams, pools and waterfalls.
Did you know? The Bailong Elevator climbs its 326 metres in about a minute and a half and was certified by Guinness in 2015 as the world's tallest outdoor lift.
05 Honghe Hani Rice Terraces
People's Republic of China23.117° N 102.738° E
Jialiang Gao , www.peace-on-earth.org · CC BY-SA 3.0 On the southern flank of the Ailao Mountains, above the Red River in southern Yunnan, whole mountainsides have been reshaped into staircases of rice paddies.
Did you know? Hani communities appoint ditch keepers to manage irrigation and settle disputes, and households pay them in 'ditch rice' for their upkeep work.
06 Hanging Temple (Xuankong Temple)
People's Republic of China39.660° N 113.708° E
BRUNNER Emmanuel ( Manu25 ) · Public domain Halfway up the sheer west wall of the Jinxia Gorge, at the foot of Mount Heng in northern Shanxi, a cluster of wooden halls and galleries clings to the rock about 75 metres above the valley floor.
Did you know? Its forty small rooms add up to only about 150 square metres of floor space, linked by walkways barely wide enough for one person.
07 Li River
People's Republic of China · 36.2 km from Guilin25.561° N 110.465° E
Image by matressa_ from Pixabay The Li River is the landscape that Chinese painters and poets have been returning to for centuries, and the one printed on the back of the 20-yuan banknote.
Did you know? Between Guilin and Yangshuo the river drops only about 38 metres, from 141 to 103 metres above sea level.
08 Huangshan
People's Republic of China30.125° N 118.167° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Image by 12412158 from Pixabay Huangshan's peaks are granite, not the limestone karst that shapes so much of scenic China, and that matters: granite fractures into sheer, blocky faces rather than smooth curves, which is why the mountain reads as a forest of vertical spires rather than rolling hills.
Did you know? Poets of the Tang to Qing dynasties left more than 20,000 poems about Huangshan, and a whole school of Chinese painting bears its name.
09 Mount Kailash
People's Republic of China31.067° N 81.313° E
Image by ynwangjing from Pixabay Mount Kailash is a mountain that nobody climbs. The 6,638-metre peak in the Gangdise range of western Tibet is sacred to four religions, and the Chinese authorities forbid any ascent; there is no recorded successful climb. Reinhold Messner, offered the chance in the mid-1980s, reportedly turned it down.
Did you know? In 2001 Chinese authorities refused a Spanish expedition's request to climb the peak and declared all climbing on the mountain strictly prohibited.
10 Terracotta Army
People's Republic of China · 24.5 km from Weinan34.385° N 109.273° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by artemtation from Pixabay The farmer who found the Terracotta Army wasn't looking for it.
Did you know? The army was not only soldiers: digs have also revealed acrobats, strongmen, musicians, officials and bronze cranes and ducks set in an underground park.
11 Ruins of St. Paul's
People's Republic of China · 1 km from Macau22.197° N 113.541° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by jazz4jess from Pixabay A stone façade stands alone at the top of a broad staircase in the old centre of Macau. It is all that remains of the Church of Mater Dei, built by the Jesuits between 1602 and 1640 and in its day one of the largest Catholic churches in Asia, together with the College of Saint Paul beside it.
Did you know? The tiers were conceived as stages of the believer's ascent to Paradise, with the pediment at the top standing for the Holy Trinity.
12 National Centre for the Performing Arts, Beijing
People's Republic of China · 0.9 km from Beijing39.903° N 116.384° E
Aurelio Asiain from HIrakata-shi, Osaka, Japan · CC BY-SA 2.0 The National Centre for the Performing Arts rises beside Chang'an Avenue as an enormous shell of titanium and glass floating on a lake. The French architect Paul Andreu, best known for his airport terminals, designed it as a single ellipsoidal dome that holds three separate theatres.
Did you know? The total floor area is about 219,400 square metres, roughly half of it in the main building.
More about National Centre for the Performing Arts, Beijing →
13 Forbidden City
People's Republic of China · 1.6 km from Beijing39.916° N 116.391° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
N509FZ · CC BY-SA 4.0 For almost five centuries the Forbidden City was the physical centre of the Chinese state.
Did you know? Giant stone slabs were probably dragged to the site on sledges along paths of ice slicked with well water.
14 Tiger Leaping Gorge
People's Republic of China27.230° N 100.140° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Image by Charlottees from Pixabay The Jinsha River — the upper Yangtze, before it earns that name downstream — has cut a 15-kilometer gorge between the Yulong and Haba snow-capped ranges so deep that the drop from the highest peaks to the river below runs to nearly 3,800 meters, making it one of the deepest canyons on the planet, whatever the exact…
Did you know? The river through the gorge is an administrative border, with Yulong Naxi Autonomous County on one bank and Shangri-La on the other.
15 Shanghai Tower
People's Republic of China · 6.6 km from Shanghai31.235° N 121.501° E
Ermell · CC0 The Shanghai Tower is the tallest building in China and one of the tallest in the world, a 632-metre spiral of glass that completes the trio of supertall towers in Lujiazui, the financial district on the eastern bank of the Huangpu river in Pudong.
Did you know? The J Hotel, which opened on its 120th floor in 2021, was billed as the highest hotel in the world.
16 Huanglong
People's Republic of China32.741° N 103.831° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Image by ymyphoto from Pixabay Huanglong, the Yellow Dragon, is a high valley in the Minshan range of northern Sichuan where mineral-rich water has built one of the finest travertine landscapes on Earth.
Did you know? Golden Sand Pavement is a single sheet of golden travertine about 1,300 metres long, with water sliding thinly over it.
17 Jin Mao Tower
People's Republic of China · 6.7 km from Shanghai31.237° N 121.501° E
Ermell · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Jin Mao Tower was the first of the supertall buildings that now crowd the Lujiazui peninsula in Pudong, across the Huangpu River from the Bund, and it is still the most graceful of them. 5 metres to the tip of its spire.
18 Jade Dragon Snow Mountain
People's Republic of China · 34.3 km from Lijiang27.098° N 100.175° E
Image by vic1108 from Pixabay Jade Dragon Snow Mountain rises straight out of the high plateau of north-western Yunnan, a jagged crest that holds snow all year above the old town of Lijiang. Its highest summit, Shanzidou, reaches 5,596 metres, and the massif's prominence of over 3,200 metres ranks it among the ultra-prominent peaks of the world.
Did you know? In the Tang era the Nanzhao king Yimouxun proclaimed the mountain the sacred "Northern Peak", and a Northern Peak temple still stands at Baisha.
19 Yamdrok Lake
People's Republic of China28.978° N 90.746° E
Bolun Yan bolun · CC0 Seen from the Kamba La pass at 4,794 metres, Yamdrok Lake appears suddenly below the road as a long ribbon of improbable turquoise, winding between bare brown hills with snow peaks behind.
Did you know? Its abbess, the Samding Dorje Phagmo, has traditionally ranked third in Tibet's religious hierarchy after the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama.
20 West Lake
People's Republic of China · 3.1 km from Hangzhou30.238° N 120.141° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by Vined from Pixabay West Lake, Xihu, lies on the western edge of old Hangzhou, a sheet of shallow water framed on three sides by gentle wooded hills and on the fourth by the city.
Did you know? Sixteenth-century scholars counted about 35 other lakes in China called West Lake, and judged Hangzhou's the most famous of them all.
21 Temple of Heaven
People's Republic of China · 2.4 km from Beijing39.882° N 116.407° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by ccxcn from Pixabay The Temple of Heaven is less a single temple than a walled ceremonial landscape in the south of central Beijing, laid out so that architecture itself would read as a statement about the cosmos.
Did you know? The Jiajing Emperor, who gave the complex its present name, also built matching altars to the Sun, Earth and Moon on Beijing's east, north and west sides.
22 Mogao Caves
People's Republic of China · 16.9 km from Dunhuang40.037° N 94.804° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Zhangzhugang · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Mogao Caves are among the richest treasure houses of Buddhist art anywhere.
Did you know? Wang Yuanlu broke into the hidden chamber on 25 June 1900, and its documents span roughly six centuries, from 406 to 1002.
23 Yonghe Temple
People's Republic of China · 5.2 km from Beijing39.947° N 116.411° E
Image by llsheri1994 from Pixabay The tallest figure in Yonghe Temple, the Lama Temple of Beijing, rises 18 metres under the roof of the last great hall: a standing Maitreya, the Buddha of the future, carved from one trunk of white sandalwood, with roughly another eight metres of the same log sunk into the ground to hold it upright.
Did you know? The future Qianlong Emperor was born inside the compound in 1711.
24 Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope
People's Republic of China25.653° N 106.857° E
SCJiang · CC BY-SA 4.0 In the karst hills of Pingtang County in Guizhou, southern China, a natural bowl-shaped depression called Dawodang has been lined with the largest single-dish radio telescope ever built.
Did you know? The receiver cabin hangs about 140 metres above the dish, suspended from six towers by steel cables that steer it to the focus.
More about Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope →
25 Great Mosque of Xi'an
People's Republic of China · 4.3 km from Xi'an34.263° N 108.937° E
Zossolino · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Great Mosque of Xi'an looks at first like a Chinese temple. Its prayer hall is a timber building with a turquoise-tiled hipped roof, painted wooden bracket sets and a six-columned porch, and the way to it leads through a sequence of walled courtyards with gardens, stone gateways and pavilions.
Did you know? Among its steles is one bearing calligraphy attributed to Mi Fu, the celebrated Song dynasty painter and calligrapher.
26 Three Pagodas of Chongsheng Temple
People's Republic of China · 16.5 km from Dali25.708° N 100.146° E
Image by 多尼的棍仔糖 from Pixabay Three white towers stand in a triangle at the foot of the Cangshan range, looking out over Erhai Lake, just north of the old town of Dali in Yunnan: the Three Pagodas of Chongsheng Temple, the emblem of the region since the days of the Nanzhao and Dali kingdoms.
Did you know? The two smaller pagodas each stand 70 metres from the central tower and 97.5 metres from each other.
27 Pagoda of Fogong Temple (Yingxian Wooden Pagoda)
People's Republic of China39.565° N 113.182° E
Charlie fong · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Pagoda of Fogong Temple in Ying County, Shanxi, is the oldest fully wooden pagoda still standing in China — which is why the whole country simply calls it the Muta, the Timber Pagoda.
Did you know? Its famous height of 67.31 metres was measured in the 1930s by Liang Sicheng's team floor by floor; a 2006 satellite survey gave 65.86 metres.
More about Pagoda of Fogong Temple (Yingxian Wooden Pagoda) →
28 Canton Tower
People's Republic of China · 6.1 km from Guangzhou23.109° N 113.319° E
Image by AndyLeungHK from Pixabay Canton Tower rises 600 m above Guangzhou, a slender lattice of steel twisted like a wrung-out rope.
Did you know? The Skywalk staircase through the waist is billed as the highest and longest open-air staircase in the world.
29 Mount Hua (Huashan)
People's Republic of China34.483° N 110.083° E
Image by LabMike from Pixabay Mount Hua is less a single summit than a cluster of granite towers raised steeply out of the plain of the Wei River in Shaanxi.
Did you know? The mountain was long counted as three peaks; the North Peak was added only after a new trail up the Hua Shan Gorge opened in the 3rd–5th centuries.
30 Summer Palace, Beijing
People's Republic of China · 15.1 km from Beijing39.998° N 116.269° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by hhach from Pixabay The Summer Palace is a landscape painting made with water, earth and timber. 9 square kilometres is Kunming Lake, a body of water dug by hand, and the spoil was heaped up to shape Longevity Hill, about 60 metres high, along its northern shore.
Did you know? The grounds hold over 3,000 historic structures and a collection of more than 40,000 objects, from bronzes and porcelain to furniture.
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 places in the People's Republic of China?
- On our list, Zhangye Danxia Geopark ranks first, followed by Potala Palace and Jiuzhaigou Valley.
- Has anyone climbed Mount Kailash?
- There is no recorded ascent of Mount Kailash. It is held sacred in four religions, and pilgrims instead walk the circuit around its base, a route of about 52 kilometres.
- When was the Terracotta Army discovered?
- The Terracotta Army was discovered in 1974 by farmers digging a well near Xi'an. The figures were buried with Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of a unified China, who died in 210 BC.
- What are the Ruins of St. Paul's in Macau?
- They are the stone façade and front steps of the seventeenth-century Jesuit Church of Mater Dei, which was destroyed by fire in 1835. The carved façade mixes Christian and Asian motifs and is part of Macau's UNESCO-listed historic centre.
- What kinds of places are there to see in the People's Republic of China?
- In our collection, the places in the People's Republic of China are most often mountains (11), archaeological sites (9), lakes (8) and nature sanctuaries (8).
- How many places are on this list in the People's Republic of China?
- The list covers 105 places.