Second-trip favorite

Yangtze River & Three Gorges

长江三峡 · Central China

The classic cross-country route — a cruise through the gorge scenery of a thousand Chinese poems.

March–May and September–November

3–4 days for a cruise

Standard route: downstream cruise Chongqing → Yichang (4 days/3 nights), then rail onward.

Don't miss in Yangtze River & Three Gorges

The experiences Western travelers rate highest here.

The 193-km Qutang-Wu-Xiling stretch between Chongqing and Yichang — sheer cliffs, hanging coffins and river towns.

The world's largest power station — a 185-m-high, 2.3-km-wide wall across the Yangtze, with a ship elevator.

More destinations at the same level of the journey.

West Lake perfection an hour from Shanghai — the landscape that defined Chinese ideas of beauty for a millennium.

The classical garden city — 2,500 years of canals, moon gates and scholar aesthetics, 30 minutes from Shanghai by rail.

Granite peaks above a sea of clouds — named to the New York Times' 52 Places to Go in 2025, now 2.5 h from Shanghai by high-speed rail.

China's ice city — a Russian-built winter wonderland whose Ice and Snow Festival took over Western social media.