Ten Famous Summer Resorts in China

As summer has come, we need a cool place to avoid summer heat. Below are ten famous summer resorts in China.

1. Changbai Mountain

Changbai Mountain is named so because its main peak, the White-head Mountain is covered with white rocks and thick snow. It is the highest hilly area in the Northeast of China. The highest peak in the mountain range is as high as 2691 meters. There are mountains vertically and horizontally, with a total area of more than 8000 square kilometers. There are mountains vertically and horizontally. Sixteen mountains among them are over 2500 meters above the sea-level, with a total area of more than 8000 square kilometers. It starts with An'tu County in Jilin province in the north, originates from Fusong County in the west and extends to the realm of Korea in the south. Changbai Mountain is famous as same as Five Sacred Mountain in China. Because of the white pumice and snow, it is known as "Millennium loose snow for the years, until the first peak on the earth".

2. Shennongjia

The Shennongjia district in remote northwestern Hubei has the wildest scenery in the province. With heavily forested mountains of fir, pine and hemlock -including something rare in China, old-growth stands -the area is known as a treasure trove of more than 1300 species of medicinal plants. Indeed, the name for the area roughly translated as Shennong’s Ladder to commemorate a legendary emperor, Shennong, who is believed to be the founder of herbal medicine and agriculture. According to the legend, he heard about some special plants growing up high on a precipice, so he cut down a great tree and used it to climb to the site and reach the plants, which he added to his medical collection.

3. The Ancient Town of Wuzhen

On both sides of a slabstone-paved street stand pubs, restaurants, pawnshops, weaving and dyeing establishments, and other businesses, all housed in wooden structures of brown. Rivers and creeks spanned with stone bridges in various designs flow through the town, and the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal passes by. Old waterside houses and outside corridors can be found here and there. This is the ancient town of Wuzhen.

Wuzhen Town, in Tongxiang City, Zhejiang Province, has a history of more than 1,000 years. Of the ancient residential houses, workshops, and stores still standing on the banks of the rivers, 169,600 square meters, accounting for 81.54 percent of the town's total floor area, have remained unchanged, lending an atmosphere of antiquity.

4. Jiuzhaigou

Jiuzhaigou Nature Reserve is located in northern Sichuan in China. The UNESCO World Heritage is famous for miles of attached lakes with brilliant blue and green colors and accompanying waterfalls.

Jiuzhaigou Nature Reserve is a component of the Huanglongsi-Jiuzhaigou National Park. Jiuzhaigou is a major feature of the Sichuan Scenic area which encompasses a 400 km by 100 km area due north of Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province. Jiuzhaigou is at the north eastern end of this Scenic area in the Min Mountains. It is part of the Aba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture. The main scenic area is some 80 km long in the form of a letter ‘Y’ made up of the three valleys – Shuzheng, Rize and Zechawa covering 720 sq km and offering stunning views of lakes, waterfalls, and mountains. The valley derives its name from the fact that there are 9 ancient Tibetan villages within it. Its highest point is 4,700 m above sea level at the end of the valley with the main sight seeing areas between 1,980 m and 3,000 m high.

5. Chengde Mountain Resort

The Mountain Resort, located in the city of Chengde in northeastern Hebei province, is China’s largest imperial garden. Twice the size of Beijing’s Summer Palace, construction spanned nearly ninety years, beginning under Emperor Kangxi in 1703 and lasting through the greater part of Emperor Qianlong’s reign. The Mountain Resort often saw use as a de facto second capital as Kangxi set a precedent followed by Qianlong and a succession of other Qing emperors of spending much of the year at the garden. It used to be a summer resort and hunting ground for emperors of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). They also used the palace to organize martial art competitions and receive the elite of ethnic minority groups from around China. In 1994, the Mountain Resort became a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

6. Tianchi Lake

The Tianshan Mountain is quite rich in water resources, owing to the large winter snowfall and water-preserving forest. Tianchi Lake (Heavenly Lake) is located on the halfway up the Peak Bogeda. A renowned scenic spot, Tianchi, also called Jasper Lake in ancient times, is said to be the place where Emperor Zhoumu and the Queen Mother of the West held court feasts. Tianchi Lake is a moraine lake formed more than 2 million years ago when the Quaternary Period glaciers were active. The thawed snow from the mountains gathered in the lake and the green water shimmers in the soft breeze and warm sunshine and now is very clean. Tianchi is embraced by snowy mountains which are covered by towering dragon spruces. Falling from a northeast cliff, Tianchi water forms a waterfall, which through erosion has created a pool below — called East Little Tianchi. The East Little Tianchi was once very large, but now shrank due to the blocking of the alluvial soil. Tianchi water flows to Sangong River. The Tianshan Mountain is also abundant in forest and animal resources. Apart from the dragon spruces, condense-leaf poplars and birches, there are extensively-spread medicinal herbs or edible plants.

7. Shangri-La

Shangri-La is the "Eden in dream". Since it first appeared in British novelist James Hilton’s Lost Horizon in the 1939, it has been associated with the mystique of a place which could not possibly exist here on Earth. In Tibetan, Shangri-La means the "sun and moon in heart", an ideal home only found in heaven. There the lofty and continuous snowy mountains, endless grasslands, steep and grand gorges, azure lakes and the bucolic villages always leave a deep impression on visitors.

8. Guilin

East or west, Guilin landscape is the best. Guilin is one of China's most picturesque cities, situated in the northeast of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China on the west bank of the Lijiang River (also called the Li River). Its name means "forest of Sweet Osmanthus", owing to the large number of fragrant Sweet Osmanthus trees located in the city. Its scenery is reputed by many Chinese to be the "finest under heaven", or directly from Chinese: "the mountains and rivers in Guilin are the number one under the heaven."

9. Qinghai Lake

Qinghai Lake , formerly known as Koko Nur or Kukunor, is a saline lake situated in the province of Qinghai and is the largest lake in China. The names Qinghai and Koko Nur both mean "Blue/Teal Sea/Lake" in Chinese and Mongolian. It is located about 100 kilometres west of the provincial capital of Xining at 3,205 m (10,515 feet) above sea level in a depression of the Tibetan Plateau in the cultural area known to ethnic Tibetans as Amdo. Twenty-three rivers and streams empty into Qinghai Lake, most of them seasonal. Five permanent streams provide 80% of total influx.

10. Lushan Mountain

Lushan Mountain lies in the south of Jiujiang City, Jiangxi Province, about 36km away from the center of the city. It is on the north bank of Poyang Lake, the south bank of the Yangtze River. It stretches about 25km from the south to the north and 20km from the east to the west. It is among the first Key Scenic Districts as "National Geopark of China", which was included in the UNESCO world heritage list in 1996.