Places on the Map

This is the list half of the site: places, sorted, with the practical column that decides whether a visit works. The other half is the knowledge layer, which explains what these things are, plus background on China and the paperwork. Each list below links across to its own page there.

Local Markets (市场)

The largest kind of market in China is closed most days. A country market opens on dates that repeat, such as every date ending in 2, 5 or 8, and the ground stands empty in between. Morning markets, night markets, fishing ports and border markets each keep their own clock.

The province pages list every market with the days and hours it opens, which is the part worth checking before making the trip.

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Museums (博物馆)

Two things decide whether a museum visit in China works, and neither is the collection: most of these are closed on Monday, and most of the free ones want a booking made in advance on a Chinese platform.

The region pages carry both facts for every entry, along with what the museum is for.

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Parks and Scenic Areas (公园与风景区)

The word park covers a forest the size of a small county and a lawn with a pond, and in China it covers both under the same sign. Whether a famous view is fenced and ticketed depends on the place rather than on the fame: West Lake in Hangzhou has no gate, and the larger East Lake in Wuhan has none either.

So the province pages lead with the gate, and say which of these are open at all hours and which close before the light does.

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Everyday Leisure (休闲生活)

What people here do with an ordinary evening: the dance lines on the square at half past six, the card tables under the trees, the birdcages hung in the branches at dawn, the skewers at midnight.

125 of the 211 are things you can walk up and join rather than buy a seat for, and almost all of them are free. 27 are in dialect rather than standard Chinese, which is the part worth checking before you travel for one.

These are activities rather than addresses, so this layer is grouped by what people are doing rather than by province.

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Shopping and Markets (购物)

Two things decide how a purchase goes, and neither is the price on the tag. At a wholesale market the first price is an opening position; in a mall it is the price. Opening with an offer in the wrong one of those is the common mistake.

The second is language: half of these have little or no English. Both facts sit against every entry, along with what the place actually sells.

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Shows and Performance (演出)

What decides whether a show is worth an evening is how much of it survives without Chinese. The pages are sorted on exactly that: 142 of these need no language at all, and 32 are opera where the words are half the work.

The other column is the calendar. Most run to fixed times all year; a handful happen once a year on a date set by the lunar calendar.

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Old Towns and Walled Cities (古城古镇)

Some of these are towns where people live, shop and hang their washing out. Others were emptied of residents and rebuilt as attractions. Both carry the same official label and photographs of the two look alike.

So every entry carries two figures from the survey: how much daily life still goes on there, out of 100, and how far the place has been turned over to visitors, out of 6.

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Heritage Sites (历史遗产)

Sites protected at national level, sorted by what they actually are. A tomb, a city wall and a cave temple ask different things of a visitor, so the grouping follows that rather than the administrative label they share.

Seven kinds, from tombs and fortifications to gardens and grottoes. Where a site also has its own page in the scenic areas layer, the entry links through to it.

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Hiking Routes (徒步路线)

Eighteen of the 123 routes here are banned or closed, and they are listed anyway, because people keep attempting them and the fines and the rescue bills are real. Those entries say so on their first line.

For the rest, the question that decides the trip is whether a foreign passport is enough on its own. It is for 89 of them. The others need a Tibet permit, a border pass or a registered club behind you, which is arranged weeks ahead.

Six kinds, from a day out on a made path to a fortnight carrying camp. Each entry gives distance, climb, top height and a difficulty grade.

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Industrial Belts (产业带)

Places where one product is made or traded at national scale: lighting and LEDs, socks, eyewear, hanfu, wigs, running shoes. A few have a wholesale market attached that anyone can walk into.

Most of them do not. Ten of the fifteen need an appointment made a week or two ahead, and every one caps the size of a group, so this is a layer to arrange rather than to wander into.

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Festivals and Fairs (节庆)

Most of these are set by the lunar calendar, which means the date moves against the calendar on your phone by up to a month from one year to the next. Each entry gives the months it falls in first, and the lunar date after it.

Some are community rites rather than public events. A visitor can usually watch from the edge, and that is a different thing from attending a show.

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Learning a Craft (手作)

Sixty-six workshops where someone will put you to work: clay on a wheel, cloth into an indigo vat, dough pulled into noodles, a New Year print taken off a pear wood block.

Eight of them are taught in English. At most of the rest you follow the hands rather than the words, which is how these crafts are taught to anyone. Eight more are places where you watch and take nothing away, and those say so at the top of the entry.

A second round of checking in 2026 dropped thirteen entries whose only trace was a booking site or a short video, among them nine city calligraphy classes. What is left has an address behind it.

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China Now (现在的中国)

Places that exist because of something done in the last few decades: sand held back, a river moved, a village that found a product, a structure you can walk into. They are not old, and that is the point of the layer.

Every entry starts with what a foreign passport gets you, because for several of these the answer is that you can look but cannot use: hailing a car or paying often needs a Chinese number or a Chinese account.

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Landforms (地貌)

Volcanic ground, coast and islands, and desert. Three kinds of country where the ground itself is the reason to go, rather than anything built on it.

There are only 35, because most of China’s landform destinations are fenced and ticketed and therefore sit in the parks layer instead. This one holds the ground where there is no gate and the landform is the whole of the subject.

Each entry carries the two things that decide a visit: whether the way in is open at all, and the months the place is worth the journey. Several of the island entries stop sailing in typhoon season.

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5A Scenic Areas (5A 景区)

5A is the top grade in the rating that China’s tourism authority gives to visitor sites. The label covers far more than scenery: mountains and lakes, walled towns and temple complexes, grottoes, museums, city landmarks and a few film studios all carry it, which is why two places with the same rating can have nothing else in common.

Each page says what is on the site, how long it takes, how to reach it and when to go.

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