Hiking in China: Who Lets You Walk

01The Gate Comes First

How does hiking work in China, and do you need a permit?

Before you ask how hard a Chinese trail is, ask who lets you walk it. Four doors, loosest to tightest: the free city hill you reach by metro; the ticketed park where the path is a stone staircase; the mountain with two entrances at two prices; the open land with no gate at all where you must still file with a county office or hire a licensed guide; and the route that is simply shut this year. Inside the gate the path is usually built. Outside it, the path is earth, and so is the paperwork.

Why the door decides everything. It sets the price, the surface under your boots, whether you may go alone, and whether a foreign passport changes the answer. Of the routes on this page, about half pass through a paying scenic area 景区 at some point, by the survey's count. Sixteen need a filing or a licensed guide even though nothing bars the way. Eighteen are closed or banned outright as of September 2026. Ninety-three are open to any visitor with a passport and nothing else.

What is on this page. One hundred and twenty-eight routes in twenty-four provinces, and the object is the route, not the mountain: one mountain can carry three of them, one route can cross three reserves. They sort into six kinds, which is also the order of the page: fifty-one day walks, twenty-one light multi-day routes with a bed at the end of each day, twenty-five camping routes, eight pilgrim circuits, fifteen on grass, sand, coast and forest, and eight that exist here only as warnings.

The awareness gap is the second thing to know. Six routes are genuinely known abroad: Zhangjiajie 张家界, Huashan 华山, Yangshuo 阳朔, the Longji 龙脊梯田 terraces, Taishan 泰山 and Tiger Leaping Gorge, by the survey's scoring of English-language coverage. Everything the Chinese outdoor world argues about, the Wusun 乌孙古道 road, Genie 格聂, Langta 狼塔, Karajun 喀拉峻, scores at or near zero in the same corpus. That asymmetry is the reason this page exists: the famous six are well covered in English already, and the useful work is the other hundred and twenty-two.

How to read a card. Every route carries a start and end coordinate, the 2026 open status with the office that issued it, the ticket and shuttle 观光车 prices, the season window, what a foreign passport can and cannot do, and the accidents on record with their years. Prices and closures move; the page says which office to check.

02Why Mountains Are Staircases

Why are Chinese mountain trails made of stone steps?

A foreign walker's first surprise in China is the surface. On the famous mountains the path is not a trail but a flight of stone steps, thousands of them, laid end to end from the gate to the summit, with tea sellers on the landings and a cable car 索道 running overhead.

Where the steps come from. Most of the old mountains were pilgrim routes and incense roads before they were scenic areas 景区: the stairs were cut so that worshippers, porters and sedan chairs could get up, and the scenic area inherited them, widened them and put a handrail on. The result is that the effort is real but the navigation is nil. Taishan 泰山 climbs one thousand three hundred and fifty metres in nine and a half kilometres and every metre of it is paved, by the survey's card. Emeishan 峨眉山 is twenty-eight kilometres of steps from the temple at the foot to the summit. The west slope of Changbaishan 长白山 is a stair of one thousand four hundred and forty-two; Nanwutai 南五台 outside Xi'an 西安 counts one thousand eight hundred and eighty-eight to its terrace.

What that means for your legs. Stone steps punish knees on the way down far more than earth does, and they set a rhythm you cannot change: no switchbacks to ease the grade, no soft ground. Walkers who are comfortable with twenty kilometres of forest trail often find a nine-kilometre staircase harder. The cable car is the standard answer, and most walkers take it down; on Taishan the descent cable car costs about a hundred yuan by the survey, and on Huashan 华山 two of the three ridges have one.

The exception that proves it. Huashan keeps the chains: the granite ridges above the north peak are climbed on iron chains set into the rock, with the plank walk on the south face bolted to a cliff, and the survey notes the walk is now a queued attraction with two harness points. Where the rock refuses a staircase, China builds a via ferrata instead. Earth paths begin where the ticket gate ends, which is the subject of most of the rest of this page.

A practical note. On a staircase mountain, poles and knee support matter more than boots, and the crowd matters more than either. The stairs are also why the night climb works: Taishan at two in the morning is a line of head torches going up a lit staircase, and the survey rates it the most reliable sunrise walk in the country for a first-time visitor.

03The Free Hills in Eight Cities

Where can you hike near Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Hangzhou, Xi'an and Kunming?

The walk most foreign visitors will actually do is the one they can reach by metro on a free morning. Eight gateway cities have twenty-four of them on this page, and the pattern repeats: a city forest park, free or nearly free, open from dawn, with a summit view of the skyline and a noodle shop at the bottom.

What they cost. Baiyun Mountain 白云山, the city hill of Guangzhou 广州 in Guangdong 广东, charges five yuan and stays open around the clock, by the survey's card. Shenzhen 深圳's Wutong Mountain 梧桐山 is free and tops out at nine hundred and forty-three metres, the highest point in the city, with Hong Kong's hills visible across the water. Huolu Mountain 火炉山 in the same city, Longquan Mountain 龙泉山 in Chengdu 成都, the Ten-Mile Langdang ridge above West Lake 西湖 in Hangzhou 杭州 and Changchong Mountain 长虫山 in Kunming 昆明 are all free. Where a park does charge, it is usually twenty to seventy yuan, and the shuttle 观光车 bus inside is often compulsory.

How you get there. Huolu Mountain sits at the end of a Guangzhou metro line. Wutong Mountain, Longquan Mountain, the West Lake ridge, Kunming's Western Hills and Changchong Mountain are all bus or metro plus a short walk. The cards give the line, the stop, the last bus back and a taxi price, because on a city hill the transport is the plan and the walking takes care of itself.

What they are good for. Half a day, a view, and a first read of how Chinese people use a mountain: retirees on the stairs at six in the morning, singing groups at the pavilions, families with thermos flasks, and on Sunday a queue at the summit marker. The Beijing three, the Jingxi caravan road 京西古道 with hoof-worn stone, the Baihe gorge 白河峡谷, and the Miaofeng 妙峰山 incense road, are the ones that come with history attached.

The catches. Shenzhen's Qiniang Mountain 七娘山 closes its gate to new entrants at four in the afternoon and Paiya Mountain 排牙山 has scrambling sections that need hands, so both rate a step above an easy walk. Kunming's Changchong Mountain is open only between the middle of June and the first of December, closed the rest of the year for fire season. Beijing's Lingshan 灵山 and Haituo Mountain 海坨山 are partly managed: one ridge is open and the main summit is not. And the free hills are where most urban rescue call-outs happen, at Wutong Mountain, Qiniang Mountain and the Xi'an 西安 valleys above all, because they feel like parks and are not.

04Two Doors, Two Prices

Why do Chinese mountains have two entrances at two different prices?

On a lot of Chinese mountains there is more than one way in, and the doors charge different money for the same ridge. Knowing which door the locals use is worth more than any gear advice on this page.

Wugongshan 武功山 is the clearest case. The grass ridge in Jiangxi 江西 that Chinese walkers rate for its sunrise can be entered at the front gate, where the ticket runs sixty to seventy yuan by the survey, or from Shenzi village, where a sanitation fee of about ten yuan gets you onto the same traverse. Both are legal. The village route is longer and unpaved, which is exactly what the two-day traverse wants.

Tiger Leaping Gorge splits the other way. The High Trail along the north wall costs nothing to walk, by most route guides, though the Yunnan 云南 tourism site quotes sixty-five yuan for it, and the two claims sit side by side on the card; the paid parts are the viewing platform above the upper gorge at forty-five yuan and the managed staircases down to the water at ten to fifteen. The gorge is where the distinction matters most, because the unmanaged paths at the bottom are where two people died in February 2026, by news reports on the card, while the signed High Trail above has no comparable record.

Provinces charge separately. Tiantangzhai 天堂寨 straddles Anhui and Hubei 湖北 and the two entrances price the same peak at sixty-two and one hundred and twelve yuan by the survey's card. The Huihang 徽杭古道 ancient road runs from Anhui into Zhejiang and each end sells its own ticket.

The shuttle 观光车 is the hidden cost. In many parks the gate ticket is only the first payment: Daming Mountain 大明山 in Zhejiang has a free gate and a compulsory twenty-five yuan shuttle; Nanwutai 南五台 charges forty for the return bus; Zhangjiajie 张家界 sells a four-day combined ticket at two hundred and thirty-nine which is the only sensible way to use the park. Cards list the ticket and the shuttle separately for this reason.

How to use this. Before booking, look at the card's gate line and ask three questions. Is there a village entrance. Is the shuttle compulsory. Does the ticket last more than one day. The answers change a Wugongshan weekend from about two hundred yuan to about fifty, and they decide whether you walk on earth or on pavement.

05The Six You Already Know

Which Chinese hikes are well known outside China?

Six walks on this page carry real recognition outside China, and each got it a different way. They are worth knowing partly because they are good and partly because knowing why they are famous tells you what the other hundred and twenty-two are missing.

Zhangjiajie 张家界, by film. The quartzite pillars of the Wulingyuan 武陵源 park scored highest of anything on this page in the survey's English-coverage check, and the reason is a film: the floating mountains of Avatar were drawn from them. Inside the park the walking is genuine, the Golden Whip Stream and the Yuanjiajie and Tianzi ridges linking up to about eighteen kilometres, but so is the queue.

Huashan 华山, by photograph. The plank walk bolted to the south face is one of the most circulated images of China on the English internet. The mountain behind it is a real traverse: five peaks, granite, iron chains, eighteen to twenty-three kilometres with up to two thousand four hundred metres of climbing by the survey's card, and the plank walk itself is a short detour with a harness and a queue.

Yangshuo 阳朔 and the Longji 龙脊梯田 terraces, by banknote. The karst reach of the Li River 漓江 is printed on the twenty yuan note, and the Yulong River 遇龙河 walk beside it is sixteen flat kilometres past the same scenery. The Longji rice terraces two hours away are a fifteen-kilometre walk on six-hundred-year-old field embankments between Zhuang 壮族 and Red Yao villages, by the card.

Taishan 泰山, by ritual. The most climbed mountain in China and the most reliable sunrise: up the lit staircase through the night, a cold wait at the top, and a cable car 索道 down.

Tiger Leaping Gorge, by backpacker history. Halfway House on the High Trail has been a stop for foreign self-organised walkers since the nineteen nineties, and the survey notes you will hear more English than Chinese on its balcony. It remains the best first multi-day walk in China for a foreign visitor: two days, a bed each night, no permit.

Pudacuo 普达措, by the word national park 国家公园. Six kilometres of boardwalk 栈道 at three thousand six hundred metres beside two lakes in Shangri-La 香格里拉, closed on Mondays; it is on this list because the English name travels, not because the walking is hard.

What the six have in common. Every one of them is inside a gate, signed, and walkable without a word of Chinese. That is also their ceiling: the routes that Chinese walkers argue about start where these end.

06Sleeping in Villages

Which multi-day hikes in China let you sleep in a village instead of a tent?

The best walking in China for a visitor with a week is the kind where you carry a day pack and sleep in a village. Twenty-one routes on this page work that way, and they are the bridge between the ticketed staircase and the tent.

Tiger Leaping Gorge, two days. Twenty-two kilometres along a shelf two thousand metres above the Jinsha 金沙 River, with Jade Dragon 玉龙雪山 and Haba 哈巴雪山 snow mountains facing each other across it. Guesthouses at Naxi 纳西族 Family, the Tea Horse, Halfway and Tina's; beds about eighty to a hundred and fifty yuan by the survey. No permit, yellow arrows on the rocks, and the single most recommended route on this page for a first multi-day walk.

Yubeng 雨崩, three days, and only one branch. The Tibetan village under Kawagarbo 卡瓦格博 is reached on foot or by off-road taxi, and in 2026 only the Sacred Waterfall branch is legal: the Ice Lake, the Sacred Lake, the caterpillar-fungus path and the Nise route were closed by four Deqin county departments in October 2025 and the closure was restated in February 2026, by the card. Four people were trapped on the closed Sacred Lake path in February 2026 and took more than fifty rescuers two days to bring out.

Wugongshan 武功山, two days on grass. Waist-high alpine meadow along a ridge, the sunrise that Chinese walkers call the best in the south, forty-five kilometres end to end, tents or the huts. Summer thunderstorms are the real hazard.

Kanas 喀纳斯, four days in Xinjiang 新疆. Jiadengyu to Hemu 禾木 to the Black Lake to Kanas Lake, about seventy kilometres, sleeping in guesthouses and felt tents, open roughly June to August, by the card. The park runs five marked routes; the Baihaba 白哈巴 section needs a border permit 边境证.

Wutaishan 五台山, the great circuit. Fifty-two kilometres over five flat summits at about three thousand metres, walked clockwise by monks and lay pilgrims together, with temple dormitory beds at fifty to a hundred and fifty yuan. Open in the warm season, shut in winter. The joke in Chinese hiking circles that pairs it with a banned route is discussed in block ten.

Yading 亚丁 and Dangling 党岭. The three sacred lakes at Yading are a day or two of boardwalk 栈道 and horse track under three six-thousand-metre peaks; Dangling in Danba 丹巴 opens between late April and mid-November and gives a lake and a camp at the top of a short valley.

What they share. A bed, a hot meal, no tent, and a gate somewhere on the route. What they ask is two to four days and the willingness to book in season.

07No Gate, But Ask First

Do you need permission to hike in Sichuan and Yunnan when there is no ticket gate?

Twenty-five routes on this page need a tent, and most of them sit on land with nothing to stop you walking in. What stops you is paperwork: a reserve that requires a filing, a county that requires a licensed guide, or a commercial operator that will not take an unregistered walker. The absence of a gate is not the absence of a rule.

The Gongga 贡嘎 circuit is the model. Eighty kilometres over five or six days around the seven-thousand-five-hundred-metre peak of Minya Konka 贡嘎山 in Sichuan 四川, no ticket anywhere, and a filing with the national reserve before you start, by the survey's card. Commercial groups run it for roughly two to three and a half thousand yuan a head. The walking is meadow and moraine at up to four thousand nine hundred metres and the hazard is altitude, not navigation.

The Rock route asks for more. Fifty to seventy kilometres from Muli 木里 in Liangshan prefecture, Sichuan, to Yading 亚丁, following the path the botanist Joseph Rock 约瑟夫·洛克 travelled in the nineteen twenties. It needs a filing, a licensed guide and a horse team, by the card, and it carries the longest accident list of any route here. The classic old variant was closed in 2026 and the current line is the shorter one.

Changping to Bipeng, the one with a direction. Thirty-six kilometres under the north face of the six-thousand-two-hundred-and-fifty-metre Yaomei 幺妹峰 peak in Aba. Walked from Changping it is open with a filing; walked in reverse it is not approved, and a walker died on a reverse attempt in October 2025 by the card's record.

Meili 梅里雪山 north slope and the village fee. The Yagong to Pojun circuit of about fifty kilometres is run by the village collective with a compulsory guide, because the route sits in the core of the Three Parallel Rivers world heritage area.

Nianqing East 念青东, the long one. The Qutong 曲通 line in Bomi 波密 county runs one hundred and ten to one hundred and forty-four kilometres over four passes above five thousand metres in eight to ten days, and is open to a foreign passport without a Tibet 西藏 travel permit because Bomi is not a border county; the guide and the logistics are still the practical gate.

The rescue clause. Sichuan and several other provinces now charge for rescues from unapproved entry, and the cards carry the provincial wording where it exists. It is the cheapest reason to file: the filing is free and the rescue is not.

Practical shape. For all of these the sequence is the same. Read the card's status line, contact the county or reserve office it names, join an operator if the card says a guide is compulsory, and treat the season window as a hard limit.

08Tibet and the Paperwork

What permits does a foreign visitor need to trek in Tibet and border areas?

Sixteen routes on this page need a document before they need a rucksack. Eleven of them are in Tibet 西藏, and the rest are in border prefectures of Xinjiang 新疆, Yunnan 云南 and Qinghai 青海. The rules are administered locally and they change, so this section describes the shape of the process and promises no outcome.

What Tibet asks. A foreign visitor travelling in Tibet arranges a permit through a travel agency and travels with a guide; the agency handles the paperwork and the itinerary has to match it. Border counties add a second permit on top. Kailash 冈仁波齐 sits in Ali prefecture and needs both, plus the guide; since August 2025 the circuit has also had a daily cap of two thousand people, by the survey's card. Motuo 墨脱 and Lhozhag 洛扎 are border counties and work the same way. Independent walking in these places is not a realistic plan for a foreign passport, and the cards say so plainly, with no hinted workaround.

What Xinjiang asks. The Ili and Aksu mountain districts are border management areas, and the permit question there is separate from whether the route is open at all; several of them are closed outright in 2026, which block nine covers. Baihaba 白哈巴 on the Kanas 喀纳斯 circuit needs a border permit 边境证 even though the rest of the route does not.

Where a passport is enough. Most of Sichuan 四川 west of Chengdu 成都, including Gongga 贡嘎, Yading 亚丁, Siguniang 四姑娘山 and Genie 格聂, has no Tibet-permit requirement, by the cards. Bomi 波密 in Tibet, for the Nianqing East 念青东 route, is not a border county. Qinghai's Amnye Machen 阿尼玛卿 circuit is handled as an agency filing, by its card.

The pilgrim circuits and their direction. Kailash is walked clockwise by Buddhists and Hindus and counter-clockwise by Bon practitioners; the Bon sacred mountain at Bonri 苯日神山 near Nyingchi is walked counter-clockwise for the same reason. The Meili 梅里雪山 outer circuit takes ten to thirteen days over one hundred and eighty-five kilometres and is walked clockwise. Pilgrims prostrating full-length along the road are a normal sight on all of them; walkers pass on the outside and do not photograph faces without asking.

The honest caveat. Every document rule on this page was checked in September 2026 with the office named on the card. Permit practice in these regions has changed more than once a year in the recent past. Check again in the month you travel, and build a plan that survives a no.

09The Doors That Shut

Which famous Chinese trekking routes are closed in 2026?

Eleven routes on this page were walkable a few years ago and are not now. The closures are not one policy but a run of separate county and reserve decisions, and together they have taken most of the long classic traverses out of play.

Xinjiang 新疆 lost its three great roads. The Wusun 乌孙古道 ancient road, the Xiate 夏塔古道 ancient road and the North Tianshan line are all closed in 2026 under whole-district bans on mountain trekking issued by Tekes 特克斯 and Zhaosu 昭苏 counties, by the cards. The Langta 狼塔 C route in Hutubi 呼图壁 has been closed since 26 June 2024 and the closure has been restated twice since. These four were the backbone of Chinese long-distance walking; the Wusun road topped a 2022 readers' poll of the country's ten best routes, by the survey's note on that list.

Sichuan 四川 closed two core zones. Genie 格聂 has been off limits since 2021 under an open-ended ban on crossing the core and buffer of the Haizishan reserve, with fines restated in 2026. Qizanggou 七藏沟 was closed by a Songpan 松潘 county notice in September 2024 and violators were penalised again in June 2026.

Tibet 西藏 closed the east face of Everest. The Kama valley 嘎玛沟 has been shut since March 2026 by the Tingri 定日 branch of the Qomolangma reserve, which bars trekking in the core and buffer zones. The administration told a news outlet that no trekking there had ever been formally approved. The route is on this page as a closed card with its history intact, alongside the seasonal warning card for the monsoon 季风 window.

And four more, for four different reasons. Xiaowutai 小五台 in Hebei 河北 is closed year-round as a reserve core zone. Chuandingding 船底顶 in Guangdong 广东 has been off limits since May 2023 under a lizard reserve. Jiudingshan 九顶山 in Sichuan is closed for all of 2026 with no reopening date. Nianbaoyuze 年保玉则 in Qinghai 青海 has been shut since 2018 for ecological recovery, and is often confused with Lianbaoyeze 莲宝叶则 on the Sichuan side, which is an open scenic area 景区.

What drove it. Two things moved at once. Reserve law tightened, and the penalty for entering a core zone rose sharply, with a ceiling of one hundred thousand yuan under the current rules by several of the cards. At the same time the accident and rescue bills grew with the sport's popularity. The result is a boundary that now moves faster than guidebooks do, which is why every card on this page names the issuing office and the date.

10The Eight That Kill

Which Chinese hiking routes are banned, and why?

Eight routes appear on this page only as warnings. They are listed because they are famous in Chinese outdoor circles and because a visitor who searches for them in English will find scenery and not the ban.

Aotai 鳌太线 is the one to understand. The forty-eight kilometre traverse along the main ridge of the Qinling 秦岭, between Ao Mountain and Taibai 太白山, runs above three thousand metres with no supply point and a stone-field plateau where fog removes every reference. The published accident review counted forty-six people dead or missing on it between 2012 and 2017; a 2021 report by People's Daily Online put the running total above fifty. It was banned in April 2018 by the Taibaishan reserve administration and the provincial forest police, and again by the Meixian and Taibai county governments that October. In January 2026 five walkers entered past a station, three died, and the survivors were fined between ten and twenty-five thousand yuan each, by state broadcaster reports on the card. A solo walker in February 2025 cost a forty-person search and paid more than eighty thousand yuan in rescue costs.

The joke you will see. The highest-scoring comment under a popular Chinese video ranking the country's best treks recommends Aotai to beginners, with more than two thousand likes. It is sarcasm, and so are the variants about doing it as a speed run or "walking in, not walking out". Anyone reading the comment section in translation should know that the route being recommended most warmly is the one that has killed the most people.

The empty quarters. Changtang 羌塘 in northern Tibet 西藏, Hoh Xil 可可西里 in Qinghai 青海 and Lop Nur 罗布泊 in Xinjiang 新疆 are hundreds of kilometres of uninhabited high desert, closed to entry, with fines up to one hundred thousand yuan and, in one Hoh Xil case on the card, eight hundred thousand. Langta 狼塔 V has been closed with the rest of the Langta road since 2024. The Kama valley 嘎玛沟 in the monsoon 季风 carries its own card because the season, not the route, is what kills there: a snowstorm in early October 2025 trapped close to a thousand walkers and took a rescue operation of more than nine hundred people.

Heizhugou 黑竹沟, the local legend. The undeveloped core of this Sichuan 四川 gorge, known in China as the Bermuda of the Sichuan basin for its disappearances, is closed; the developed section is a normal day walk and stays open.

Why they are here at all. A warning that is not findable is not a warning. Each card leads with the ban, names the office and the year, lists the accidents with sources, and gives an easier alternative. None of them gives route directions.

11Grass, Sand, Coast and Forest

Where can you walk on grassland, desert, coast and forest in China?

Fifteen routes on this page are not about mountains at all, and they follow different rules: on grassland the gate is a herder's fence, in the desert it is a vehicle, on the coast it is the tide, and in the forest it is the reserve boundary.

Grassland. Hulunbuir 呼伦贝尔 in Inner Mongolia 内蒙古 is walked along the Mergel 莫尔格勒河 River, the winding watercourse Lao She called the finest in the world, in stages of five to fifteen kilometres. Ulan Butong 乌兰布统 on the old Qing 清, 17th to early 20th century imperial hunting ground gives birch woods and low hills over two days. Nalati 那拉提 and Kuerdening 库尔德宁 in Ili are high river-valley grasslands with spruce forest, open in season with a ticket and a compulsory shuttle 观光车. Karajun 喀拉峻 is the one Chinese walkers rate highest, a twenty-kilometre traverse from Qiongkushitai 琼库什台, and it stays open inside the scenic area 景区 even though the surrounding district banned undeveloped-area trekking in 2026.

Desert. Kubuqi 库布齐 runs about twenty-two kilometres over one or two days and is free to walk, with tickets only where it touches the resort. Badain Jaran 巴丹吉林 needs a four-wheel-drive and a guide as a practical matter and takes you to Bilutu 必鲁图峰, the highest sand peak in the world by the card's claim, and a lake that stays pink all year. Tengger 腾格里 is the one to be honest about: the five-lake traverse of about fifty kilometres has the worst word of mouth of anything on this page, with the top comment under a popular video calling it fifty kilometres of identical dunes and others describing quitting halfway. It is here because people ask about it.

Coast. The Dongxichong 东西冲 traverse in Shenzhen 深圳 is six to seven and a half kilometres of rock scrambling with fixed ropes along a coastline a National Geographic list rated among China's ten finest, and the tide decides when you can start. Weizhou Island 涠洲岛 off Beihai 北海 is a volcanic island loop past an eighteen-fifties French church; Pingtan 平潭 in Fujian 福建 walks a wind-turbine coast sixty-eight nautical miles from Taiwan, with blue-tears plankton on spring nights.

Forest. Shennongjia 神农架 is the roof of central China at three thousand one hundred metres with golden monkeys in the reserve. Arxan 阿尔山 in Inner Mongolia has a heart-shaped crater lake, a river that does not freeze, and a lava field. Mohe 漠河's Arctic Village walks the Heilongjiang 黑龙江 bank at fifty-three degrees north, the northernmost settlement in the country, with Russia on the far shore.

The common thread. None of these needs mountain fitness. All of them need the season right, and four of them close for part of the year.

12PreeChina, and What It Is Not

What does PreeChina arrange for hiking in China?

• A Chinese walk needs three things arranged in advance: the door, the bed and the season. Those are what we do.
• The four kinds of trip. – An afternoon. A city hill in whichever gateway city you land in, reached by metro, free or five yuan, back in time for dinner. Twenty-four of them on this page. – A first multi-day walk. Tiger Leaping Gorge in two days with a bed each night, no permit, no tent. Wugongshan 武功山, Kanas 喀纳斯 or the Wutaishan 五台山 circuit if you want the same shape elsewhere. – A camping route with a filing. Gongga 贡嘎, the Rock route, Siguniang 四姑娘山, Meili 梅里雪山 north slope. We file with the county or reserve, book the operator where a licensed guide is compulsory, and build in the weather day. – A permit trip. Kailash 冈仁波齐, Motuo 墨脱, Lhozhag 洛扎, Amnye Machen 阿尼玛卿. The agency and guide are arranged first and the itinerary is written to match the permit, because the permit is the constraint.
• What we check the week you go. The open status with the office named on the card, the ticket and shuttle 观光车 prices, the cap where one exists, the season window, and whether the branch you want is the branch that is open. Yubeng 雨崩 is the standing example: the village is open and three of its four paths are not.
• What this page is not. It is not the parks page, which covers what happens inside the gate. It is not the Great Wall page; two wall walks appear here and the wall itself is there. It is not mountaineering: Haba 哈巴雪山, Yuzhu and Muztagh Ata are summits, not walks, and appear only where a route passes their base camp. It does not cover Hong Kong's trails, which are in an appendix, or routes outside China.
• And it takes no view on the things that gather around trails. Which route is the most beautiful, whether a mountain is sacred and to whom, whether a closure was right. We give the distance, the ascent, the ticket, the office that issued the ban, the accidents with their years, and the date we checked. On the eight routes in block ten we say plainly that they are banned and that people have died on them, and we do not print directions.