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China

China

Continent

Asia

Best States to Visit

  • Beijing
  • Chengdu
  • Guilin

Best Cities to Visit

  • Beijing
  • Shangai
  • Xi'an
  • Chengdu
  • Hangzhou

Size

9,596,961 KM2

Population

1,411,778

GDP

$14,720,000,000,000

Spending Budget

$800 - $2,600

Famous For

  • Food
  • Martial Arts
  • Innovation

Best Time to Visit

  • January
  • March
  • April
  • May
  • September

History

China emerged as one of the world's first civilizations, in the fertile basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. China was one of the world's foremost economic powers for most of the two millennia from the 1st until the 19th century. For millennia, China's political system was based on absolute hereditary monarchies, or dynasties, beginning with the Xia dynasty in 21st century BCE. Since then, China has expanded, fractured, and re-unified numerous times. In the 3rd century BCE, the Qin reunited core China and established the first Chinese empire. The succeeding Han dynasty saw some of the most advanced technology at that time, including papermaking and the compass, along with agricultural and medical improvements.

Present Day

China, officially the People's Republic of China, is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population of more than 1.43 billion. China follows a single standard time even though it spans five geographical time zones and borders 14 countries, the second most of any country in the world after Russia. Covering an area of approximately 9.6 million square kilometers, it is the world's third or fourth largest country. The country is officially divided into 23 provinces, five autonomous regions, and four direct-controlled municipalities of Beijing (the capital city), Tianjin, Shanghai (the largest city), and Chongqing, as well as two special administrative regions: Hong Kong and Macau.

Future

As China becomes an innovation hub, the country inches its way closer to becoming a global superpower. With its development, comes infrastructural and technological development contributing to its already lavish landscaping in major cities.
Must Visit Places ------------

Great Wall of China

The Great Wall of China is a series of fortifications that were built across the historical northern borders of ancient Chinese states and Imperial China as protection against various nomadic groups from the Eurasian Steppe. Several walls were built from as early as the 7th century BC, with selective stretches later joined together by Qin Shi Huang (220–206 BC), the first emperor of China.

Potala Palace

The Potala Palace is a dzong fortress in the city of Lhasa, Tibet Autonomous Region, China. It was the winter palace of the Dalai Lamas from 1649 to 1959, has been a museum since then, and has been a World Heritage Site since 1994. The palace is named after Mount Potalaka, the mythical abode of the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara. The 5th Dalai Lama started its construction in 1645 after one of his spiritual advisers, Konchog Chophel, pointed out that the site was ideal as a seat of government.

Forbidden City

The Forbidden City is a palace complex in Dongcheng District, Beijing, China, at the center of the Imperial City of Beijing. It is surrounded by numerous opulent imperial gardens and temples including the 22-hectare (54-acre) Zhongshan Park, the sacrificial Imperial Ancestral Temple, the 69-hectare (171-acre) Beihai Park, and the 23-hectare (57-acre) Jingshan Park. It was constructed from 1406 to 1420, and was the former Chinese imperial palace and winter residence of the Emperor of China from the Ming dynasty.

Victoria Harbor

Victoria Harbour is a natural landform harbour separating Hong Kong Island in the south from the Kowloon Peninsula to the north. The harbour's deep, sheltered waters and strategic location on the South China Sea were instrumental in Hong Kong's establishment as a British colony and its subsequent development as a trading centre. Lying in the middle of the territory's dense urban region, the harbour is the site of annual fireworks displays and its promenades are used as gathering places for tourists and residents.

Terracotta Army

The Terracotta Army is a collection of terracotta sculptures depicting the armies of Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China. It is a form of funerary art buried with the emperor in 210–209 BCE with the purpose of protecting the emperor in his afterlife. The figures, dating from approximately the late third century BCE, were discovered in 1974 by local farmers in Lintong County, outside Xi'an, Shaanxi, China. The figures vary in height according to their roles, the tallest being the generals. The figures include warriors, chariots and horses.

Li River Cruise

The Li River or Li Jiang, which belongs to the Xijiang River system in the Pearl River Basin, is a generic term for the tributary of the upper reaches of the Guijiang River and is located in the northeastern part of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China. It flows 215 kilometres from Xing'an County to Pingle County , where the karst mountains and river sights highlight the famous Li River cruise. Li River cruises from Guilin to Yangshuo are famous, attracting millions of visitors a year.

Mt. Huang

Huangshan is a mountain range in southern Anhui Province in eastern China. It was originally called “Yishan”, and it was renamed because of a legend that Emperor Xuanyuan once made alchemy here. Vegetation on the range is thickest below 1,100 meters (3,600 ft), with trees growing up to the treeline at 1,800 meters. The area is well known for its scenery, sunsets, peculiarly-shaped granite peaks, Huangshan pine trees, hot springs, winter snow and views of the clouds from above. Huangshan is a frequent subject of traditional Chinese paintings and literature, as well as modern photography. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of China's major tourist destinations.

Leshan Giant Buddha

The Leshan Giant Buddha is a 71-metre tall stone statue, built between 713 and 803 (during the Tang dynasty), depicting Maitreya. It is carved out of a cliff face of Cretaceous red bed sandstones that lies at the confluence of the Min River and Dadu River in the southern part of Sichuan province in China, near the city of Leshan. The stone sculpture faces Mount Emei, with the rivers flowing below its feet. It is the largest and tallest stone Buddha statue in the world and it is by far the tallest pre-modern statue in the world.

Hani Terraces

The Honghe Hani Rice Terraces are the system of Hani rice-growing terraces located in Honghe Prefecture, Yuanyang County, Yunnan, China. The terraces' history spans around 1,200 years. The total area stretches across 1,000,000 acres and four counties, although the core area of the terraces is located in Yuanyang County. In 2013, 16,603 hectares of the Honghe Hani Rice Terraces were listed as a World Heritage Site, because of their outstanding resilient construction, unique social-ecological system, and importance to the Hani people.

Pudong Skyline

Pudong is a district of Shanghai located east of the Huangpu River across from the historic city center of Shanghai in Puxi. The name refers to its historic position as "The East Bank" of the Huangpu River, which flows through central Shanghai, although it is now administered as the Pudong New Area, a state-level new area which extends all the way to the East China Sea. Filled with skyscrapers, the Pudong Skyline is a delight to watch

Longmen Grottoes

The Longmen Grottoes or Longmen Caves are some of the finest examples of Chinese Buddhist art. Housing tens of thousands of statues of Shakyamuni Buddha and his disciples, they are located 12 kilometres south of present-day Luoyang in Henan province, China. There are as many as 100,000 statues within the 2,345 caves, ranging from 1 inch to 57 feet in height. The area also contains nearly 2,500 stelae and inscriptions, hence the name “Forest of Ancient Stelae", as well as over sixty Buddhist pagodas.

Jiuzhaigou

Jiuzhaigou is a nature reserve and national park located in the north of Sichuan Province in southwestern China. A long valley running north to south, Jiuzhaigou was inscribed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 1992 and a World Biosphere Reserve in 1997. It is known for its many multi-level waterfalls, colorful lakes, and snow-capped peaks. Its elevation ranges from 2,000 to 4,500 metres.

West Lake

West Lake is a freshwater lake in Hangzhou, China. It is divided into five sections by three causeways. There are numerous temples, pagodas, gardens, and natural/artificial islands within the lake. West Lake has influenced poets and painters throughout Chinese history for its natural beauty and historic relics, and it has also been among the most important sources of inspiration for Chinese garden designers. It was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2011.

Yungang Grottoes

The Yungang Grottoes, formerly the Wuzhoushan Grottoes, are ancient Chinese Buddhist temple grottoes near the city of Datong in the province of Shanxi. They are excellent examples of rock-cut architecture and one of the three most famous ancient Buddhist sculptural sites of China. The site is located about 16 km west of the city of Datong, in the valley of the Shi Li river at the base of the Wuzhou Shan mountains. They are an outstanding example of the Chinese stone carvings from the 5th and 6th centuries.

Reed Flute Cave

The Reed Flute Cave, also known as "the Palace of Natural Arts," is a landmark and tourist attraction in Guilin, Guangxi, China. The cave got its name from the type of reed growing outside, which can be made into flutes. Reed Flute Cave is filled with a large number of stalactites, stalagmites and other rock formations. Inside, there are more than 70 inscriptions written in ink, which can be dated back as far as 792 AD in the Tang Dynasty.

Hanging Monastery

The Hanging Temple, also Hengshan Hanging Temple, Hanging Monastery or Xuankong Temple is a temple built into a cliff (75 m or 246 ft above the ground) near Mount Heng in Hunyuan County. Built more than 1,500 years ago, this temple is notable not only for its location on a sheer precipice but also because it is the only existing temple with the combination of three Chinese traditional philosophies: Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. The structure is kept in place with oak crossbeams fitted into holes chiseled into the cliffs. The main supportive structure is hidden inside the bedrock.

Yangtze River Cruise

The Yangtze or Yangzi is the longest river in Asia, the third-longest in the world and the longest in the world to flow entirely within one country. For thousands of years, the river has been used for water, irrigation, sanitation, transportation, industry, boundary-marking and war. The river is home to endangered species like the river dolphin and Chinese alligator. Cruises are held along the length of the river.

Summer Palace

The Summer Palace is a vast ensemble of lakes, gardens and palaces in Beijing. It was an imperial garden in the Qing dynasty. Mainly dominated by Longevity Hill and Kunming Lake, it covers an expanse of 2.9 square kilometres, three-quarters of which is water. Inspired by the gardens in South China, in the Summer Palace there are over 3,000 various Chinese ancient buildings that house a collocation of over 40,000 kinds of valuable historical relics from each dynasty.

Longshen Rice Terraces

The terraced fields are built along the slope winding from the riverside up to the mountain top, between 600 to 800 metres above sea level.A coiling terrace line that starts from the mountain foot up to the mountain top divides the mountain into layers of water in spring, layers of green rice shoots in summer, layers of rice in fall, and layers of frost in winter. The terraced fields were mostly built about 650 years ago.

Mogao Caves

The Mogao Caves, also known as the Thousand Buddha Grottoes or Caves of the Thousand Buddhas, form a system of 500 temples 25 km southeast of the center of Dunhuang, an oasis located at a religious and cultural crossroads on the Silk Road, in Gansu province. An important cache of documents was discovered in 1900 in the so-called "Library Cave", which had been walled-up in the 11th century.

Suzhou Gardens and Canal

The Classical Gardens of Suzhou are a group of gardens in Suzhou region, Jiangsu province, China, which have been added to the UNESCO World Heritage List. Spanning a period of almost one thousand years, from the Northern Song to the late Qing dynasties, these gardens, most of them built by scholars, standardized many of the key features of classical Chinese garden design with constructed landscapes mimicking natural scenery of rocks, hills and rivers with strategically located pavilions and pagodas.

Tiger Leaping Gorge

Tiger Leaping Gorge is a scenic canyon on the Jinsha River, a primary tributary of the upper Yangtze River. It is located 60 kilometres north of Lijiang City, Yunnan. Legend says the name comes from a hunted tiger escaping by jumping across the river at the narrowest point, using the rock in the middle. At a maximum depth of approximately 3,790 meters from river to mountain peak, Tiger Leaping Gorge is one of the deepest and most spectacular river canyons in the world.

Mount Tai

Mount Tai is a mountain of historical and cultural significance located north of the city of Tai'an. It is the highest point in Shandong province, China. The tallest peak is the Jade Emperor Peak, which is commonly reported as being 1,545 meters tall. Mount Tai has been a place of worship for at least 3,000 years and served as one of the most important ceremonial centers of China.

Zhouzhuang

Zhouzhuang is a town famous for its canals in Jiangsu province. It is located within the administrative area of Kunshan, 30 km southeast of the city centre of Suzhou. It is a popular tourist destination, classified as a AAAAA scenic area by the China National Tourism Administration. It is one of the most famous water townships in China, noted for its profound cultural background, the well preserved ancient residential houses and the elegant watery views. It has been called the "Venice of the East".

Wudang Mountains

The Wudang Mountains consist of a small mountain range in the northwestern part of Hubei, just south of Shiyan. They are home to a famous complex of Taoist temples and monasteries associated with the god Xuanwu. The Wudang Mountains are renowned for the practice of Tai chi and Taoism as the Taoist counterpart to the Shaolin Monastery. The Wudang Mountains are one of the "Four Sacred Mountains of Taoism" in China, an important destination for Taoist pilgrimages. The monasteries such as the Wudang Garden were made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994 because of their religious significance and architectural achievement.