Jokhang Temple

UNESCO

UNESCO

UNESCO

8d · Lhasa, Yamdrok, Shigatse and Gyantse — the standard agency-tour Tibet circuit.

10d · Ten days on the Tibetan Plateau visiting Lhasa's monasteries and palaces, the Tashilhunpo at Shigatse, and the Rongbuk Monastery approach to Everest Base Camp — with practical permit guidance.

10d · Ten days structured around China's overnight soft-sleeper trains — Beijing to Xi'an, Xi'an to Chengdu, Chengdu to Lhasa — experiencing the transition from one landscape to the next at a human pace, through the night.

21d · Two weeks comprehensive plus Yunnan loop (Kunming, Dali, Lijiang) and a Tibet permit-tour to Lhasa.

Tang-dynasty Buddhist pagoda, built 652 CE to house the sutras brought back by Xuanzang. 64m, seven storeys, climbable.

One of the most important Buddhist monasteries in Chinese history, founded in 386 CE at the foot of Mount Lu and considered the birthplace of Pure Land Buddhism in China.

UNESCO · Once the largest monastery in the world (10,000+ monks). 8 km west of Lhasa. Active Gelugpa monastery; debating courtyard sessions in the afternoon.

1,700-year-old Buddhist temple 110 km west of Xi'an. The 1987 discovery of a finger relic of the Buddha in its underground crypt was a major archaeological event.

The mother monastery of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism, founded in 1409 by Tsongkhapa atop Wangbur Mountain 47 km east of Lhasa, offering sweeping plateau views and an important kora trail.

A nine-storey mandala stupa built in 1427 containing 108 chapels on multiple floors, considered one of the finest examples of Tibetan religious architecture and the most important landmark in Gyantse.

1,500-year-old wooden temple complex pinned to the side of a 75m cliff at Mt Heng. Engineered with horizontal posts driven into the rock face.

Active urban Buddhist temple in central Shanghai. Famous for two life-size jade Buddhas brought from Burma in 1882.

UNESCO-listed pair of Ming-Qing Huizhou merchant villages in southern Anhui, renowned for whitewashed walls, inky horsehead gables and moon-shaped ponds.

UNESCO-listed archaeological site in Hangzhou preserving the remains of a 5,000-year-old city with a sophisticated water-management system, jade ritual culture and social hierarchy — regarded as one of the earliest state-level societies in East Asia.

UNESCO Natural World Heritage site in Inner Mongolia — the third largest desert in China, featuring some of the world's tallest stationary dunes and a unique network of freshwater and saline lakes sustained by a still-unexplained subterranean water system.

UNESCO-listed capital cities and royal tombs of the Koguryo Kingdom in Jian, Jilin — the Chinese portion of a transnational heritage property shared with North Korea, representing one of the most powerful states of ancient East Asia.

UNESCO Natural World Heritage site — a serial property of six Danxia landscapes across six provinces, representing China's defining red-cliff-and-pillar sandstone landform type, including Danxia Mountain, Zhangye, Taining and Langshan.

UNESCO-listed collection of private gardens in Suzhou — four inscribed in 1997 and five more added in 2000 — representing the pinnacle of Chinese garden design through the refined integration of architecture, water, rock and plant.

UNESCO-listed Suzhou garden organised symmetrically around a central residence. Less crowded than the four most-visited gardens.

Once the largest monastery in the world (10,000+ monks). 8 km west of Lhasa. Active Gelugpa monastery; debating courtyard sessions in the afternoon.