Gaoming

Gaoming district occupies the hilly western fringe of Foshan municipality where the Pearl River Delta lowlands rise towards the Yunfu highlands. The district is the least urbanised part of Foshan — agriculture, forestry, and light manufacturing sustain a population that is substantially smaller than the other Foshan districts, and the landscape is genuinely forested and rural within 20 minutes' drive of Gaoming town.

Xifeng Mountain, the district's central natural feature, is a moderate volcanic massif with hiking trails to the summit plateau and a series of waterfalls on the northern flank. The forested upper slopes are part of a nature reserve and preserve a landscape of broadleaf subtropical forest with ferns, mosses, and periodic mist cover from the Pearl River Delta's humid climate.

The old Gaoming county-town streets, around the Gaoming government compound, preserve a modest collection of Republican-era and Qing shophouse architecture — a working county-town fabric rather than a tourism-developed heritage precinct. The market streets around the old town are active weekday-morning food markets serving the surrounding agricultural community.

Hejiang reservoir, on the western edge of the district, is a large freshwater reservoir constructed in the 1950s for irrigation and flood control. The reservoir shores are undeveloped and function as a quiet countryside walking destination for Foshan residents escaping the city on weekends.