Shangrao, Granite Peaks and Lake Country

Shangrao is a prefecture rather than a single sight, spread across the hills of northeast Jiangxi between the Wuyi range and China's largest freshwater lake — and a surprising share of everything worth a detour in the province lies inside its boundaries. The headline is Sanqingshan, a UNESCO World Heritage granite massif of needle peaks and drifting mist where Taoist hermits built shrines from the Song dynasty onward. Plank walkways are pinned along vertical cliffs for kilometres; the two celebrated formations, the Oriental Goddess and the Giant Python Rising, are weathered pillars that resolve into figures whenever the cloud thins.

Lingshan, closer to the city, is a quieter national scenic area of granite ridges, bamboo and terraced hamlets. In Yanshan county, the restored Ehu Academy marks the site of the 1175 debate between Zhu Xi and Lu Jiuyuan, the philosophical showdown that split Neo-Confucianism in two. To the west, the eastern shore of Poyang Lake floods and retreats with the seasons, leaving wetland grass, fishing villages and wintering migratory birds behind it. Yiyang county, in the same prefecture, gave its name to yiyangqiang, one of the four great operatic styles of Ming China.

Shangrao also administers Wuyuan, the Huizhou-village countryside, and the cliffside village of Wangxian Valley, which makes the city a practical base: it sits where two high-speed lines cross, with Shanghai, Hangzhou, Nanchang and Huangshan all within a couple of hours. Eat Jiangxi-style — smoked bacon with dried bamboo shoot, chilli-heavy stir-fries, freshwater fish, and the green tea grown on these slopes. Spring mist and autumn clarity are the seasons to aim for in eastern China.