Experience the best of Huangshan

The Yellow Mountains are a granite range of steep peaks, twisted pines and seas of cloud, long a subject for Chinese painters and poets and now a World Heritage Site. The city of Huangshan, in southern Anhui province, is the usual gateway. Stone steps and cable cars climb to viewpoints used for sunrise, and the mountain's four celebrated wonders are said to be its pines, odd-shaped rocks, cloud sea and hot springs.

In Tunxi, the old centre of the city, Old Street is lined with Ming and Qing style shops selling ink sticks, inkstones, brushes and tea. In the countryside nearby, the villages of Xidi and Hongcun, a World Heritage pair, are clusters of whitewashed Huizhou houses with dark tiled roofs, carved gateways and canals running past the doors, and Shexian county has a row of stone memorial archways.

Huizhou cooking, part of the Anhui tradition, is known for stinky mandarin fish, a fermented fish then braised or fried, and for bamboo shoots, mountain mushrooms and wild herbs. Huangshan Maofeng, a green tea grown on the slopes, is picked in spring. Spring and autumn give the clearest views, and winter snow turns the peaks white.