Top 10 Chinese Nature Destinations

Over 3,000 quartzite sandstone pillars draped in subtropical vegetation rise dramatically from a sea of mist in Hunan Province, creating one of the most otherworldly landscapes on the planet.

The 83km Li River cruise between Guilin and Yangshuo passes through an unbroken panorama of conical karst peaks, bamboo groves, and traditional fishing villages unchanged for centuries.

The world's highest and largest plateau, known as the Roof of the World, is a land of salt lakes, nomadic herders, ancient monasteries, and the most pristine high-altitude ecosystems on Earth.

A valley of 3,400 multicoloured travertine pools formed by calcite-rich springs, surrounded by snow peaks, dense forest, and rare giant pandas and Sichuan golden snub-nosed monkeys.

Xinjiang's remote glacial lake in the Altai Mountains, surrounded by Siberian larch forests that turn gold in autumn, is home to a mysterious lake monster reported by Mongolian herders.

The Wuzhishan mountain range at the heart of China's tropical island province protects one of Asia's last intact tropical rainforests, home to the critically endangered Hainan gibbon.

At 4,718 metres above sea level, Namtso is the world's highest saltwater lake, its crystalline blue waters fringed by glacier-capped peaks and roamed by wild yaks and Tibetan antelopes.

A remarkable ecological restoration project has converted millions of hectares of the Mu Us Desert into farmland and grassland, one of China's most dramatic environmental turnaround stories.

The Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding houses over 200 giant pandas and is the world's most successful breeding programme for the species once teetering on the edge of extinction.