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Published: November 30th 2009
Beautiful Islands - Shangdong's Miao Dao
Islands off the most eastern coast of ancient China where the emperors believed the gods were staying.In 2005, the Chinese National Geography magazines listed 114 places in 17 categories as the most beautiful places in China.
The list was not developed through voting competitions by tourists to select their favourite places but by academics and specialists, who are experts in each of the categories so it’s the most authoritative list so far. You can feel the difference when comparing this list to those titles you can find in bookshops as the justification for the places were very professionally explained.
We visited a few places and they are indeed beautiful. Since then, we always try to include these places in our travel plans. Only challenge is that these places can be quite remote and not very well known outside China. But the rewards are really, as the title suggested, beautiful places that make each visit worthwhile.
The 17 categories:-
1. Mountains
2. Glaciers
3. Lakes
4. Marshlands
5. Waterfalls
6. Forests
7. Gorges
8. Show Caves
9. Grasslands
10. Islands
11. Towns and Villages
12. Deserts
13. Yadan Landforms
14. Coastlines
15. City Districts
16. Peak forests
17. Danxia
We will try to visit at least a place in each category so that
the children can learn about geography and nature. The city district category is easy to visit and we have been to all. This is the exception as the rest of the places usually need transport arrangements and are physically demanding. The most challenging travel so far were the visits to Shunan Bamboo forest and Furong Cave which were 2 days trips with 2 hours to the destination and plenty of walking and climbing.
We plan to travel around China covering all the Provinces and along the way visit as many as possible of the Beautiful Places and UNESCO World Heriatege sites. The links to those travels and summaries are here:-
a) China Provinces
b) UNESCO World Heritage Sites
c) travel blogs
The tally so far: 10 categories and 16 beautiful places visited. The photos of the places we have visited are attached.
Update: 1, 13 categories and 20 beautiful places visited.
Its a good way to end the year traveling to Jiangxi, Anhui and Zhejiang Provinces this Dec 09 - Jan 10 and along the way visited 5 beautiful places:- Longhushan Danxia, Sanqingshan mountain, Wuyuan village, Huangshan Mountain Beautiful Show Caves - Chongqing's Furong Cave
World class cave displaying various speleothems. and West Lake (re-visit).
Update: 2, 13 categories and 21 beautiful places visited.
We visited Benxi Water Cave in Liaoning province. The cave is 5800m long and has a dry cave section and water under water cave section. Visitors board the boats at a pier inside the cave to visit the water cave section.
Update: 3, 13 categories and 22 beautiful places visited
We visited the Golden Bech at Changli. It a unusual coastline where the desert meets the sea.
Update 4, 13 categories and 24 beautiful places.
Our travel to Hunan province brougt us to the Huanglong Cave and Wulingyuan Peak Forest.
For travel details to the beautiful places, please see the blog entries.
Enjoy the photos!!! We will update this entry as we visit more beautiful places.
Note: The contents (text and photos) of this article remain the copyright of the Author, Jenny. Under no circumstances should the photos or text be used without the express written permission of the Author. Please contact the Author by leaving a message if you wish to use or publish photos or text from this article.
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