14 Days in Liaoyang

Settle in and open with the 70.4-metre Jin-dynasty pagoda lighting up over the park.

1. liaoyang white pagoda park

The temple tracing its founding to the Han era and reopened after the 2004 rebuilding, and the museum in a 1920s merchant courtyard.

1. liaoyang guangyou temple
2. liaoyang city museum

Nurhaci's capital from 1621 to 1625, earthen walls and the rebuilt Tianyou gate, with the early-Qing royal tombs on the Yanglu hill nearby.

1. liaoyang dongjing city site
2. liaoyang dongjing mausoleum

Han painted tombs known since 1918 and nationally protected since 1961, the Cao Xueqin memorial, and the Qing scholar Wang Erlie's residence.

1. liaoyang hanwei mural tombs
2. liaoyang cao xueqin memorial
3. liaoyang wang erlie memorial

Honestly labelled neighbouring-city day — about 80 kilometres east for the boat along roughly three kilometres of underground river near 10 degrees; sleep in Benxi town.

1. benxi water cave

A second honest Benxi day — forest ridges and old maple stands at their best from late September to mid-October; overnight again in Benxi.

1. benxi guanmenshan forest park

A third honest Benxi day — gorges, streams and terraced pools in the county's hills — then the road back to Liaoyang for the evening.

1. liaoyang laobiangou

Honestly labelled neighbouring-city day — under half an hour to Anshan for the granite summits, cable cars and monastery courts of Qianshan; sleep in Anshan.

1. anshan qianshan

The jade Buddha carved from one 260-tonne block, then the spa district south of Anshan with bathhouses reaching back to the last emperor's era; return to Liaoyang by evening.

1. anshan yufuyuan
2. anshan tanggangzi hot springs

Forest gorge walking in Gongchangling, favoured by painters, then an overnight beside the mineral springs.

1. liaoyang hehuogou
2. liaoyang tanghe hot springs

Morning by the Tanghe reservoir, afternoon farmhouse tables and orchard slopes at Wazigou on the water's edge.

1. liaoyang tanghe reservoir
2. liaoyang wazigou

Half an hour north into Liaoyang's own Lighthouse city for Tongerbao, a nationally known leather-and-fur shopping town whose malls reset for the autumn trade; half sight, half spectacle.

1. liaoyang tongerbao fur town

A final soak, the reversed-temperature hillside, and a riverside walk where the Taizi keeps the name of Prince Dan of Yan.

1. liaoyang lengredi park
2. liaoyang taizi river

A last park-and-market loop, Northeast dumplings for lunch, then the HSR from Liaoyang station toward Shenyang or Dalian.

1. liaoyang white pagoda park