5 Days in Liupanshui

Around 1,800 m above sea level, midsummer averages about 19.7 degrees — the 2005 Cool City title — so walk the rainbow boardwalk of about 1.1 km at Minghu, then the museum recording the 1960s Third-Front build-up.

1. liupanshui minghu wetland
2. liupanshui sanxian museum

About 30 km west, Yushe's forest park turns into Guizhou's earliest ski field from December to February around 2,300 m; the Yi cultural town at Haiping below throws its torch festival on the sixth lunar month's twenty-fourth day.

1. liupanshui yushe forest park
2. liupanshui haiping yi town

Two hours south into Panzhou — wind turbines and horse herds along a ridge topping out at the 2,857-m Niupengliangzi; spring azaleas colour the slopes and July mornings still ask for a fleece.

1. liupanshui wumeng grassland

South of the Panzhou seat — more than a thousand ginkgos, many 300 years or older, gold from mid-October, plus the bamboo sea southeast of the county with the Paleolithic Panxian Dadong cave site nearby.

1. liupanshui tuole ginkgo village
2. liupanshui dadong bamboo sea

East to Liuzhi, where the Suoxia eco-museum opened in 1998 as China's first, documenting the few thousand Longhorn Miao who keep the timber-and-thatch villages; return for an evening train from Liupanshui station, on the HSR map since July 2020.

1. liupanshui suoxia ecology museum