5 Days in Pingliang

An easy landing day — willow ponds planted from General Zuo's 1870s march, a city noodle lunch, and dusk among the rebuilt shopfronts of the Kongtong old town at the mountain's foot.

1. pingliang liuhu park
2. pingliang kongtong ancient town

Take the stone Stairway to Heaven up the 2,123-metre mountain, a 5A scenic area since 2007, past the Thunder Peak ridge to the hilltop Emperor City's Taoist halls; the mountain appears in Han records of imperial visits more than 2,000 years back.

1. pingliang kongtong mountain

A gentler second day in the rear valleys and the Tanzheng lake reaches below the dam, with the city museum's bronzes to finish; Kongtong's own martial-arts school gives morning demonstrations in the old town.

1. pingliang kongtong mountain

Seventy kilometres southeast, the Great Cloud Temple's hall protects the 1964 find — fourteen relics in five nested layers of stone, bronze, silver and gold — and Hui hill above town holds the Royal Mother Palace with its Northern Wei cliff grottoes; overnight in Jingchuan.

1. pingliang daiyun temple
2. pingliang wangmu palace

The South Grottoes' main hall, cut in 509, lines up seven standing Buddhas about six metres tall in a single vault; on the way back, Chongxin's Longquan temple folds springs and pines into one hillside before the evening train.

1. pingliang south grottoes
2. pingliang longquan temple