{"id":38305,"date":"2026-03-11T07:46:34","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T23:46:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/?p=38305"},"modified":"2026-03-12T21:03:39","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T13:03:39","slug":"year-end-2026-part-1-china-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2026\/03\/11\/year-end-2026-part-1-china-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Year-End 2026 \u2013 Part 1 \u2013 China (again)"},"content":{"rendered":"

With our Jeju – June 2026 itinerary pretty much done except for more rounds of checking and tweaking, we’d been also thinking about where to go for our year end. This time though, there are a few likely big changes from last year’s 21-day marathon trek through western China.<\/p>\n

We likely won’t do another 21-day trip. The affordance of time aside, we were pretty much worn out after finishing Western Sichuan and returning to Chengdu on day 14 last December, that the remaining week of travel on that trip – to Jiuzhaigou and then spending 4 days in Chengdu – felt like drudgery!<\/p>\n

The daughter might not join us for the trip, as our likely travel periods won’t play nice with the academic calendar in her new school. This would be the first time she won’t be joining us for a family trip, but we’re still traveling all together for our Jeju – June trip.<\/p>\n

That out of the way, what places for year-end then? There were just a few places under consideration:<\/p>\n

Tohoku<\/strong>. This is one region of Japan that I have not visited at all.<\/p>\n

Hokkaido<\/strong>. Or more specifically, eastern and northern Hokkaido that we largely did not visit in 2019.<\/p>\n

Kyushu<\/strong>. I did up a complete itinerary last year, and it’s doable. There’d be a fair bit of distance between places, but from the looks of it, easier to travel compared to Tohoku or Hokkaido.<\/p>\n

North-western China<\/strong>, and specifically the Xi’An region, traveling in a north-easterly direction until Zhangye.<\/p>\n

South-eastern China<\/strong>, and specifically the region around Mt. Huangshan.<\/p>\n

Of the five places, north-western China got dropped fast because of how cold the area will be in December. We got through subzero temperatures of -5 to -10 degrees Celsius last December, but north-western China is expected to be much lower than that! Never mind too that we’d likely again be doing an expedition-styled trip with numerous drives from place to place that would take most of each day. As for the three regions in Japan, the scenery and sights we’d be treated to would be quite varied region to region. But a trip around south-eastern China and the Huangshan area would have one big advantage: it would have many types of landscapes, geology, and sights from all three. And there were also the issues of cost: a trip to China still remains significantly cheaper than a trip to (anywhere in) Japan, despite the strength of the Singapore dollar against the Yen.<\/p>\n

So, I started looking deeper into an 18 day trip to the Huangshan-Wuyuan area, and realized quickly that this region is among the most compact corridors in the country where we’d be able to see some of the most iconic landscapes in China: including the granite peak mountains of Mt. Huangshan, the red sandstone landforms in Longhu, terraced farmland in Wuyuan, and classical Jiangnan lake scenery in Hangzhou if we finished there. In fact, if we did this area at year-end, we would have covered 7 of the 10 most iconic landscapes in the country according to this list below [caveat: many web sites have their own lists but many of these places below appear in at least several of them]:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Landscape Type<\/th>\nFamous Location<\/th>\nCovered? And in what year<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n
Karst limestone peaks<\/td>\nYangshuo<\/td>\n\u274c Not yet<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Sandstone pillar mountains<\/td>\nZhangjiajie National Forest Park<\/td>\n\u274c Not yet<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Granite peak mountains<\/td>\nMount Huangshan<\/td>\n\ud83d\udfe1 2026<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Danxia red sandstone landforms<\/td>\nLonghu Mountain Scenic Area<\/td>\n\ud83d\udfe1 2026<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Alpine snow mountains<\/td>\nDaocheng Yading Scenic Area<\/td>\n\u2705 2025<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Alpine turquoise lakes<\/td>\nJiuzhaigou National Park<\/td>\n\u2705 2025<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Plateau grasslands<\/td>\nLitang<\/td>\n\u2705 2025<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Terraced farmland landscapes<\/td>\nWuyuan County<\/td>\n\ud83d\udfe1 2026<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Classical Jiangnan lake scenery<\/td>\nWest Lake<\/td>\n\ud83d\udfe1 2026<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Desert landscapes<\/td>\nDunhuang<\/td>\n\u274c Not yet<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

And the iconic sites include:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Mt. Huangshan. I’m sold! [Photo by Uniq Trek<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>So, next steps are to do a detailed day-by-day itinerary to see if this is all workable. More to come soon!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With our Jeju – June 2026 itinerary pretty much done except for more rounds of checking and tweaking, we’d been also thinking about where to go for our year end. This time though, there are a few likely big changes<\/p>\n

Read More Year-End 2026 \u2013 Part 1 \u2013 China (again)<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38309,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-traveling","wpcat-17-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/blog-mt.huangshan-uniq-trek-2VH9MrudyGI-unsplash.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38305"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38337,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38305\/revisions\/38337"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}