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Henan, Heart and Soul of China Often flat as a board, the plains of Henan are lined with poplar plantations, dotted with fish farms and fields of winter wheat: at first glance, little reason to linger. Since the time of the Shang the Yellow River basin has nurtured one Chinese dynasty after another, their capitals rising and falling in turn. Cities like Zhengzhou and Kaifeng, stitched together by expressways, repay a closer examination of the legacies of thousands of years of Chinese civilisation. And if the locals warm to you, they just might reveal their ancient culinary arts too: fried scorpion, anyone?
In Shanxi, Loess is More. The province 'West of the Mountains' is a land of loess, the rugged dun-coloured country sandwiched between the Great Wall and the Yellow River. From the Loess Plateau a fine, loose soil washes down countless gullies, relentlessly silting up the Yellow River. Farmers have always struggled here, but merchants prospered for centuries by trading tea, salt, silk and grain between Mongolia to the north and the ancient cities to the south. Buddhist sanctuaries surviving on mountain slopes, clinging to canyon walls or nestled in caves reward the traveller, as do walled cities and thousand-year-old pagodas.
Shangri-La rediscovered. By the eager people's bureaucrats of South West China's remote Diqing Region, that is. Author James Hilton might turn in his grave at this appropriation of the verdant valley existing solely within his imagination, but to arrive on this easternmost outlier of the fabled Roof of the World, an austere 3,000-metre steppe, does afford a glimpse of life in the Tibetan heartland
Tigers leap where angels fear to tread in Yunnan's Tiger Leaping Gorge. Gazing over the top of my cement-walled stall in the pit toilets at Half Way House guesthouse, I look up to the sublime majesty of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, whose 5,000-metre snow-dusted crags blush musky pink in the chill of a mountain morning. The Feng family are out feeding their pigs and goats - and frying up breakfast pancakes for those privileged to share these mountains with them.
Order any of the above stories by contacting Philip Game