Interactive map · Verified 2026-08-16
China Travel Map
Search every city, sight and dish we cover — or start from a suggested route and watch it draw itself. Tap a province to zoom in; zoom past street level and the board becomes a real street map with pins for sights, food and shows.
Every city on this map, by region
The map above carries 23 cities and 186 individual pins. If you'd rather read than click, here is the same coverage laid out geographically — grouped by where the cities actually sit, not alphabetically.
The North 6 cities
The imperial core and the Yellow River heartland — the first trip for most visitors, and the densest concentration of the sights people picture when they picture China.
- BeijingImperial capital · Great Wall · hutongs
- Xi'anTerracotta Army · city wall · food
- PingyaoMing walled city · draft banks · Shanxi noodles
- QingdaoGerman colonial architecture · Tsingtao beer · seaside
- DatongYungang Grottoes · Hanging Temple · knife-cut noodles
- LuoyangLongmen Grottoes · Shaolin Temple · water banquet
The East Coast 6 cities
Shanghai and the canal towns and gardens around it, plus the seaside cities. Flat, fast, and stitched together by the country's best rail corridor.
The South 4 cities
Subtropical: Cantonese food, karst rivers, island beaches. Warmer for longer, and the natural entry point if you're coming via Hong Kong.
The Southwest 5 cities
Mountains, minority cultures and the spiciest food in the country. Distances get real here — this is where flying starts to beat the train.
The Northwest 1 cities
The Silk Road corridor: desert, grottoes and oasis towns. Sparse, spectacular, and far from everything else.
- DunhuangMogao Caves · Mingsha Dunes · Silk Road
The Northeast 1 cities
Russian-influenced architecture and a winter that is the whole point — ice festivals rather than a season to endure.
- HarbinIce and Snow World · Russian architecture · guobaorou
The thing a map of China doesn't tell you: the scale
China is roughly the size of the continental United States, and a map flattens that into something that looks crossable in an afternoon. It isn't. Two cities that sit a thumb's width apart on the screen above can be a full travelling day apart in practice.
The rail network hides this well in the east — Shanghai to Suzhou is under half an hour, and Beijing to Shanghai is a comfortable half-day. It hides it badly everywhere else. Once you head west or southwest, distances stop being a train ride and start being a flight, and an itinerary that looked neat on a map turns into three days of transit.
This is the single most common way a first China itinerary goes wrong, and it's why the trip planner subtracts real door-to-door transfer time from each day rather than letting you stack cities. If you're sketching a route from this map, sketch it in one region first.
How to use this map
Search it, filter it, or take a suggested route: the box above the map finds every city, sight and dish we cover; the chips swap between Sights, Food, Experiences and two curated cuts (Must-see and Hidden gems); and Suggested routes draws six hand-built itineraries — the classic Beijing–Xi'an–Shanghai first trip among them — with the real rail or flight time on every leg. Click any province and the map zooms to what's inside it; zoom past street level and the abstract board switches to real streets, where each pin opens a photo card linking to the city guide covering it.
Every pin comes from a city hub we maintain by hand — coordinates, opening patterns, and prices checked against the dates shown on each guide, not scraped from a database. Found a route worth keeping? The trip planner turns the same cities into a day-by-day schedule with rail times built in — each suggested route can start one for you in a tap.
Map questions, answered
- Does Google Maps work in China?
- Not well — inside mainland China its business listings, transit routes, and walking directions are sparse or years out of date, so even when the app loads, the answers are unreliable. Locals navigate with Amap (高德地图); Apple Maps also works reasonably well for visitors. Our travel apps guide walks through the setup before you fly. See the travel apps guide.
- Are the pin locations on this map exact?
- They're placed to be recognizably right at city scale, but treat them as approximate. Every pin links to the full guide entry, which carries the details that actually matter on the ground: Chinese names to show a driver, ticket prices, and reservation rules — each with a verification date.
- Can I use this map offline in China?
- No — it's a web page, so it needs a connection. Before you travel, build your route in our free trip planner and print it (or save it as a PDF), and keep offline essentials on your phone: your hotel's name and address in Chinese, plus screenshots of anything booking-critical. Start with the trip planner and the pre-trip checklist.
- Is there a good map of China for tourists?
- Most maps of China are administrative — provinces, borders, capitals — which tells you nothing about where to go. This one is built the other way round: it only shows the 23 cities we actually cover, and switching layers replaces them with the individual sights, dishes and shows inside each one. Every pin links to a guide with prices and reservation rules rather than a Wikipedia stub.
- How far apart are Chinese cities, really?
- Further than the map suggests — China is roughly the size of the continental United States. In the eastern corridor high-speed rail hides it well: Shanghai to Suzhou is under half an hour, Beijing to Shanghai a comfortable half-day. West and southwest of Chengdu it stops hiding, distances become flights, and an itinerary that looked tidy turns into three days of transit. Sketch your first route inside one region.
- Which part of China should I visit?
- Depends what you came for, and the regional breakdown on this page is arranged around exactly that: the North for imperial sights and the Great Wall, the East Coast for Shanghai and the canal towns, the South for Cantonese food and karst rivers, the Southwest for mountains and spice, the Northwest for the Silk Road, the Northeast for winter. A first trip that stays in one or two of these will be better than one that samples all six.
- Which cities should a first-time visitor start with?
- The classic first trip is Beijing, Xi'an, and Shanghai — imperial sights, the Terracotta Army, and the modern skyline, all linked by high-speed rail. Add Chengdu for pandas and spice, or Guilin for karst scenery, if you have more than ten days. The trip planner budgets realistic hours per day for all 23 cities on this map. Compare them all in the city guides.
Verified 2026-08-16. Pin positions are approximate — open the full guide for exact locations, prices, and reservation rules. Province boundaries via DataV.GeoAtlas; street detail ©OpenStreetMap contributors © CARTO.