China’s New World Heritage Sites: A Decade of Inscriptions Worth the Journey
Since 2017 UNESCO has added an island of villas, a sacred mountain, a Neolithic city, a medieval port, tea forests, desert tombs and a porcelain town. A guide to what each offers the traveller.
China has added a World Heritage site almost every year for the past decade. The recent inscriptions have something in common: few of them are about emperors. They concern trade, craft, farming and belief, and most lie far from Beijing and Shanghai. Together they make a useful list for travellers who have seen the obvious places and want a reason to go further.
Places of trade
Kulangsu (2017) is a car-free island off Xiamen where merchants returning from Southeast Asia built villas in a mixture of Chinese, European and Art Deco styles. It is the easiest of these sites to enjoy, with guesthouses in old houses and music from open windows. An hour up the coast, Quanzhou (2021) was the great port of the Song and Yuan dynasties, the Zayton of Marco Polo. Its 22 listed monuments include a mosque of 1009, twin stone pagodas, Hindu carvings and a statue of Mani. The two combine well in four days in Fujian.
Places of craft
The tea forests of Jingmai Mountain (2023), in the far south of Yunnan, are the first World Heritage site devoted to tea: old groves tended by the Blang and Dai peoples under a canopy of taller trees. Jingdezhen (2026) records a thousand years of porcelain making, from kaolin mines to imperial kilns to river docks, in a city where the trade is still alive and young potters have set up their studios. Both reward visitors with an interest in how things are made, and both have good small hotels.
Places of early history
Liangzhu (2019), on the edge of Hangzhou, is a city of 5,000 years ago, with dams and jade-filled tombs. It needs imagination, and its museum by David Chipperfield supplies the context. The Xixia Imperial Tombs (2025), near Yinchuan in Ningxia, are the eroded earthen mausoleums of the Tangut kings, set against the Helan Mountains at the edge of the desert, and among the most atmospheric ruins in the country.
A mountain and an axis
Fanjingshan (2018), in Guizhou, is a natural site, a refuge for a rare monkey and an ancient forest, with two small temples on a split pillar of rock. It is the most dramatic of the group and the hardest to see in clear weather. The Beijing Central Axis (2024) is the exception to the pattern: 7.8 kilometres of imperial planning from the Bell and Drum Towers to Yongdingmen, through the Forbidden City. Most visitors will have walked part of it without knowing.
How to use the list
The sites fall into natural pairs. Kulangsu and Quanzhou share a coast. Liangzhu fits a stay in Hangzhou, and Jingdezhen is three hours further by train. Jingmai belongs to a longer journey through Yunnan. Fanjingshan and the Xixia tombs each need a trip of their own.
A World Heritage listing in China brings crowds, timed tickets and visitor caps, so reservations are now needed almost everywhere. It also brings investment in museums and signage, and better hotels follow.