The giant panda is high on the endangered species list; only a few thousand of these unique animals remain, all in Gansu, Sichuan and Shaanxi provinces. The Chinese government is making great efforts to increase their numbers.

Seventy-five km northwest of Beijing in Yanqing County lies the Juyongguan pass.

The Yungang Grottoes, ancient Buddhist temples located near the city of Datong in the Shanxi province of China, are excellent examples of rock-cut architecture. They are also one of the three most famous cave clusters or ancient scriptural sites of China.

Mount Wuyi, widely considered to be one of the most beautiful spots in China, stands south of Wuyishan, a city in Fujian province. The mountain’s slopes are covered by a vast subtropical forest and dotted with a number of important archeological sites.

During the Ming and Qing dynasties Ping Yao, in the center of Shanxi province, was the financial capital of China. Today the city’s ancient architecture is in very good condition and it retains much the same appearance it had hundreds of years ago.

The statues number over fifty thousand, carved in seventy separate sites along with a hundred thousand characters. Altogether the hills are a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1999.