Beijing Botanical Garden 北京植物园

The Beijing Botanical Garden is well known for its peach trees that blossom when it gets warm. The Beijing Botanical Garden is the largest peach blossom garden in northern China. You can see thousands of different kinds of peach trees. There are about 70 variety of peach trees living there including ornamental peach trees, big peach trees, peach trees that bear big peaches, and chrysanthemum peach trees. Peach trees bloom during the period of the early days of April until early May. During this time, the Beijing Peach Blossom Festival is held in the garden. The garden is perfumed with romantic blooms and intoxicating fragrances, and it is very colorful. The state garden area measures about 56 hectares or 139 acres and is in the northwestern outskirts of Beijing, and the natural scenery is beautiful as well.

Ticket price: 10 RMB or about 1.40 USD per person.

Bus routes: 904, 318 and 714.

Pinggu’s Peach Groves

Another place near Beijing where you can go to see and smell peach flowers and eat peaches is Pinggu in Liujiadian County. In this area about 70 kilometers or 40 miles northeast of Beijing, preach trees stretch as far as the eye can see. There are about 6,000 hectares or almost 15,000 acres of peach groves, and it is said to be the largest peach grove area in the world. 200 varieties of peaches are grown, and there are very big peach varieties that are not grown in other countries. About 270 million kilograms or 300,000 tons of peaches are harvested each year. The groves are famous among peach growers.

Some of the groves are hundreds of years old and have been cultivated for generations. The Pinggu peahes are known for their various distinctive colors and flavors and for their high sugar content. It is said that the soil is sandy and there is plenty of water, and there is a big diurnal difference of temperature that is ideal for growing big sweet peaches. So if you love peaches and peach products like jams and peach juice, at Pinggu you can pick your own peaches and buy whatever you want. Try the peach-honey jams.

Travel routes: take public Bus No. 918 at Dongzhimen 东直门 in Beijing and get off at Guanzhuang Lu Kou Station (官庄路口站), and then change to Bus No. 6 and get off at Xiaoyuzi Peach Blossom Sea Station (小峪子桃花海站).

Xiangshui Lake 响水湖

The pearl trees in Xiangshui Lake begin to bloom at the beginning of April. In addition, there are peach blossoms, apricot blossoms and azaleas for you to enjoy.

Ticket price: 15 RMB or about 2.50 USD per person.

Travel route: there is a train from Xizhimen Railway Station (西直门火车站) to the lake.

Period: The month of April.

Jingshan Park

Jingshan Park is famous for peonies. There is a peony display each year in the park. Many varieties of peonies are displayed. Peonies have been displayed in Jingshan Park since the Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368). The park has a display collection of more than 1,000 peonies of some 100 varieties.

Ticket price: 5 RMB or about 86 cents USD per person.

Bus routes: 5, 111 and 819.

Time: the middle of April to the middle of May.

Dajue Temple

Time: March 30 - April 15.

Dajue Temple is located at the southern foot of Yangtaishan Mountain in the western suburbs of Beijing. The temple was built in 1068.

The magnolia tree at the temple is said to be 300 years old. It was planted by a Buddhist monk named Jialing who lived in the Qing Dynasty (1644–-1911). It blossoms each year around early April. The magnolia flowers in Dajue Temple are exceptionally large, bright, elegant and fragrant. These eye-catching flowers surpass other magnolias in Beijing and draw crowds of tourists each spring. There is a tea house on the temple grounds where visitors can sip tea while appreciating the flowers.

Travel route: You can take Bus No. 903 that departs every half hour from the Forbidden City to Dajue Temple. There are also trains from Beijing South Train Station to Dajue Temple. ChinaTrainSearch.

Tanzhe Temple

Tanzhe Temple has long been famous for its purple magnolias. Two magnolia trees on the temple ground are over 200 years old. What makes them more special is that they bear both white and purple magnolias. Most magnolia trees only bear white magnolias. The magnolias blossom between early April and the middle of April. The blooms last for only 10 days.

Time: from the beginning of April until the middle of April in most places..

Read more information on places to see flowers in Beijing

The county of Luoping in eastern Yunnan Province is well-known for its beautiful scenery in spring, when its fields of rope flowers are in full bloom(see the picture below). Rope flowers begin to bloom in February and continue to late June.

Luoping is about 240 kilometers away from Kunming. During the high travel season from February to June, there are regular bus leaving from Kunming to Luoping. Bus to Luoyang departs Kunming East Bus Station (昆明东部客运站) from 7 am to 7:30 pm on almost hourly basis. Kunming East Bus Station is located at Dongsanhuan Hongqiao Intersection, Kunming (昆明东三环虹桥立交). This station is commonly known by locals as Majie bus station (马街客运站) - this is probably the best name to give to a taxi driver.

There are also trains connecting Kunming and Luoping. Train K366 from Kunming to Guangzhou stops on its way at Luoping at 15:18. Ticket price from Kunming to Luoping is 38 yuan.

Train K182 from Kunming to Shanghai South arrives at Luoping Station at 21:33.

There also more slow trains from Kunming to Luoping, but they are mainly used by the local population. Those trains usually have many stops on the way, so travelers are not recommended to take them.

See below more photos of Luoping

Interested in things to do this season? see China Highlights China Spring Travel Guide

I like getting out into the Guilin countryside to explore. I have just uploaded a photo of some typical Guilin countryside (see My Photos). I come from the countryside of East Anglia in the UK, which is quite different from Guilin.

Guilin is the name of three geographic entities: a city of 600,000 (Guilin City), a county-size area including the city and its surrounding countryside (Greater Guilin, seldom used), and a prefecture containing 10 other counties (Guilin Prefecture). When talking about Guilin countryside I am talking about the countryside of Guilin Prefecture. Up in the big mountains the countryside varies significantly, but down on the karst plains, this is what it’s like...

The steep karst hills rise steeply from the water-flat paddy fields, swathed in dense wild vegetation where the hillside is much less than vertical. The paddy fields make a patchwork of random shapes, divided by small levees just wide enough to walk on and hold in a few inches of water. Villages follow an equally random pattern. There is usually one main access road into a village, then small tracks and paths that wind off in between the brick-wall-overhanging-concrete-floor houses. When a house is decorated the front and back are usually tiled and the sides are left a dark gray render.

Suzhou is a famous tourist city in China. It is economically developed with profound history and culture. Due to its short distance to Shanghai and convenient transportation, many people traveling to Shanghai often spend one or two days to visit Suzhou. Suzhou is famous for several things: classical Chinese landscape gardens, silk, embroidery, Suzhou Opera and hairy crabs.

Every day there are many trains operating between Suzhou and Shanghai, and a single trip takes 25 to 40 minutes by bullet trains. It is very convenient and the train is clean and comfortable. Usually the train tickets are available when you go to the train station. If you take trains with initial letter of K or T, it’ll take about one hour and the fare is cheaper.

I had only one day for Suzhou because I was on a tight schedule, but was deeply impressed by its beauty. The weather on that day was misty with occasional drizzles, which actually made the city look even more beautiful.

When we entered the city, the first thing impressed me was that in order to unify the overall look of the city, many of the public bus stations were built with traditional Chinese styles to match with the classical landscape gardens. Attractions to be visited for the day included Lingering Garden, Couple’s Garden, Hanshan Temple and Tiger Hill Park. We also had a chance to visit Suzhou Silk Factory.

Suzhou is renowned as the “City of Gardens”. There are more than 60 landscape gardens in Suzhou City. Nine of them had been collectively enrolled as a World Heritage Site by the UNESO. We visited two gardens in a day, and I think that was fairly enough. If you are a huge fan of gardens, you can visit more. But for regular travelers, one or two is good.

Lingering Garden and Couple's Garden

Lingering Garden features excellent handling of space of buildings. It has the most number of buildings among the landscape gardens in Suzhou. Couple’s Garden (Ou Yuan) is famous for yellow stone rockeries. One special thing about Couple’s Garden is that it has a small private dock. When we finished visiting the garden, we left by riding a small wooden boat on the canal. I like boat rides, very interesting!

Tiger Hill Park

Tiger Hill Park features the 7-storey ancient brick pagoda which leans a bit sideward. A bluestone-slab bridge was built more than 10 meters above the pond. There are two holes in the bridge which was used for dragging up water from the pond below.

Hanshan Temple

The temple was built about 1500 years ago. Hanshan Temple is famous among Chinese people, because there was a famous ancient poem on our Chinese textbook that most Chinese people can recite: “Moon’s down, crows cry and frost fills all the sky; by maples and boat lights, I sleepless lie. Outside Suzhou Hanshan Temple is in sight; its ringing bells reach my boat at midnight.”

Tolling the bell is a popular activity at Hanshan Temple. By paying a small fee you can climb up the bell tower and toll the bell. Many people were there so we had to queue. Our tour guide told us that we should toll exactly three times, meaning blessing, fortune and longevity. Another interesting thing at the temple is that you can see lots of coins on the roof of the buildings. Our tour guide told us it’s because people throw coins onto the roof; if the coins don’t fall, their wish may come true.

At Suzhou Silk Factory, we learned about the producing procedures of silk, and saw exhibitions of many beautiful silk products, such as scarves, clothes and fans.

Silkworms are being boiled in order to extract silk.