Luoyang 4-Day Wanxianshan, Guoliang Village and Red Flag Canal Tour

Head north from Luoyang. Three and a half hours to Huixian in Xinxiang, and then the road starts narrowing and the walls on either side start rising. Private cars are not allowed up the mountain during the day, so you change to the scenic shuttle at the gate. That ticket is compulsory at 45 yuan per person and covers unlimited transfers over two days, which makes the shuttle the easiest way to move around the whole area. The first stop is the Guoliang Tunnel, also called the Cliffside Gallery. It was not built — it was cut. Between 1972 and 1977 the villagers worked it out of the cliff with hammers and steel chisels, about 1.3 kilometres of it in all. Walking through, the rock wall is close on your left and open on your right, with a drop of several tens of metres beyond. It is walked, not driven, and when the entrance is busy the queue is slow, but the rock face changes the whole way so the wait is not dead time. Beyond the tunnel is Guoliang Village itself. The stone houses are built right against the cliff, roofs weighted with flat slabs, and from a yard you can look down into the valley and up at the mountain at the same time. More than forty films have been shot here, including The Cool Temple Bell and Raise the Red Lantern, and the place carries that sense of having a story behind it. This is the height of the foliage season here. Official notices put the viewing window as running into early November, with red rock cliffs above spreads of yellow oak and larch in three distinct layers of colour — a broad wash from a distance, individual patches up close. Fewer people than the National Day holiday, too. Walk on through Tianchi, the Cliffside Households, and the Echo Spring line; the spring pushes water out of a crack in the rock, quietly enough that you have to be close to hear it. Lunch at one of the farmhouses in the scenic area — mountain food is simple and quite salty, with cold wild greens and flatbreads. Order modestly; you can carry the rest. Stay overnight in a farmhouse guesthouse inside the scenic area. The nights up there are extraordinarily quiet — you can hear wind in the trees and water somewhere off in the dark. The rooms are plain and the bedding is clean, which is a fair trade for a window that opens onto the mountain.

A second day without leaving the mountain, in a different part of it. Nanping is nothing like Guoliang. Guoliang is a village on a cliff and the point of it is how people lived against the rock; Nanping is about water. The Tianhe Waterfall drops from the cliff, and although the autumn flow is well below the summer peak, the water is clear and the pools beneath it run that deep blue-green. The approach path runs through a narrowing canyon with the rock closing in overhead, until only a strip of sky is left. It is cool and damp in there, so the front of your jacket will get wet. Baliu Valley is on the other side of the range. The name refers to the length of the valley, eight kilometres, with a stream along the bottom and slopes rising on either side — in autumn the oak turns and the persimmon trees are heavy with orange fruit. Nobody picks it; walk underneath and the air smells sweet. It is quieter than Guoliang, the path is easier, and this is the most relaxed stretch of the whole trip. Lunch again at a farmhouse, the same sort of home cooking as yesterday. If you would rather not walk in the afternoon, sit in the afternoon sun at the Cliffside Households with a stone bench and look down the valley. Doing nothing for a few hours is not a wasted afternoon. Stay on the mountain again. If the sky is clear tonight, there is almost no light pollution in the village and the stars are genuinely worth stepping outside for.

Leave Wanxianshan in the morning and head south to Linzhou. The afternoon is at the Red Flag Canal, on the same Taihang range — but the experience is entirely different. Wanxianshan is a landscape that takes your breath away; the Red Flag Canal is an engineering project that puts weight in your chest. Start with the Memorial Hall. The exhibition runs chronologically, beginning with the drought that gripped Lin County before the canal, and the figure that stays with you is the one about how much life ten years of work cost for a single tonne of water. Then there are the objects themselves: the chisels used to bore the tunnels, the carrying poles for the stone, the tools of the first tunnel crews. They are all on display, and they are the reason the rest of the site matters. The afternoon goes to the Youth Cave. Official guidance suggests visiting the Youth Cave in the morning and the Memorial Hall in the afternoon, with a free shuttle between the two — this itinerary does the reverse, coming to the Youth Cave with the background already in mind, which lands better. The Youth Cave is the hardest section of the whole canal. Three hundred young workers cut it out of the cliff face. The passage runs halfway up the mountain, with the rock on one side and a drop on the other. It had no railing at all originally; what is there now was added later, and it does not look substantial, so walk on the cliff side and keep to the inside. At the far end is the hydro station, where the canal comes down off the mountain. The sound of the water is enormous from fifty metres away. Standing beside it, looking at that channel cut through solid rock, it is hard not to think about the ten years it took. Stay in Linzhou city tonight. The food there is good and the portions are generous — stewed dishes and local noodles.

Have breakfast in Linzhou before setting off. In the morning you can see local people carrying bowls of hot pepper soup and fried dough on the street — join their rhythm for breakfast rather than queueing at a hotel restaurant. After checking out, if there is time, it is worth a short trip to the Shibanyan area. The Taihang range is cut into sheer stone walls here, and the villages are built on top of the slabs — the same mountains as Wanxianshan, seen from the other side. There is no need to push it on a return day, though; a look at the village entrance is enough. Leave after lunch for Luoyang, about two and a half hours. The road runs out onto the North China Plain, and unlike the climb in, it is flat and easy, which is exactly when people fall asleep in the car. Over four days there are three images that stay: the red rock at Wanxianshan, the road somebody cut into the cliff, and the water coming out of the mountain at the Youth Cave. They are in fact three faces of the same Taihang range — landscape, labour and will. The return day has no fixed programme, so pack the night before and leave your bags by the door. The descent out of Wanxianshan is steep and still full of bends, so anyone prone to carsickness should sit in the front and stay off their phone. Most visitors think pairing the two places works well — the scenery is demanding and the history gives the mind a rest, so the rhythm does not tire you out. One practical adjustment worth making: if you are travelling with elderly relatives, move the Red Flag Canal day later and put Baliu Valley on the day before departure. The whole sequence then flows more smoothly.