Explore China
An interactive map of China’s 34 provinces and regions — tap any province to see a preview, or jump straight to the full guide. From WillyChina — online Mandarin lessons by native and professional teachers.
Tap a province on the map
Hover for name · Click to jump to its card
North China · 5
The political and cultural heartland around Beijing.
Beijing 北京 Běijīng
China’s political and cultural capital — over 3,000 years of imperial history layered with modern energy. Home to the Forbidden City, the Great Wall’s most-visited stretches, and the country’s standard Mandarin (Putonghua).
Read the full guide →Tianjin 天津 Tiānjīn
Beijing’s neighbouring port city — a treaty-port heritage of European architecture, famous baozi steamed buns and a distinctive Tianjin dialect with its dry, witty humour.
Guide coming soonHebei 河北 Héběi
The province that wraps around Beijing and Tianjin — home to long stretches of the Great Wall, the imperial summer retreat at Chengde, and the Bohai Sea coast.
Guide coming soonShanxi 山西 Shānxī
China’s coal heartland and a treasury of ancient architecture — the walled city of Pingyao, the Yungang Buddhist grottoes, and the Hanging Temple cling to its loess plateau cliffs.
Guide coming soonInner Mongolia 内蒙古 Nèi Měnggǔ
Vast grasslands, the Gobi Desert and the Mongolian steppe — yurts, horseback culture, lamb-heavy cuisine, and a bilingual Mongolian-Mandarin signage along the long border with Mongolia and Russia.
Guide coming soonNortheast China · 3
Cold winters, hearty cuisine, Korean and Russian influences.
Liaoning 辽宁 Liáoníng
The southern gateway to the northeast (Dōngběi) — Shenyang’s Qing-era imperial palace, Dalian’s seaside European architecture, and a hearty cuisine built around stews, dumplings and lamb skewers.
Guide coming soonJilin 吉林 Jílín
The middle of Dōngběi — Changbai Mountain’s volcanic crater lake on the North Korean border, the world’s longest ice-rime forests on the Songhua River, and a Korean-Chinese cultural mix.
Guide coming soonHeilongjiang 黑龙江 Hēilóngjiāng
China’s northernmost province — Harbin’s annual Ice and Snow Festival, Russian-influenced architecture, and the deep boreal forests of the Greater Khingan Range.
Guide coming soonEast China · 6
The Yangtze delta — wealth, water towns, and Shanghai.
Shanghai 上海 Shànghǎi
China’s commercial heart and largest city — the Bund’s colonial-era waterfront facing Pudong’s neon skyline. Shanghainese (Wú dialect) is spoken here alongside Mandarin.
Read the full guide →Jiangsu 江苏 Jiāngsū
Yangtze-delta wealth and water-town beauty — Suzhou’s classical gardens, Nanjing’s Ming dynasty walls, and a refined cuisine built around freshwater fish, crabs and lotus.
Guide coming soonZhejiang 浙江 Zhèjiāng
Tea country and tech country — Hangzhou’s West Lake, Longjing green tea, the ancient water town of Wuzhen, and the headquarters of Alibaba.
Guide coming soonAnhui 安徽 Ānhuī
Home to the legendary Yellow Mountain (Huangshan) — the inspiration for centuries of Chinese landscape painting — alongside the picture-perfect Hui-style villages of Xidi and Hongcun.
Guide coming soonFujian 福建 Fújiàn
China’s tea, tulou and seafaring province — Wuyi rock teas, the circular Hakka earthen fortresses, Xiamen’s colonial Gulangyu island, and the Hokkien (Min) dialect family.
Read the full guide →Shandong 山东 Shāndōng
Confucius’s birthplace and the spiritual peak of Mount Tai — coastal cities like Qingdao (with its German beer-brewing legacy), and a cuisine built around wheat, seafood and bold flavours.
Guide coming soonCentral China · 4
Yangtze River heartland, the cradle of Chinese civilisation.
Jiangxi 江西 Jiāngxī
Lush green mountains and the porcelain capital of Jingdezhen — Lushan’s mist-shrouded peaks, Wuyuan’s canola fields, and a thousand years of imperial ceramic craft.
Guide coming soonHenan 河南 Hénán
The cradle of Chinese civilisation — Luoyang’s Longmen Grottoes, the Shaolin Temple where kung fu was born, and Anyang’s oracle bones (the earliest Chinese writing).
Guide coming soonHubei 湖北 Húběi
Yangtze River heartland — Wuhan’s three cities at the river’s bend, the Three Gorges Dam, the sacred Taoist peaks of Wudang Mountain, and famously hot-and-numbing dry noodles.
Guide coming soonHunan 湖南 Húnán
Chairman Mao’s birthplace and the surreal sandstone pillars of Zhangjiajie (the inspiration for Avatar’s floating mountains). Cuisine here is fiercely spicy — even more than Sichuan’s.
Guide coming soonSouth China · 3
Cantonese-speaking, subtropical, the global trading south.
Guangdong 广东 Guǎngdōng
The Cantonese-speaking south — Guangzhou’s 2,000-year trading history, Shenzhen’s tech boom, dim sum culture and a coastline that turned China into a global manufacturer.
Read the full guide →Hainan 海南 Hǎinán
China’s tropical island province — Sanya’s white-sand beaches, coconut groves, the Li and Miao ethnic cultures, and increasingly a free-trade port and duty-free shopping destination.
Guide coming soonGuangxi 广西 Guǎngxī
Karst landscapes immortalised on the 20-yuan note — Guilin and Yangshuo’s mountain peaks rising from the Li River. Zhuang is the largest ethnic-minority group in China and the region’s namesake.
Guide coming soonSouthwest China · 5
Mountains, ethnic diversity, pandas, spicy food.
Chongqing 重庆 Chóngqìng
The world’s largest municipality by population — a mountain city of bridges, cable cars and famously fiery hotpot. Sichuanese cuisine and dialect rule here.
Guide coming soonSichuan 四川 Sìchuān
Pandas, peppercorns and Chengdu’s relaxed teahouse culture — Sichuan’s spicy-numbing (málà) cuisine and laidback rhythm draw travellers from everywhere. Tibetan and Qiang cultures share the mountains here.
Read the full guide →Guizhou 贵州 Guìzhōu
Karst mountains, ethnic-minority villages and Maotai (China’s most famous baijiu). The Miao and Dong peoples preserve some of China’s most colourful living traditions here.
Guide coming soonYunnan 云南 Yúnnán
China’s most ethnically diverse province — 25 recognised ethnic groups, the old towns of Lijiang and Dali, the rice terraces of Yuanyang, and Pu’er tea country bordering Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam.
Read the full guide →Tibet (Xizang) 西藏 Xīzàng
The roof of the world — Lhasa’s Potala Palace, Mount Everest’s north face, monasteries strung across high plateaus, and Tibetan Buddhism shaping daily life. Tibetan and Mandarin are both official.
Guide coming soonNorthwest China · 5
Silk Road, deserts, Muslim cultures, Tibetan plateau edge.
Shaanxi 陕西 Shǎnxī
Where the Silk Road began — Xi’an’s Terracotta Army, the ancient city walls, the Great Mosque, and one of China’s most flavour-packed Muslim-Chinese street-food scenes.
Guide coming soonGansu 甘肃 Gānsù
The Silk Road corridor itself — Dunhuang’s Mogao Buddhist caves, Zhangye’s rainbow-striped Danxia landform, and Lanzhou’s hand-pulled beef noodles (the original lāmiàn).
Read the full guide →Qinghai 青海 Qīnghǎi
High plateau province on the Tibetan border — Qinghai Lake (China’s largest salt lake), the source of the Yellow and Yangtze rivers, and significant Tibetan, Hui and Mongolian populations.
Guide coming soonNingxia 宁夏 Níngxià
China’s Hui Muslim heartland — the Tengger Desert, the imperial Western Xia tombs, mosques across Yinchuan, and a wine industry quietly winning international awards.
Guide coming soonXinjiang 新疆 Xīnjiāng
China’s largest region by area and its westernmost — Kashgar’s old Silk Road bazaar, the Taklamakan Desert, the Tianshan Mountains, and Uyghur culture, food and music shaping daily life.
Guide coming soonSpecial Regions · 3
Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan — distinct jurisdictions.
Hong Kong 香港 Xiānggǎng
A self-governing SAR with its own legal system, currency and immigration — Victoria Harbour’s skyline, dim sum brunches, dense vertical living, and a Cantonese-speaking culture that punches far above its size.
Guide coming soonMacau 澳门 Àomén
A former Portuguese colony, now a Cantonese-speaking SAR — pastel colonial churches alongside the world’s largest gaming industry, plus the unique Portuguese-Cantonese fusion of Macanese cuisine.
Guide coming soonTaiwan 台湾 Táiwān
A self-governed island with its own democratic system — Mandarin (Guóyǔ) is the official language alongside Hokkien (Taiwanese), Hakka and Indigenous Austronesian languages. Famous for night markets, bubble tea and traditional Chinese characters.
Guide coming soonNo provinces match your search. Try a different term.
One country, 34 vastly different places
China is so geographically and culturally vast that “China” as a single label is almost meaningless. Cantonese-speaking Guangdong feels nothing like Mandarin-speaking Beijing; the Tibetan plateau is a different world from Shanghai’s high-rises; Xinjiang’s Silk Road bazaars share little with Heilongjiang’s Russian-influenced snow festivals. Each of the 34 administrative divisions — 23 provinces, 5 autonomous regions, 4 municipalities, 2 Special Administrative Regions, plus Taiwan — has its own dialect, cuisine, history and rhythm.
Why we built this
Most “guide to China” content online is shallow — a list of five must-see cities and a handful of clichés. Real understanding requires going region by region: tasting Sichuan’s numbing peppercorns, walking Pingyao’s Ming-dynasty walls, hearing Cantonese flow at a Guangzhou dim sum table. We’re slowly writing province-by-province guides for travellers, Mandarin students and culturally-curious readers who want depth, not summaries.
If you’re learning Mandarin, this page also doubles as a regional context map. The standard Mandarin you’ll learn in lessons is based on Beijing’s Putonghua — but you’ll hear Wú in Shanghai, Yuè (Cantonese) in Guangdong and Hong Kong, Mǐn dialects in Fujian, and dozens of distinct mountain-region tongues across the southwest. Knowing where each variant lives makes Mandarin learning more grounded and more interesting.
FAQs
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) administratively recognises 34 divisions: 23 provinces, 5 autonomous regions, 4 direct-controlled municipalities (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Chongqing), and 2 Special Administrative Regions (Hong Kong, Macau). Taiwan is included in the PRC’s official count as a province, though it is self-governed with its own democratic system — we list it here as a distinct entry for completeness.
Provinces (省 shěng) are standard administrative divisions — like states in Australia or the US. There are 23 of them.
Autonomous regions (自治区 zìzhìqū) have higher proportions of ethnic-minority populations (Tibetans, Mongolians, Uyghurs, Hui Muslims, Zhuang) and theoretically receive cultural-autonomy protections. There are 5.
Municipalities (直辖市 zhíxiáshì) are major cities that report directly to the central government, bypassing provincial-level administration. Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Chongqing.
SARs (特别行政区 tèbié xíngzhèngqū) are Hong Kong and Macau — they have their own legal systems, currencies and immigration controls under the “one country, two systems” framework.
For first-timers we usually suggest a triangle of Beijing (history + capital culture), Shanghai (modernity + Yangtze delta) and Sichuan (Chengdu’s pandas + spicy food + relaxed pace). That gives you imperial, modern, and inland-cultural sides of the country in 10–14 days. From there, where you go next depends on what hooked you: Yunnan and Guangxi for nature, Xi’an and Gansu for the Silk Road, Hong Kong and Guangdong for Cantonese culture.
You don’t need it, but it dramatically improves the experience. Tier-1 cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou) have enough English signage and translation apps to get by. Outside those, English drops sharply — even at high-end hotels in second-tier cities. Knowing 50–100 essential Mandarin phrases (greetings, numbers, ordering food, asking directions) transforms the trip. That’s roughly the HSK 1 level, and our free resources cover the foundations.
Not yet — at the moment 4 are live (Beijing, Shanghai, Sichuan, Guangdong) with the rest in production. We publish a new province guide every few weeks. Cards marked “Guide in production” show what’s coming. The map and cards on this page work as a regional overview regardless of which guides are written.
The blog hub is a long-form narrative read about China’s regions — historical context, cultural overview, the why behind regional differences. This page is the interactive index — pick a province visually, get an immediate preview, jump to the full guide. The two complement each other.
Want to learn Mandarin before your trip to China?
From basic survival phrases to conversational fluency — WillyChina’s online lessons get you ready in weeks, not years.
Book a Free Intro Lesson →