The hook
The Qing emperors' summer capital: an enormous walled garden-palace of lakes, meadows, and pavilions, ringed by outlying temples, one of them a half-scale replica of Lhasa's Potala Palace, a few hours north of Beijing and largely overlooked.
01Why it's worth it
For much of the 18th century the emperors ran the empire each summer from Chengde, escaping Beijing's heat, and they built to match: the Mountain Resort is a walled park of some 560 hectares laid out to gather China's landscapes in one place, lakes in the style of the southern water towns, grassland like the Mongolian steppe, forested hills with hunting lodges. Around it they raised the "Eight Outer Temples" in Tibetan and Mongolian styles as a piece of imperial diplomacy toward their frontier subjects, the grandest being the Putuo Zongcheng, modelled on the Potala in Lhasa. It's a UNESCO site and a serious slice of Qing history, yet because it sits just off the main tourist tracks it stays comparatively calm, the kind of place travellers flag as genuinely underrated.
02How to experience it
Give the walled resort most of a day on foot or by park cart (the lake gardens, the misty-hill pavilions), then visit the outlying temples, above all the Potala replica, for the views back over the whole layout. It's an easy high-speed-rail trip from Beijing; spring to autumn is best.
From the locals
It heads the list when travellers name China's overlooked cities: "Chengde (not Chengdu)," one wrote, "the Qing emperors used to vacation there during the summer, there are interesting palaces to visit as well as a replica of the Potala Palace," a place "often overlooked by many people."