Kunming

Since 1985 black-headed gulls have flown in from Siberia every year to winter on this lake from November to March. Hold up a piece of bread and the flock swarms overhead. The circuit takes half an hour, and in the morning older people gather to dance.

Dragon Gate is a narrow path and set of grottoes chiselled out of the cliff above the west shore of Dianchi Lake. From the cave where the ledge ends the lake opens out beneath your feet. The way is so tight that holiday crowds shuffle through in single file.

Limestone pillars carved by rain rise as thick as trees, part of the South China Karst that UNESCO inscribed in 2007. The drive is ninety minutes or so, and inside, the maze of paths brings you back where you started if you miss the signs.

A temple first built, by its own account, under the Nanzhao kingdom. In the middle of the courtyard an octagonal pavilion sits on a pond, reached by stone bridges. Behind stands a separate hall in Thai Buddhist style, so one temple holds two traditions.

On the Dianchi shore, villages of twenty-five of Yunnan's minority peoples have been rebuilt, houses and shrines included. Each village keeps set performance times, so plan your route from the noticeboard by the gate. Seeing all of it needs over half a day.

Hillside fields northeast of Kunming whose iron-rich soil runs deep red. Each field grows a different crop, so red earth, green and yellow join like a patchwork, and the colour is strongest the day after rain. About four hours by car, so stay a night.

In the city centre two archways face each other, named for a golden horse and a jade-green rooster. Legend says that once every sixty years the shadows cast by sun and moon meet between them. The pair standing now were rebuilt in 1999.

A military school opened in 1909, through which generals such as Zhu De and Ye Jianying passed. Yellow-walled wings enclose the parade ground on four sides, and it lies just east of Green Lake, an easy walk after the gulls.

One of Asia's biggest wholesale markets for cut flowers, with roses and lilies bundled and stacked to the floor. At night the traders pour in and it gets busier still, and a bunch costs a fraction of what a city florist asks.

An old landing village on the way to the airport, with temples, shrines and pagodas packed into a small area. Stalls in every lane sell erkuai and grilled tofu, and with the airport so close it fills half a day before a flight out.

A long embankment hugging the eastern edge of Dian Lake, with the ridge of the Western Hills stretched out across the water. In winter black-headed gulls from Siberia settle here in flocks, and hold up some bread and they swoop to your hand.

A three-storey pavilion in a park at the north tip of Dian Lake, its pillars hung with a 180-character couplet by the Qing scholar Sun Ran. It is called the longest couplet in China, and small boats push out from the landing below it to circle the lake.

A Taoist hall cast entirely in bronze, pillars, roof and doors alike, rebuilt by Wu Sangui in the early Qing. It stands on wooded Mingfeng Hill after a long climb of stairs, and a cable car joins it to the Horticultural Expo Garden below.

A temple in the hills northwest of the city holding 500 arhats modelled over several years in the late Qing by the Sichuan sculptor Li Guangxiu and his pupils. One stretches an arm to the ceiling, others ride the waves; no two faces or poses match.

A newer hall by Guandu Old Town, strongest on Dian kingdom bronze cowrie containers and minority artefacts. Admission costs nothing once booked in advance with a passport number; closed Mondays. Guandu is within walking distance, so the two fill half a day.