I have to agree w/ some of the commenters on Lijiang and Putuoshan.

Lijiang — at least the main area in Old Town — is not even close to being off the beaten path anymore, as it is now basically run by outsiders (not the locals) and mostly become a glorified shopping mall with a horrible raucous bar district that wasn’t there a few years ago. Even Shuhe (another small town in the countryside) has late night outdoor karaoke. If you want to experience something closer to what Lijiang used to be, you have to go to Baisha.

Putuoshan, as lovely as it is, is crawling with Chinese tourists just about any time of the year (except maybe winter), and it can get crowded and noisy. It’s possible to get away on small corners of the island, but don’t expect to have it to yourself.

Perhaps my most memorable times were spent along the Silk Road . . . the fort at Jiayuguan in late January, three inches of new snow on the ground . . . not a footprint on it other than mine . . . looking out across the Takla Makan, felt for a moment like Marco Polo . . . ditching the tour group I’d been assigned-to at the hotel – they, a group of 50 from Korea, me a solo non-Korean-speaking Californian . . . walking into the shadowy cave at the Magao Grottoes . . . as my eyes adjusted I saw two enormous feet in front of me . . . I looked up to the face of the Budddha, 95 feet above me . . . found an old ladder, climbed up to that face . . . Magical . . .

Peter