赣州市

Why this place

Ganzhou is the largest city in southern Jiangxi, in the Hakka-speaking south of the province, and it is where the Long March began in 1934. Its old town has the finest surviving Song-dynasty city wall in China, whose flood-control function is still explained by the same stone.

What to see

• The Song-dynasty city wall and the Fushou Ditch flood channel — Song engineering still working
• The Long March memorial and the Ruijin revolutionary sites
• Hakka villages and the walled 'wei' houses of the south, a defensive Hakka building type
• Wudang Mountain (Jiangxi) and the Hakka ancestor halls of the countryside

What to eat

• Hakka cuisine — salt-baked chicken, stuffed tofu, rice wine
• Ganzhou navel oranges, one of China's best-known citrus crops

Best time

March–May and October–December