Tianshui

Straddling the Wei River valley, Tianshui has been inhabited for over 8,000 years and is considered a cradle of Chinese civilisation — the mythical sage-king Fuxi, credited with inventing writing and the eight trigrams, was said to have been born here. The city's greatest treasure is Maijishan ("Haystack Mountain"), whose sheer sandstone cliffs are honeycombed with 194 caves containing over 7,000 Buddhist sculptures spanning the Northern Wei to Qing dynasties. Tianshui also marks the transition between the loess plateau and the Qinling-Daba mountains, giving it spectacular and varied landscapes.