The valley.
Rehai — "the sea of heat" — is a gorge of steaming springs below the young volcano field: boardwalks over pools the colour of enamel, vents hissing in the ferns, and a humidity that makes the whole valley feel like a lid lifted off something. Go early; by mid-morning the tour coaches have their own weather system, and the fog you want is the geological kind.
The kettle.
The Grand Hot Kettle is the valley's centrepiece: a spring that runs at 97 degrees and has been boiling, in the same shape, for as long as the records go. The eggs cook in eleven minutes and are sold by the basket; the evidence is the queue. Around it, the smaller springs carry their own names and their own temperatures, and the boardwalk runs the circuit with the honest discipline of a place that knows what it is sitting on.
The bath culture.
The volcanoes heat more than a valley: Tengchong's bath culture ranges from village pools where the booking is your boots at the door, to serious resort soaks with the water piped straight from the source. The etiquette is old and firm — wash first, keep your voice down, let the water do the talking. After a day on the crater rims, the baths are the town's real monument: geology, domesticated.
Keep reading
The Heshun library
Cangshan clouds
The national season map