The Huangshan & Huizhou walk.

Meet at Tunxi (Huangshan city) station and drive an hour to the mountain's east entrance. Take the Yungu cableway to save the lower staircase for the descent, then walk the summit's eastern network: the Begin-to-Believe peak first, where the towers of the north scarp assemble themselves exactly as the paintings promise.

Eight kilometres of ridge walking to the summit hotels by mid-afternoon, with the stone-pine towers in constant company. The hotels are functional and the sunset platforms are not: claim a spot on the west-facing terrace as the cloud sea lights up from underneath.

Dinner on the mountain, early night — tomorrow begins in the dark by design.

Up before five for the dawn platforms: Guangmingding, the Bright Summit at 1,860 metres, and the Lion Peak headland, where the sunrise goes through its whole repertoire — cloud sea first, granite second, colour last. Breakfast back at the hotel while the day-tripper crowds are still assembling.

The day's walk is the mountain's best: the west side paths and, conditions permitting, the West Sea Grand Canyon loop — twelve kilometres of walkways bolted to the granite faces, down into the canyon country and back up through towers the summit hotels never see. This is Huangshan's full argument, and the legs will know it.

Descend by cableway on the west side by late afternoon and drive thirty minutes to Hongcun for the first of two village nights.

Hongcun early, before the coaches: the village is designed around water, and the system still runs as its Ming-dynasty engineers intended — the spring-fed crescent of the Moon Pond at the centre, the channels running down every lane for washing and gardens, the South Lake mirror at the village foot. An hour with the water system teaches more Huizhou architecture than any lecture.

Then out on foot: seven gentle kilometres through the Mukeng bamboo valley, the famous sea of green the films keep borrowing, and back by farm paths through the camphor trees.

Afternoon free in Hongcun's lanes — the wood-carving halls are worth an hour each — and dinner in the village, Huizhou cooking: stinky mandarin fish for the brave, bamboo-shoot stew for everyone.

Drive forty minutes to Xidi, the other half of the UNESCO pair: a village of merchant mansions built by families who made fortunes in salt and came home to spend them on gate lintels, brick carvings and lattice windows of absurd refinement. The houses are original, occupied, and open.

The walk today is the circuit between Xidi and the surrounding farming hamlets — nine kilometres of stone paths through rapeseed fields and persimmon orchards, the white-walled villages appearing and disappearing across the valley the way they do in every painting of this region.

Evening drive to a guesthouse near Chengkan, quieter than the famous pair and the best-preserved of the lot, with the largest ancestral hall in Huizhou waiting for morning.

Chengkan early: the Longxi river loops around the village in the pattern the geomancers chose, and the Luogong ancestral hall — the largest timber hall in the region — holds its dark scale beautifully in the morning light. Five gentle kilometres of village paths, then the transfer back to Tunxi.

The old Tunxi quarter, Tunxi Laojie, is a kilometre of Song-style shopfronts still trading: tea houses, ink-stone workshops, the Hui-style pastry counters. Lunch here, an hour of shopping or ink-stone gossip, and the trip ends at the station or airport by mid-afternoon.

The summary you will actually give people: two days on the most painted mountain in China, three days inside the paintings' frame — and the frame, everyone admits, is where the life is.