Longgang: the limestone basin at the end of the county road

Longgang sits in the south-east corner of Yunyang, against the border with Lichuan in Hubei, and its core area is 80 kilometres from the county seat. The record rates it a national 5A scenic area and a national geological park and calls it the first basin under heaven, a phrase that has stuck harder than any measurement. Travellers gave it two names of their own: the last Shangri-La of the Three Gorges and, among climbers, Chongqing's small Hua Shan. Wherever the road ends, that is the point at which Yunyang stops being a river county and becomes a county of limestone.

Water cut the basin. The Changtan River runs through the south-east of the county with rapids and long gorges, and its system includes the Shisun River, Laoya Gorge and Huangling Gorge, running tens of kilometres between walls. The county record lists them for their scenery rather than for transport, though they drain the same limestone the basin is cut into. The county's other listed sites are the same kind of country, caves and gorges and cliff walks, and the whole is treated as one geological park rather than as a series of separate attractions.

Above the new county seat, Panshi City stands on the high ground behind the town, with water on three sides, cliffs on four and a flat top of 3.5 hectares. It is a natural fort and it was used as one. In 1983 a professor at the China Academy of Urban Planning and Design asked the Sichuan planning institute to open it, under its other name Mozhai, as a Three Gorges tourist site. It has what the towns below kept losing: height. From the top, the new town, the crossing and the water that replaced the old seat are all in one view.