We travelled to Henan, central China, and visited several interesting cities and cultural highlights during our 1-week trip. Henan surprised me a lot and the whole family enjoyed the combination of cities, old temples and architecture and mountains. As a bonus: Henan prices are much lower than for example Shenzhen.
We travelled from Tuesday 16th of December 2025 – 24th of December 2025 with 3 adults and 2 children (11 and 14years).
Our itinerary:
- day 1: fly to Zhengzhou and drive to Shaolin
- day 2: Shaolin Temple + Mountain
- day 3: Taxi from Shaolin to Luoyang (Longmen Grottoes + Museum)
- day 4: Luoyang
- day 5: Luoyang train to Kaifeng
- day 6-7: Kaifeng
- day 8: Kaifeng train to Zhengzhou
- day 9: Zhengzhou Museum and fly back
The roughly the route we followed:
Detailed itinerary
Day 1: we flew in the afternoon from Shenzhen to Zhengzhou in about 3 hours and arrived quite late on Zhengzhou airport. Because we arrived quite late, we had arranged a private taxi to immediately take us to the small city of Dengfeng(登封), which is the ideal place to stay if you are visiting the Shaolin temples and Songhan mountain. It’s about 100km from the airport and I guess the ride took about one and a half hour.
We stayed in a hotel(星图酒店) in the center of Dengfeng city. Tip 1: be sure to check if the hotel you are booking is allowed to host foreigners! Many (cheaper) hotels in Henan apparantly do not have the governmental license to have foreign guests.
Day 2
We took a taxi from our hotel to Shaolin Monestry. You will pass many Kungfu schools on your way there. Note that later in 2026 cars cannot drive to current parking space anymore. We understood there will be a short mandatory bus-route to take you from a new larger parking space to the entrance. Some highlights of the Shaolin complex:
Training of boys near the entrance:
Free performance daily at 10:30, 11:30, 14:00 and 15:00 (at least when we were there in December). We watched the 10:30 performance right when we entered, which was convenient, because we didn’t have to worry to return on time to the beginning of the park to watch:
The temple complex itself is quite nice, will take 2-3 hours to see everything
Afterwards, we walked further to see the Shaolin Pagoda Forest where famous monks are buried:
After a few hours, we walked further and took the cablecar to the top of the ShuCeShan, part of the SongShan mountain, where we followed a man-made trail alongside the mountain with stunning views of the “book-mountain”:
We stopped at the hanging bridge from where you can see the next monastery. It is possible to walk all the way back down at the other side of the mountain (4+ hours track?), but we simply walked back to the cablecar and took it back down to the Shaolin monastery again and we went back to the hotel.
Day 3
We left the hotel near the Shaolin temples early in the morning and took a taxi towards the Longmen Grottoes. At the entrance, there is a dedicated room to store your luggage, so we left our large suitcases there, and with our tickets, we walked from the entrance to the Longmen Grottoes. There are literally thousands of Buddha images carved in the rock next to the river, ranging from a few cm to 17 meters. Especially the very large Buddha’s are not to be missed
After visiting the grottoes/caves, we took a car to our hotel and checked in. In the afternoon, we went out to see the city center of Luoyang, which was the Eastern end of the Silk Road during the Han dynasty.
In Luoyang you will see many girls and women wearing traditional clothes, taking photos with the various landmark buildings. There is a whole industry to rent these clothes, professional photographers
Day 4
We visited White Horse Temple (BaiMaShi), the first Buddhist temple in China. You need to buy entrance tickets (see first photo) and then we walked around the temple complex.
Within the temple complex there are also Buddhist temples from other countries. There are relatively new and less interesting. They were built less than 20 years ago, and age is unfortunately already starting to show:
When you go out of the main temple complex, on the side, you can follow a small path which leads to the Qiyun Pagoda:
After the WhiteHorseTemple, we took a taxi back to the city center, ate something in a small restaurant just outside Luoyang Museum and then visited the museum. We stored our jackets and backpacks for free in lockers outside the entrance and then joined the crowds in the museum. Well worth a visit! The museum building is very large, but inside there are only two floors that can be visited.
You probably need about 3 hours in the museum.
Day 5
In the morning we visited an old street in 洛邑古城 and old city gate and of course you will see the little shops renting traditional clothes (and providing the makeup) everywhere.
Then we walked to an area which looks old, but was not really old, again with women in traditional clothes everywhere. Still nice to walk around for about an hour, look in some shops, take photos etc.
Then we took a small tuk-tuk (about 3km?) to another old and impressively large gate LiJingMen 丽景门(location):
Afterwards we picked up our luggage at the hotel and took a taxi to the Luoyang railway station in the North of the city to take the train to Kaifeng.
In Kaifeng we decided to stay in two different hotels: one close to the Millenium City Park (Qingming Shanghe Yuan 清明上河园) and one in another part of the city. We checked into our hotel and then walked to the Park. When you buy tickets for a special evening-show, you get entrance to the park included for 3 days. When you enter for the first time, they scan your face, so next time when you enter the park, you don’t even need your ticket anymore!
The evening-show is highly recommended. We had one of the more luxurious top-seats (with big discounts online), but it doesn’t really matter where you sit. This show is really big with more than 700 people participating and surrounding the whole lake!
Day 6
The next morning, after breakfast in our hotel, we again went to the Millenium City Park. From our hotel it was about a 4 minute walk. Within the park there are also lots of performances. The park is newly built, but in ancient Chinese style. Even though it is thus not real and more of a theme-park, we all enjoyed ourselves:
Do not miss
- the horse-shows (back in the park, near the theme-rides)
- the water/fire attack
- night-show with manmade fireworks
You definitely need at least one full day to see the whole park and all of the shows. We went one evening, then the next whole day and then finally in the last morning one more time shortly to take some rides.
Day 7
We first shortly went to the park to ride a camel and shoot bow-and-arrow, but then across the road from the main entrance went on a small boat-tour across the lake and visited another park. This park was bit less interesting.
We then took a taxi to a famous Luoyang restaurant 邢家老店 (location) and ate very good with 5 people for only 35 euros:
We then picked up our luggage, went to the next hotel, checked in and when to another (Kaifengfu) park with shows! Yes, there are a lot of parks with shows in Kaifeng. As long as you don’t expect it to be hundreds of years old, it is all really worthwhile watching!
Some photo’s of Kaifengfu in the evening. The park is much smaller than Millenium Park, but if you follow the group and watch all the shows in rapid succession and also enjoy the lights, it is also worthwhile! Note that if you buy tickets, pay attention if you have “day-tickets” (which do not allow to enter anymore after 18:00), or just “evening tickets” . This is important, because one of the shows requires you to go outside the main gate and then go back in.
Day 8
We went to see one of the genuinly old landmarks of Kaifeng: the Iron Pagoda (location). It was built in the year 1049. The brick pagoda is built from stone, but the color is similar to iron. Feeding the deer was more interesting:
Then we took a taxi to walk around the old Christian/Jewish/Muslim neighbourhood of Kaifeng and even visited a Christian church (children under 18 years were not allowed inside for some reason). The Chinese-style building of a Mosque as there are quite a lot of Muslim-Chinese living in this area
Afterwards we took the train from Kaifeng back to Zhengzou:
Day 9
In Zhengzhou we stayed in the city-center for one night. The next morning we went to visit the HeNan Museum 河南博物院. The museum is again good, with lots of historical artifacts and English texts for the displayed items:
In the afternoon we took a taxi to return with our luggage to Zhengzhou airport to fly back. It is possible to take a train, but this was not expensive and a bit faster:
We all enjoyed our trip to Henan. Because we travelled in December, the tourist hotspots were not too busy. It was quite cold in Henan, with temperatures ranging from pleasant in the sun (no jacket needed), to very cold (below freezing).
Highlights were:
- Shaolin Monestry + Mountain (don’t forget this!)
- Longmen Grottoes
- Luoyang City Center with the beautifully lid pagoda’s and temples
- Kaifeng Millenium City Park (don’t miss the shows!)
- The musea (I liked both Zhengzhou and Luoyang; though the kids were less interested in this. You can also just pick one of the two, as it partially overlaps).
- Cheap and delicious food, taxi’s and very reasonably priced hotels!