Enshi恩施

Enshi City is the capital of the Enshi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, tucked in southwestern Hubei between the Wuling Mountains and the Qing River valley. It sits above the world's only confirmed independent selenium ore deposit and was named the "Selenium Capital of the World" in 2011. Its karst landscape stacks three geological wonders—the Grand Canyon, Tenglong Cave (one of Asia's largest caverns), and Suobuyan Stone Forest (a seabed fossil forest some 460 million years old)—each within an hour or two of the others by car. This is also home to the Tujia and Miao peoples, where the Daughters' Fair, Baishou dance, and Xilankapu weaving are living customs and festivals rather than museum pieces. With no direct international flights and sights scattered across several counties, Enshi has yet to be worn into a tourist conveyor belt—the price is planning your own logistics, the reward is a richly textured destination that still keeps its rough edges.

Natural Scenery

Three geological wonders packed into a single mountain region.

• Enshi Grand Canyon: the Yunlong Ground Fissure, dubbed "the earth's beautiful scar," plus the 150-meter-tall "One-Column Incense" stone pillar
• Tenglong Cave: one of Asia's largest caverns, with an entrance big enough to park a helicopter and a near-constant temperature of about 12°C
• Suobuyan Stone Forest: a 460-million-year-old seabed stone forest on gentle terrain with few visitors
• The Qing River valley runs through the city, where roofed bridges and riverside promenades make up the daily walking life of locals

Culture & Heritage

Living Tujia and Miao tradition, not museum exhibits.

• Nü'er Hui (Daughters' Fair): dubbed "China's Valentine's Day," a traditional Tujia market-and-matchmaking gathering held from the 7th to 12th day of the seventh lunar month
• Baishou Dance: a collective Tujia folk dance performed ritually as the "Shebari" ceremony during Spring Festival, and also seen daily around the Girls' Town
• Xilankapu: traditional Tujia brocade weaving, with patterns drawn from mountains, rivers, animals and plants
• Enshi Yulu: the only surviving steamed, needle-shaped green tea in China, inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2022

Tastes & Specialties

Selenium-rich mountain cuisine, with cured meats as the star.

• Selenium-rich potatoes: small tubers grown in local selenium-rich soil, delicious in firewood-simmered rice or mashed
• Hezha: a thick soup of soybeans simmered whole with their liquid—the most everyday dish on a Tujia table
• Enshi Gege: shredded pork coated in chili powder, steamed quickly in a palm-sized bamboo steamer; fewer and fewer people make it these days
• Enshi Yulu tea paired with a selenium-rich meal is the easiest way into "eating Enshi"