China · Hubei
Where to Stay in Shiyan, Hubei
Where to stay in Shiyan
Each area has its own feel; here's who each one suits.
Where you stay in Shiyan turns on the city or the mountains. The streets of the modern centre keep the shops, the museums, and the stations within a walk, and staying downtown suits anyone here for the auto city. Wide avenues run between the ridges.
Hotels cluster near the centre. Out toward Wudang and the holy peaks, the town gives way to temples and forested slopes. A room at the mountain foot trades the centre for the pilgrim gates, the Golden Hall trail, and the quiet of the shrines.
Cloud drifts among the temple peaks. Stay downtown for the city, or by the mountain for the temples. Wudang towers over the whole valley.
About Shiyan
Shiyan is the mountain city of cars and Taoist shrines.
What is Shiyan known for?
Built among the ranges of northwest Hubei as a great works for China's Dongfeng cars, it rises near the holy mountains of Wudang, whose ancient temples and bronze Golden Hall crown the peaks, and it stands by the vast Danjiangkou reservoir on the Han. Green ranges wall the valleys. Wudang's peaks rise to the south.
What are the main landmarks in Shiyan?
The Wudang mountains rise holy above Shiyan. The great Taoist range, crowned with ancient temples and a bronze Golden Hall on its highest peak, has drawn pilgrims and martial artists for a thousand years, the emblem of the region, south of the city. A vast reservoir fills the valleys.
The Danjiangkou lake spreads behind its dam on the Han, while the auto works and the museums mark the modern city of Shiyan.
What is the history of Shiyan?
Shiyan was a mountain village until the cars came. For most of its history this was a remote corner of huts and fields below the holy mountains, far from the great cities of the plain. Then the state chose the hills for industry.
In the nineteen-sixties China built a huge motor works here, deep among the ranges and safe from attack, and a whole city of workers rose almost overnight to make the Dongfeng trucks and cars. The holy mountains had drawn pilgrims far longer. For a thousand years the peaks of Wudang above the city were a great centre of the Taoist faith, where emperors raised temples and palaces and monks perfected the soft martial arts.
Then a great dam changed the river. Engineers raised the Danjiangkou dam on the Han nearby, and its reservoir became a source of water piped across China to the thirsty north. The old temples still crown the peaks.
Shiyan keeps its car works and its holy mountains in the hills of Hubei.
Where is Shiyan?
Shiyan lies in the mountains of northwest Hubei in China, near the border of Shaanxi. The city sits in narrow valleys among the Qinba ranges, on the upper Han river above the great Danjiangkou reservoir, ringed by wooded peaks. Steep forested ridges rise around.
The Han gathers behind the reservoir dam.
What is the climate of Shiyan?
Shiyan has a mild, humid mountain climate. Warm, wet summers fill the valleys, and cool winters bring frost and rare snow to the ridges, with mist and rain through the wooded hills. Cloud clings to the Wudang peaks after rain.
The reservoir mirrors the green slopes.
How do you get to Shiyan?
Shiyan lies in northwest Hubei, on the rail line between Wuhan and Xi'an. Fast trains and the expressway run to it through the mountains, and an airport serves the city and the Wudang range. Mountain roads climb south to the Taoist peaks.
Wuhan lies half a day east by train.
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Updated August 2026