Half an hour on the train
and you are in another city

Forty years ago Shenzhen was a fishing village. Today it is one of the fastest-growing skyline cities on earth, headquarters to Huawei, Tencent and DJI. The remarkable part is how close it is: 30 minutes from Guangzhou by high-speed rail — quicker than crossing Guangzhou itself end to end.

If you only have a day, pick a theme. Families head to OCT (华侨城), where the Window of the World and Happy Valley theme parks sit side by side. Shoppers go to Huaqiangbei (华强北), the largest electronics market in the world. For the view, ride to the top of the Ping An Finance Center, at 599 metres one of the tallest towers in China. For a quieter afternoon, walk OCT-LOFT, a former factory district turned into galleries and cafés. Shenzhen has far less history on show than Guangzhou, but it wins on modern energy and theme parks.

If you have ever watched a Chinese kung fu film, you already know Foshan without realising it. This is the home of Wong Fei-hung (黄飞鸿), master of the Hung Ga style; of Ip Man (叶问), Bruce Lee's teacher; and the ancestral home of Bruce Lee himself. The place to go is the Ancestral Temple (祖庙 Zumiao), a Taoist temple founded almost 1,000 years ago in the Northern Song dynasty. Inside you will find an antique Cantonese opera stage, a bronze statue of the Northern Emperor deity, and lion-dance and martial-arts demonstrations on some days. Entry is just ¥20, open 8.30 am to 6 pm.

A short walk away is Lingnan Tiandi (岭南天地) — a district of restored Lingnan-style and arcade (qilou) shop-houses now occupied by restaurants, cafés and design shops. Think of it as Foshan's answer to Shanghai's Xintiandi, but with a distinctly Cantonese southern character. It is free to enter, open 10 am to 10 pm. Foshan is also a serious Cantonese food town — do not leave without trying the congee and dim sum.

Conghua is a district in the north of Guangzhou itself — no need to leave the city limits — but the landscape changes to mountains and forest almost immediately. The draw is the Conghua hot springs (从化温泉), which surface from twelve separate springs at an average temperature of around 60°C, rich in more than ten kinds of minerals. They are a rare type of "sweet" spring with low radon and no harsh sulphur smell, and Cantonese visitors have been soaking here for decades.

Today there is a spread of spa resorts, from public pools to luxury properties with private soaking tubs — ideal for a day when your legs need a rest from city walking. Soak, eat a regional lunch, and head back by evening, or stay one night if you want to slow right down. Beyond the springs, in winter the nearby swamp cypress forest turns vivid red and orange, which is a sight in itself.

If you have done a few days of city sightseeing and want some adrenaline, Gulong Gorge (古龙峡) in Qingyuan is the answer. The headline attraction is the Yuntian glass skywalk (云天玻璃桥), a 1,314-metre transparent walkway suspended over a deep canyon and its waterfalls — look straight down through the floor at the forest and water below, and if you do not have the nerve, your legs will let you know. The glass bridge costs ¥108.

The other draw is Gulong Gorge rafting: a 6-km run with a 378-metre drop, lasting 30–40 minutes, rated one of the most thrilling rafting routes in Guangdong (open mainly in summer and early autumn). Rafting is ¥168 on weekdays and ¥218 at weekends.

Honestly, this is the furthest and least convenient trip on the list — about 68 km from Guangzhou, a 2–2.5 hour drive, and public transport takes several connections. The simplest way is a Klook day tour with round-trip transport, or a hired Didi there and back.

This is the strangest and most striking trip on the list. Out among the rice paddies of Kaiping stand close to two thousand tall stone towers — part fortress, part mansion, mixing Greek columns, Roman domes and Gothic windows with Chinese motifs in a style you will not see anywhere else. They are called Diaolou (碉楼), built in the early twentieth century by overseas Chinese who had worked in America and Southeast Asia and sent money home to build defensible homes for their families. They were inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2007, covering five village clusters and more than 1,800 towers.

The most famous cluster is Zili (自力村), where towers and villa-houses are scattered across paddy fields and lotus ponds — cinematic enough that the film Let the Bullets Fly was shot here. Also worth seeing are Liyuan (立园), a hybrid garden-mansion estate, and Chikan (赤坎), an old riverside town of arcade shop-houses.

One honest note: the villages are spread far apart, so seeing them all in a single day is a rush. If you have the time, one night in Kaiping is far more comfortable — or take a day tour that loops several clusters by car.