Chengdu or Zhangjiajie?

Neither city has a coast anywhere near it, so for swimming both come down to hotel pools. The difference is in what replaces the beach: Chengdu has leisure water parks for its humid summers, while Zhangjiajie offers river rafting in the gorges and boat rides on Baofeng Lake.

Chengdu is one of China's great eating cities, the source of Sichuan cooking with its numbing pepper, red-oil cold dishes and late-night beef-tallow hotpot, and its lanes are full of small family counters. There is real range too, from fierce to smoky and sweet-and-sour, plus park teahouses and some fine dining.

Zhangjiajie's western Hunan food is worth trying, especially sanxiaguo stew and wood-smoked bacon, but the choice is narrow. Near the park gates in Wulingyuan, meals are mostly generic food for tour groups, so the good eating is in the city's evening food streets.

Chengdu has no historic core, but it has a solid set of sights: the Wuhou Shrine, Du Fu Thatched Cottage, the working Wenshu Monastery and Qingyang Palace, and the Jinsha and Sichuan museums. Allow three or four days for them.

Zhangjiajie's town offers half a day at most, with the quiet Ming-era Puguang Temple and a Tujia folk-customs park. Its heritage lies further out, in places like Fenghuang and Laosicheng.

Chengdu is known across China for staying out late. A hotpot dinner leads on to the neon bars and clubs along the Jin River, or to craft beer and cocktails in Yulin, and the snack streets keep going past midnight.

Zhangjiajie goes to bed early because its visitors are up at dawn for the parks. A beer at a riverside bar or a karaoke room is about the limit, and Wulingyuan is quieter still.

Zhangjiajie is the reason many people travel to this part of China. The UNESCO-listed forest of sandstone pillars at Wulingyuan, often wrapped in mist, and the Heaven's Gate arch on Tianmen Mountain right above the town are scenery on a scale Chengdu cannot match. The paths are paved and stepped and crowded at peak times, but the views are extraordinary.

Chengdu itself sits on a flat, hazy basin floor with riverside greenways. Its nature lies an hour or more away, on the Taoist trails of Qingcheng, the cloud-forest climb of Emeishan and the bamboo panda country towards Wolong.

Chengdu makes the stronger base. The Leshan Giant Buddha, the ancient Dujiangyan irrigation works and the Sanxingdui bronze masks are each about an hour away, and old market towns like Huanglongxi and Pingle, Emeishan and even Chongqing are all within reach.

Zhangjiajie has three excellent outings, the riverside old town of Fenghuang, cliff-top Furong Town and the UNESCO-listed ruins of Laosicheng. Beyond these, most nearby places offer more mountains rather than a change of scene.

Chengdu has the panda base, which most children remember for years, plus a zoo, an aquarium park, amusement parks and big parks where local families gather. Spicy food and a sprawling city take some planning, but the metro helps.

Zhangjiajie is pure adventure for older children, with swinging cable cars, glass walkways, a lift on a cliff face and macaques by the path. Almost nothing is designed for them, though, and long queues and steep steps make it hard work with toddlers or pushchairs.

Chengdu's metro is the deciding difference. It is clean, signed in English and reaches the panda base, the main sights, both airports and the rail stations, with cheap taxis and shared bikes for the rest.

In Zhangjiajie the forest park lies about 30km from town, reached by bus, taxi or a hired driver. Park shuttles, cable cars and lifts are confusing and mostly signed in Chinese, which is why many visitors split their stay between Wulingyuan and the city.

Chengdu is a fashion-conscious city with busy luxury malls around Chunxi Road, the traditional-style quarter by the Daci Temple, and local buys such as Shu brocade, Sichuan embroidery and mountain teas.

Zhangjiajie has souvenir streets, dried mushrooms and smoked bacon, with Tujia xilankapu weaving and Miao silver the only real finds.

Both are cheap places to spend a few days, with low-cost hotels, meals and taxis. What differs is where the money goes. In Chengdu most temples and museums cost little or nothing, so the bills come from hotpot, cocktails and train trips to Leshan. In Zhangjiajie the separately ticketed park pass, cable cars, lifts and glass bridges quickly become the biggest cost.

Chengdu has more going on in the evening. Sichuan opera variety shows with face-changing and fire-spitting play every night, and its livehouses host indie bands and Sichuan-dialect hip-hop, one of the liveliest small-venue scenes in China.

Zhangjiajie offers large staged spectacles of Tujia and Miao folklore, including an open-air show beneath Tianmen's cliffs. They are colourful but made for tour groups, and the town has no music scene of its own.

Slowing down is part of Chengdu's local culture. Afternoons in bamboo chairs at the teahouses of People's Park, mahjong, ear-cleaning and cheap massage give a stay real pauses, even if the megacity surrounds them.

Zhangjiajie is a place of early starts and thousands of steps. Rest there means a foot massage after the trails, a hotel spa or a hot spring outside town, rather than an easy pace.