Hangzhou or Zhangjiajie?

Neither city is a place for a swim, so anyone who wants sand and sea will need to go elsewhere for that part of the trip. What differs is the nearest thing to it. From Hangzhou, the designated summer swimming areas at Qiandao Lake are about two hours away. Zhangjiajie offers summer whitewater rafting in the gorges, and otherwise only a hotel pool.

Hangzhou eats better for most visitors. Its cooking is delicate and slightly sweet, from West Lake fish in vinegar sauce to shrimp with Longjing tea. On top of that come lakeside banquets, tea drunk in the hill villages where it is picked, and the night markets and food courts of a large city.

Zhangjiajie's western Hunan cooking is bolder: chilli, sour pickles, wood-smoked bacon and the three-pot stew simmering at the table. Its evening food streets are worth finding. The choice is narrow, though, meals near the park gates are generic tour-group food, and anyone who avoids chilli has to keep asking for dishes without it.

The gap here is wide. West Lake is itself a designed cultural landscape, surrounded by Lingyin Temple, the Feilai Feng carvings and old pagodas. Hangzhou adds serious museums of silk, tea and Zhejiang history, and the Neolithic city of Liangzhu on the outskirts, even though its old streets have mostly been rebuilt.

In Zhangjiajie the town has the quiet Ming-dynasty Puguang Temple, a Tujia folk-customs park and a few rebuilt streets, and you can see them all in half a day. Its deeper heritage is out in the old towns and Tujia sites, so culture there means making a separate trip.

Neither is a nightlife city, but Hangzhou at least gives you an evening. You can stroll the lit lakeshore, have a drink on a terrace around Hubin, or head to the clubs, craft beer bars and karaoke in Wulin, which students and young workers keep busy. Zhangjiajie goes to bed early because everyone is up at dawn for the parks, and a beer at a riverside bar is about as late as it gets.

This is Zhangjiajie's category by a long way. The quartz-sandstone pillars of Wulingyuan rise out of forest and mist, macaques forage beside the Golden Whip Stream path, and Tianmen Mountain has cliff-edge walkways and its great natural arch. Very few places anywhere look like this, although the trails are paved steps and get packed in the peak weeks.

Hangzhou's outdoors is gentler and closer to the city. There are half-day walks through the tea terraces and the Nine Creeks valley, cycling on the causeways, and boats through the Xixi wetland, with Moganshan's bamboo hills an hour away. It is countryside to enjoy between sights rather than scenery to build a trip around.

Hangzhou sits in one of the richest parts of China for day trips. Shaoxing is under half an hour by high-speed train, Shanghai about an hour and Suzhou's classical gardens about an hour and a half. The canal towns of Wuzhen, Xitang and Nanxun are each an easy trip by road.

From Zhangjiajie the list is shorter but good. Fenghuang's stilt houses on the Tuo River and Furong Town on its cliff above a waterfall are both on the rail line, and Laosicheng, the overgrown Tujia capital, is a UNESCO site. Beyond those three, most of what is in reach is more mountains.

Hangzhou is the easier city with children. West Lake has pedal boats, ferries to the islands and wide paths for scooters, and there is also a zoo in the hills, an aquarium with penguins and beluga whales, and theme parks on the edge of town. The main drawbacks are humid summers and festival crowds.

Zhangjiajie thrills older children with swaying cable cars, glass walkways over sheer drops and macaques by the path. Almost nothing there is made for children, though, and long queues and steep steps wear out small legs and defeat pushchairs.

Hangzhou is simpler to get around. A clean metro reaches the railway stations and the airport, shared bikes and lakeside cycle lanes cover the scenic core, and cheap taxis fill the gaps out to the temples and tea villages.

Zhangjiajie falls into two parts: the walkable city centre, where the Tianmen cable car starts, and Wulingyuan around 30km away, reached by bus or with a hired driver. Inside the forest park the shuttle routes are confusing and the signs mostly in Chinese, so many visitors split their stay between two hotels.

Hangzhou gives shoppers a real reason to browse: silk fabric, scarves and qipao, spring Longjing tea bought from the growers, and the department stores and luxury malls of Wulin. Zhangjiajie sells mostly souvenirs and mountain produce such as dried mushrooms and smoked bacon. The things worth taking home are the Tujia xilankapu brocade and Miao silverwork.

Both cities are inexpensive to stay in. The difference is where the money goes. In Hangzhou the main sights cost little, since the lake, the causeways and most hill walks are free, and the bill rises mainly with lakeside hotels and banquet dining on the water.

In Zhangjiajie, hotels, meals and taxis are cheap, but the forest park pass, the Tianmen cable car, the glass bridges and the lifts are all ticketed separately and soon become the biggest cost. In both cities, rooms cost more during the national festival weeks.

Both cities rely on large staged shows for visitors: Hangzhou's evening performance on the surface of West Lake, and Zhangjiajie's Tujia and Miao folklore productions, including an open-air show beneath the Tianmen cliffs. Hangzhou has more beyond those. Yue opera plays in local theatres if you can follow it without surtitles, and the Grand Theatre hosts the city orchestra, touring ballet and concerts, while Zhangjiajie has no theatre or music scene of its own.

Hangzhou is much the better place to unwind, because rest is part of the day there rather than a reward at the end of it. An hour under the willows or a slow pot of tea needs no planning, and a massage is rarely more than a short walk away. The lake is calmest before breakfast and on weekdays, and the side valleys stay peaceful when the shore is crowded.

In Zhangjiajie, relaxing mostly means recovering from the trails, with a foot rub after a day of stone steps or the spa at one of the better hotels. Its one real advantage is bathing. Hot-spring resorts lie in the countryside outside town, and Hangzhou itself has no tradition of bathing to match them.