Suzhou or Zhangjiajie?

Neither city has anything for swimmers. Suzhou's lakes and canals are for looking at, and its nearest coast is the muddy Yangtze estuary. In Zhangjiajie, the lakes among the peaks are only for boat trips.

The one difference is how you might get wet. In the mountains, summer rafting through the gorges is a real day on the water, while in Suzhou a hotel pool is the only option.

Suzhou eats better, and more gently. Its Jiangsu cooking is sweet, delicate and based on fish and shrimp from the lakes, from squirrel-shaped mandarin fish to the breakfast noodle bowl and the autumn hairy crab. Teahouses and pastry shops add to it, and there are more polished restaurants around Jinji Lake.

Zhangjiajie's western Hunan food is a different thing entirely: hot, sour and smoky, built around the three-pot stew, cured bacon and chilli pickles. It is rewarding in the city's food streets, but meals near the park gates are often generic tour-group food, and there is little cooking from outside China.

This is where the two cities differ most. Suzhou's walled classical gardens, including the Humble Administrator's Garden and the Master of the Nets, are a world-class reason to visit on their own. Tiger Hill, the Panmen water gate, the canal streets and two fine museums add to them.

Zhangjiajie has a quiet Ming temple, a Tujia folk park and a few rebuilt streets, which together take half a day. Its heritage lies out of town, in places such as Fenghuang and Laosicheng, rather than in the city itself.

Neither city is a place for a big night out, but Suzhou gives an evening more shape. You can take a lantern-lit stroll along Pingjiang Road, try the small bars on Shiquan Street or go to the rooftop lounges and few clubs around Jinji Lake, and Shanghai is half an hour away by train for anything bigger.

Zhangjiajie keeps early hours because its visitors get up at dawn for the parks. A beer by the river or an hour of karaoke is about the limit, and Wulingyuan goes quiet after dinner.

Zhangjiajie is in another league. Wulingyuan's thousands of mist-wrapped sandstone pillars, the cliff walkways and natural arch on Tianmen Mountain, the Yellow Dragon cave and mountain rafting make it one of China's great landscapes, even if the paths are paved and crowded at peak times.

Suzhou's outdoors is gentle delta country. You can cycle the lakeside roads and tea terraces on the Lake Tai peninsulas, make short climbs on Lingyan Hill or take an evening loop round Jinji Lake. It is pleasant, but there are no mountains nearby.

Suzhou is much the better base for day trips. Fast trains reach Shanghai in about half an hour and Nanjing, Hangzhou and Yangzhou within two hours. The canal water towns of Tongli, Luzhi and Zhouzhuang are close enough for an afternoon.

From Zhangjiajie the choice is narrower. Fenghuang's riverside old town, the cliff-top village of Furong and the overgrown Tujia capital at Laosicheng are all worth the trip. Beyond those three, most of what is within reach is more mountain scenery.

Suzhou is the easier choice with children, though neither city is ideal. Children may get bored in the gardens, but canal boat rides, the lakeside parks around Jinji Lake and the water and amusement parks west of the old town give them something of their own.

Zhangjiajie can thrill older children with its cable cars, glass walkways, the lift up the cliff face and the macaques. Long queues, steep steps and summer storms are hard on small children and pushchairs, though, and almost nothing is designed for families.

Distances are what separate these two. In Suzhou, the old town inside the moat is small enough to cover on foot or by shared bike along the canal lanes, and a clean metro with English signs runs out to the railway stations and Jinji Lake. Only outer sights such as Tiger Hill and the Lake Tai shore need a taxi, and paying through Chinese mobile apps makes it all smoother.

Zhangjiajie takes more planning. The main forest park at Wulingyuan is about 30km from the city, and the Grand Canyon and other sights are scattered further out. Inside the park, the shuttle routes are confusing and the signs are mostly in Chinese. Many visitors split their nights between Wulingyuan and the city, or hire a driver for the outlying sights.

Suzhou gives you a real reason to shop: silk and fine double-sided embroidery, best seen in the workshops of Zhenhu village. Its canal streets sell tea and fans, and there are modern malls by Jinji Lake. Zhangjiajie sells souvenirs, mountain produce and smoked bacon near the park gates, and the Tujia xilankapu brocade and Miao silverwork are the only things worth looking out for.

By Western standards both cities are cheap for hotels, meals and getting around. The difference is where the money goes. In Suzhou, a prosperous city, the extras are garden entry fees and special crab or fish dinners.

In Zhangjiajie, daily life costs a little less, but the separate tickets for the forest park, the Tianmen cable car, the glass bridges and the lifts soon become the largest part of the budget. In both cities, Golden Week pushes hotel rates up.

Suzhou has living traditions of its own. It is the birthplace of Kunqu opera, performed in theatres and on summer evenings in garden pavilions, and of Pingtan storytelling, heard in teahouses. Concerts and touring shows play at the arts centre by Jinji Lake.

Zhangjiajie's stage belongs to big folklore spectacles: Tujia and Miao song and costume in large theatres, and an open-air show set against the Tianmen cliffs. They are polished, but they are made for tourists, with no local music or theatre scene behind them.

In Suzhou, rest is part of everyday life rather than something you have to travel to find. There are massage parlours on almost every street, and it is easy to fall into the slow habits of a garden and teahouse town. The exception is the gardens at weekends and in the national festival weeks, when the narrow paths fill and the calm disappears.

Zhangjiajie offers recovery rather than relaxation. After a day on the stone steps a foot massage is a real pleasure, and the hot-spring resorts in the countryside beyond town offer the kind of soak Suzhou cannot, as it has no thermal bathing tradition. Otherwise, quiet is limited to early mornings in the park's lower valleys, before the tour groups arrive.