Conghua Hot Spring

This guide to Conghua Hot Spring near Guangzhou tells how a resort once visited by Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and Deng Xiaoping, drawing bathers to these mineral waters since at least 1634, keeps failing to win the national resort status the government expects of it. It follows the 1930s villas and bathhouses built along the Liuxi River, the Japanese occupation that emptied them in 1937, and the state guesthouse and UNESCO recognition that followed. Notice the locked gates along the valley, guarding buildings that let no visitor through.