The Dengfeng monuments are scattered along the southern foot of Mount Song, one of China's five sacred mountains, in the middle of Henan province. UNESCO grouped them together because they trace three thousand years of people treating one mountain as the centre of the world.
Its curving profile looks oddly modern, almost like a rocket ship made of clay. Shaolin gets the crowds because of the martial arts and the films, but the buildings that survive there are mostly later than its reputation, and the pagoda forest, where abbots are commemorated in stone, is quieter and more affecting than the training displays. A little further on is the Zhou Gong observatory platform at Gaocheng, a simple stone gnomon on a terrace where astronomers measured the midsummer shadow to fix the middle of the earth. Dengfeng was literally the place from which the empire calculated its calendar.
The surrounding country is dry, loess-tinged farmland that climbs sharply into grey rock ridges, and the smell in the morning is of woodsmoke, incense and wet stone. Roads around the ticketed sites are busy with tour buses and delivery trucks, so go early, before the groups arrive, and expect plenty of junctions, speed enforcement and local traffic habits that need patience. Motorcycle rules in Chinese cities and scenic areas vary by place and can be strict, so check what is allowed on a foreign-plated or hired machine well before you plan to ride here; it is not somewhere to improvise.
Songyang has fuel, restaurants and hotels in quantity, and Zhengzhou is the big city a couple of hours away if you need anything serious. Spring and autumn are the comfortable seasons. Summer is hot and hazy, and the winter mornings bite. Whatever the timing, leave an afternoon for slowing down, because the sites are spread out and each rewards a bit of walking more than a quick photograph.