Jilin sits in the middle of China's northeast, landlocked between Liaoning and Heilongjiang, and shares with both the cold winters and the Manchurian history that define the region. It is less visited than its neighbours, which makes it all the more rewarding for those who do come.
Changchun, the capital, was the seat of Manchukuo — the Japanese puppet state established in 1932 — and the Puppet Emperor's Palace where Puyi lived under Japanese supervision is a sobering, fascinating place. The city has a film-making heritage (the Changchun Film Studio was China's first) and a relaxed, manageable scale. Jilin City, on the Songhua River, is famous for its winter rime ice: when the river freezes, the moisture coats the riverside trees in white crystals that last for weeks and glow in the low winter light. It is one of those natural spectacles that is genuinely worth planning a trip around.
The great draw of Jilin Province is Changbai Mountain in the southeast, an extinct volcano on the North Korean border whose crater lake — Tianchi, the Sky Pool — sits at 2,189 metres. The lake is vast, deep, and strikingly blue-green when the weather cooperates, which it does not always do. The surrounding nature reserve protects one of the largest tracts of virgin forest in northeast China. Siberian tigers still roam here, though you are very unlikely to see one.
The province also has a significant Korean minority in the Yanbian Autonomous Prefecture near the North Korean border — the food is noticeably different from standard northeastern Chinese cooking, sharper and more fermented.
