China has hills that look painted. They’re outside Zhangye in Gansu Province, where bands of red, orange, yellow and gray run across the landscape. Early or late in the day, the colors can look almost unreal. They aren’t. The hills formed over tens of millions of years as layers of sediment built up, were pushed and tilted by tectonic forces, then slowly worn down by wind and rain. The famous striped hills are part of the Zhangye Danxia landforms, but the area doesn’t all look the same. Nearby Binggou Danxia is rougher and more dramatic, with formations that look like walls, towers and cliffs. The setting matters too. Zhangye sits along the old Hexi Corridor, one of the main routes that connected China with Central Asia along the Silk Road. People, goods and ideas moved through this region for centuries. So when you visit, you’re looking at more than colorful rock. You’re standing in a place shaped by geology over millions of years and by human movement for a very long time after that. That’s the kind of place I like writing about in the Timeless Traveler newsletter. It catches your eye first, then gives you a reason to keep thinking about it. Subscribe if that sounds like your kind of travel.