Climb Every Mountain.

Inside Packer's Cafe, located in the backpacking circuit town of Lijiang in China's southwestern Yunnan province, a group of thirtysomething Chinese are gearing up for a trek. Hair unkempt and clad in Gore-Tex pants, they chain-smoke amid piles of high-tech equipment, discussing their passion for camping. "Our lifestyle is free," says Li Gang, who owns the cafe. "We like to go where no one else has been before."

They are blazing all kinds of new trails. Traditionally, the Chinese have never considered sleeping in a tent and lugging around a heavy pack a holiday. But among China's young, urban, white-collar workers, adventure travel is increasingly chic. These youth have grown up during China's most prosperous times and--unlike their parents and grandparents--have no memory of the hardships wrought by Mao Zedong; for them the countryside is a place for leisure, not labor. When Liao Guogang, 33, decided to quit his job as a doctor to travel in Yunnan and Tibet, he had a hard time telling his parents. "They don't understand why I'd give up my job, because they lived through the Cultural Revolution, when they made $4 a month," he says.

China's backpackers--flush with cash, vacation time and a sense of their rising stature in the world--are re-discovering their vast country. While SARS has forced many Chinese to rethink their vacation plans, these intrepid youth are striking out for ever more exotic locations. Many head for the high plateaus of Tibet, the Buddhist monasteries in Gansu and Yunnan's hidden lakes. Tian Yongqi, the owner of Tina's Guesthouse, a trekkers' cabin in Yunnan's Tiger Leaping Gorge, says that over the past four years the ...