Gaoyou Travel Guide: Grand Canal Post Station, Lake Crabs and Pagoda Lanes
Gaoyou does not announce itself. It sits north of Yangzhou along the old Beijing Hangzhou waterway, roughly an hour from the city that the whole world has heard of, and…
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Tibet Travel Permits for Foreigners: How to Visit Tibet, China Legally
There is no border post where you can simply show up and walk into the plateau. To set foot in Tibet, China as a foreign visitor you need paperwork arranged…
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Getting Around Chinese Cities: Metro, Bus, Ride-Hail and Bike-Share
The metro gets the praise — and deserves some of it Every China city guide tells you to take the subway, and for good reason: it’s cheap, fast, and avoids…
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Dongtai Jinair Lake Guide: Qinghai’s Turkey-Blue Salt Lake
Pull off the highway in the middle of the Qaidam Basin and you will see a sheet of water the colour of a swimming pool in southern Spain, ringed by…
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Qingjiang Gallery Guide: Enshi’s Emerald River Canyon in Hubei
Hubei, China spends most of its reputation on the Yangtze and the dam at Sandouping. Thirty kilometres upstream of the dam, on a tributary that most international itineraries never mention,…
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Gaoligong Mountain Guide: Yunnan’s Biodiversity Frontier
Yunnan, China does not do one climate per province. It does one climate per valley, and nowhere is that truer than on the Gaoligong range in the far west, where…
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Dushanzi Grand Canyon Guide: Xinjiang’s Rainbow Earth Ravine
Northern Xinjiang, China has a habit of producing landscapes that look wrong for a desert country: green valleys, black limestone, turquoise lakes, and then the canyon at Dushanzi, which is…
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Baili Azalea Guide: Guizhou’s Sea of Wild Mountain Flowers
Guizhou does not get the foreign visitor numbers that Yunnan or Sichuan do, which is exactly why the Baili Azalea forest is still one of the least crowded great flower…
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Ranwu Lake Guide: Glacial Blue Waters of Eastern Tibet
Most first-time visitors to Tibet, China fly into Lhasa, spend a few days getting used to the altitude, and then see only the Potala Palace and the Yarlung Zangbo valley…
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Riding China’s High-Speed Rail: Classes, Seats and Onboard Reality
Booking without the headache The single biggest mistake first-time riders make is assuming they can just show up and buy a ticket the way they would for a European intercity….
