Every Hainan itinerary runs along the coast, and every Hainan itinerary misses the point. Two hours inland from the beaches sits Wuzhishan, the only mountain city on the island, holding…
Qingzhou is the city in Shandong that quietly outlived its own fame. For thirteen centuries it was the seat of a prefecture that governed most of central Shandong, and for…
Yunnan is supposed to be the cool green province of the southwest, which makes Yuanmou the exception that proves you should check the map. This county in the north-centre of…
What people miss most Ask a Chinese friend what they miss most abroad and the answer is often “breakfast.” Zǎofàn (早饭) isn’t a muted continental spread — it’s a full,…
You have almost certainly eaten in Shaxian. It is the tiny district south of Sanming in inland Fujian that spawned the most widespread restaurant chain in China, the place where…
I flew into Chengdu and left out of Guilin on a three-week loop through Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou and Guangxi, and the thing that surprised me was how little these four…
There are about a dozen “ancient towns” within an hour of Chengdu, and most of them were rebuilt from memory in the 2000s. Huanglongxi is one of those, and I…
Mianxian is a county that history books mention in one line and tourists never visit. It sits in the upper Han River valley in southern Shaanxi, a green basin bracketed…
Somewhere between the Pearl River delta’s factories and its golf courses there is a stretch of low hills where, at the turn of the twentieth century, returned emigrants built fortified…
Guilin sells the world a picture of karst peaks reflected in a river, and most visitors happily buy it. Ten hours of mountain road further west, the scenery changes completely:…