Yongchuan sits at the far western edge of Chongqing Municipality, about 60 kilometres from the city centre and roughly one hour by high-speed rail. It is the greenest corner of…
Yuyao sits in the shadow of two famous neighbours and quietly outranks both of them for the first morning of any trip. A county-level city administered by Ningbo, it spreads…
In 208, a fleet of chained warships burned on a bend of the Yangtze and the balance of a continent shifted. Chibi is the Hubei town that sells itself on…
Trains that leave the country There’s a particular thrill to a train that crosses a border: you watch the landscape change, the language on the signs shift, and the paperwork…
Anhui has Huangshan, Xidi and the Huizhou villages that fill every photograph of the province. Thirty kilometres south of Xuancheng, Ningguo gets almost none of that traffic, and that is…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…