First, a quick promise: this is Taishan in Guangdong province, the Pearl River Delta county-level city whose name you will see on old North American immigration records as “Toishan.” It…
Two thousand years before tourists came chasing karst peaks, an engineer named Shi Lu stood on a low watershed north of Guilin and solved a problem that had stopped armies….
Some places earn a nickname and then live up to it. Guangnan, a county in southeastern Yunnan near the Guangxi border, is home to Bamei Village—a Zhuang settlement so cut…
Most visitors to Chengdu never make it to Dayi, a county-level city an hour west of the capital. That is their loss. Dayi packs two very different experiences into one…
Chengdu travelers usually head west to Mount Qingcheng or Dujiangyan. I went a different way—southwest to Qionglai, a county-level city in Sichuan where a preserved Ming-and-Qing river town meets a…
When friends in Shanghai asked me for a quick nature break that did not involve a five-hour train to the mountains, I pointed them to Liyang. This county-level city in…
Most travelers who dream of Tibet, China imagine the Potala Palace in Lhasa and the prayer-flag passes of the central plateau. But if you fly into the far east of…
Our Guiping travel guide is for travelers who want Guangxi beyond the postcard karst of Guilin and Yangshuo. Guiping (桂平) is a county-level city in central Guangxi, where the Qian…
Our Mengzi travel guide is for travelers who believe the best way to understand a place is through its food. Mengzi (蒙自) is a county-level city in southeastern Yunnan, the…
Our Tonglu travel guide is written for travelers who know the name of the Fuchun River even if they have never stood on its bank. Tonglu (桐庐) is a county…