Southwest China Travel Guide: Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou and Guangxi
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…
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Huanglongxi Ancient Town Guide: Chengdu’s Qing-Era River Township
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…
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Mianxian Travel Guide: Zhuge Liang’s Tomb and Dingjun Mountain in Shaanxi
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…
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Kaiping Travel Guide: Diaolou Watchtowers and Overseas Chinese Heritage
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…
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Sanjiang, Guangxi Travel Guide: Dong Wind-Rain Bridges and Rice Terraces
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:…
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Vegetarian and Vegan Travel in China: Where and How to Eat Meat-Free
Traveling with a vegan friend I once traveled with a friend who’d been vegan for a decade, and watching her eat her way across China was a masterclass in creative…
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Songpan Travel Guide: Ancient Tibetan Gate Town to Jiuzhaigou
If you drive north out of Chengdu toward the alpine lakes of Jiuzhaigou, you pass through a walled town that was already a frontier garrison when the road was only…
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China Buddhist Temple Route Guide
There are more Buddhists in China than in any other country, and the country responds by hiding its best temples in places that have no business being tourist sites —…
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China Travel with Teens Guide
We have travelled with four teenagers across this country over eight years — our own and other people’s — and the thing we have learned is that China is one…
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Shanxi Historic Route Itinerary: Temples, Towns and Pagodas
Shanxi is the province that quietly holds the oldest buildings in China. Before any other place on this list, it gave the country the Hanging Temple bolted to a cliff,…
