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I went to Fuyang (阜阳) because I wanted to see the Anhui nobody photographs: the flat, wheat-growing north where the dialect hardens, the noodles get thicker, and the pace is…

I came to Anqing (安庆) almost by accident, rerouting around a sold-out Huangshan, and it turned into one of my favorite unscripted stops in Anhui. Anqing sits on the north…

I live in Wuhan part of the year, and for the longest time Xiaogan (孝感) was just a blur of high-rise blocks outside the train window on the way to…

I had bounced through Changsha half a dozen times before I finally took the short hop north to Yiyang (益阳), and I regret the wait. Sitting on the south shore…

I first rolled into Shaoyang (邵阳) on a muggy afternoon, expecting a forgettable industrial stopover on my way west toward Guangxi. What I found instead was a city wedged between…

Xiangtan sits in eastern Hunan on the Xiang River, between the provincial capital Changsha and the hills that roll toward Guangdong. It is best known as the home region of…

Dazhou sits in northeastern Sichuan where the Sichuan basin gives way to the mountains of the Qinba range, a transport crossroads that has linked Chengdu, Chongqing, and Shaanxi for centuries….

Guang’an lies in eastern Sichuan where the Qujiang and Jialing rivers meet, a few hours northeast of Chengdu by high-speed rail. It is best known as the hometown of Deng…

Neijiang sits in southeast Sichuan where the Tuojiang River bends through a wide plain, about an hour by high-speed rail from Chengdu and roughly the same from Chongqing. Locals call…