Attractions

I’ll be honest: when I first planned my Xi’an trip, the Big Wild Goose Pagoda was the one on my list. Everybody goes there. Then a local friend dragged me…

The first time I visited Nanjing, I made the mistake of treating the Confucius Temple as just another old building on my list. I walked in around noon, took a…

The first time I walked through the gate of the Humble Administrator’s Garden, I stopped talking mid-sentence. A narrow doorway opened onto a wide pond, a pavilion floating on the…

I had seen the photos for years — a slim, twisting tower glowing like a piece of neon ribbon against a humid southern sky — but nothing prepared me for…

When I first stood in front of the Shanghai Museum, I honestly didn’t expect to lose an entire afternoon inside. From the outside it looks like a big bronze cooking…

I have stood on a lot of lake shores in my life, but the first time I looked down on Heavenly Lake Xinjiang from the switchback road above Urumqi, I…

I almost didn’t set my alarm. After two days bouncing along the desert highways of northern Xinjiang, China, the last thing I wanted was a 6 a.m. wake-up call. But…

I still remember the moment Hongyadong first hit me. I had shuffled out of the Chongqing metro at around 8 p.m., squinting through the river mist, when the whole hillside…

I’ll be honest: I almost skipped the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum on my first trip to Nanjing. Purple Mountain sounded like a hike, the guidebooks called it “a must-see,” and I’d…

I almost missed Xitang. It was my second trip to China, and I had Wuzhen and Zhujiajiao already pinned on a map like trophies. Then a cab driver in Jiaxing,…