Attractions

I still remember the first time I stood on a watchtower at 4:50 a.m. with frost on the battlements and my camera fogging from the cold. Then the sky cracked…

I still remember the first time I stood on a Huangshan Yellow Mountain ridge at 5:40 in the morning, half-asleep and shivering, watching the granite peaks turn from grey to…

The first time I stood at the edge of Five Flower Lake, I genuinely forgot to take a photo. The water was such an impossible shade of turquoise that my…

The first time I stood on the Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront after dark, I stopped mid-sentence. Victoria Harbour Hong Kong opened up in front of me like a switched-on city…

I still remember my first morning at West Lake. The mist had not yet lifted, a few old men were practicing tai chi on the shore, and a wooden boat…

The first time I stood on the deck of a Li River cruise from Guilin, the mist had not yet burned off the water, and a fisherman in a bamboo…

The Shanghai Bund night view — the lit-up skyline of Pudong’s supertall towers mirrored on the Huangpu River — is best seen from the Bund promenade on the river’s west…

The terracotta warriors are the single most jaw-dropping archaeological sight in China — and seeing them in person is nothing like the photos. In 1974, farmers digging a well outside…

A Great Wall day trip from Beijing is the one excursion almost every first-time visitor plans — and the section you pick decides whether you come home with a quiet,…

The Temple of Heaven isn’t a temple and it isn’t one building — it’s a 273-hectare walled park in southeast Beijing where Ming and Qing emperors came to pray for…