Attractions

The first time I saw the sun leak over the rim of the world from 1,545 meters up, I understood why emperors crawled up here on their hands and knees….

The first time I heard a wooden staff crack against the air at 6 a.m., I was half-asleep on a tour bus outside Dengfeng. Then the doors opened and there…

There is a window in Beijing — narrow, unreliable, and utterly worth chasing — when the city’s hills turn the color of a struck match. I have stood at the…

The first time I walked through the vermilion gates of the Beijing Confucius Temple, I was alone at 8:40 in the morning, before the tour buses rolled in. The courtyard…

There are a handful of places on earth that stop you mid-step and make the breath catch — and I don’t mean from the altitude, though that happens too. The…

I have stood in a lot of cold, wind-scoured places in my travels across China, but nothing prepared me for the moment the road curved over Pang La pass and…

The first time I saw Yamdrok Lake, I was leaning out of a minivan window at 4,900 metres, gasping less from the altitude than from the colour. Below me a…

The first time I saw Namtso Lake, Tibet, China, I stopped talking. We had driven for hours through a windswept valley, the road climbing past prayer-flag-draped passes, and then the…

Most first-time visitors to Beijing fixate on Badaling. It’s the postcard image, the one with the cable car and the crowds three-deep on every step. I went there once, squeezed…

The first time I stood on the Jiankou Great Wall, the wind nearly took my hat off and the wall beneath my boots was a pile of fractured grey bricks…