Cities

Shuozhou is the kind of place that does not show up on most Shanxi itineraries, and that is exactly why it rewards the traveler who digs a little deeper. Tucked…

Most foreign travelers who plan a trip through Shanxi never make it past Pingyao and the Datong temples. About 200 kilometers southwest of Taiyuan the ground falls apart into a…

Yangquan is the sort of place that rewards travelers who already know they like Shanxi. It sits in the eastern mountains of the province, where the Taihang range folds the…

Langfang is a city that most travelers only see from a train window, and that is a mistake we want to correct. It sits in the narrow corridor between Beijing…

Hengshui is the kind of Chinese city that rarely appears on a foreigner’s list, and we think that is a shame. It sits in the plain of southern Hebei, a…

Most foreign travelers have never heard of Dongying, and that is exactly why we like sending curious ones there. This is a city built on two stories: the Yellow River,…

Qingyang sits in the east of Gansu province, a region known locally as Longdong, where the Loess Plateau rises in rolling yellow hills cut by deep ravines. A Qingyang travel…

Alxa League sits in the far west of Inner Mongolia, where three great deserts meet in a silence broken only by wind. For travelers who have already ticked off Beijing…

At the southern edge of Hebei, where the North China Plain finally lifts into the Taihang range, Xingtai is the city that stands between the fields and the mountains. A…

An hour by high speed train from Beijing, Baoding is the Hebei city that history keeps bumping into. For centuries it was the seat of the Zhili governor, the official…