Cities

If you’re sketching out a Yunnan itinerary and want a base that never gets uncomfortably hot or brutally cold, this Kunming travel guide is for you. Sitting at roughly 1,890…

If you have ever seen one of those Chinese landscape paintings with impossibly green hills rising straight out of a misty river, you were probably looking at Guilin and Yangshuo….

Most first-time visitors to China fly into Beijing or Shanghai and never make it west. That’s a real mistake. This Xi’an travel guide is for the traveler who wants the…

If you want one Chinese city that rewards slowing down, this Hangzhou travel guide is for you. Marco Polo called it “the City of Heaven,” and the nickname still fits….

The first time I got lost in Kashgar old town, I was grateful for it. I had turned off Seman Road to chase the smell of roasting lamb, took three…

The first time I landed in Urumqi, I expected a dusty stopover and booked just one night before heading deeper into Xinjiang. By the next morning I had changed the…

The best time to visit Xinjiang depends on what you came to see, because it isn’t one climate — it’s several. The first time I drove south from Urumqi, I…

The best time to visit Shanghai is spring (March to May) and autumn (September to November), when daytime temperatures sit comfortably in the high teens to mid-20s °C and the…

The first time I stood on the viewing platform at Yuanjiajie, the clouds peeled back and I finally understood why James Cameron filmed Pandora’s floating mountains here. If you’re planning…

The best time to visit Zhangjiajie is April to early June or September to mid-November, with late September and October offering the rare combination of comfortable weather, thin crowds, and…