Cities

Standing at the foot of the Forbidden City’s Meridian Gate at 8 a.m., I watched a first-time visitor from Chicago freeze. “This is real?” she whispered. A good beijing travel…

The short version: a Shanghai travel guide for first-timers comes down to three things — ride the metro, walk the riverfront at night, and let the neighborhoods do the work….

At 7:40 on a Tuesday in March, I was pressed against the glass at the Chengdu Research Base, watching a cub the size of a Thanksgiving turkey roll off a…

The best time to visit Beijing is spring (April–May) or autumn (September–October), when daytime highs sit in the comfortable 19–26°C range and the skies turn that famous postcard blue. I’ve…

Written by Karl · Updated July 2026 Stand on the Bund at 6:15 p.m. and watch the Pudong skyline switch on. One second the towers across the Huangpu River are…

At 5:40 a.m., the hutong outside my window was still dark, and then a single bicycle bell cut the silence — an old man wheeling his cart of steamed buns…

At 7:10 a.m., a stainless cart rattles past your table at Guangzhou Restaurant on Wenchang Road, and a server lifts the lid off a bamboo steamer — har gow, shrimp…

At 6:12 p.m. on a wet Tuesday in April, I stood on the overpass at Liziba and watched a red light-rail train slide straight into the 6th floor of a…

If you have ever wondered where the floating Hallelujah Mountains in the movie Avatar came from, the answer is real, and it is in central China. This Zhangjiajie travel guide…

The call to prayer rolls out over the mud-brick lanes of Kashgar’s old town just as the first light hits the rooftops, and for a moment the only sound is…