Cities

Chuzhou is the kind of Chinese city that lives in a famous essay rather than on a postcard. Nearly a thousand years ago the statesman and writer Ouyang Xiu served…

Bozhou is not on most foreign itineraries, and that is precisely the point. Deep in northern Anhui, far from the alpine drama of Huangshan, this is a city built on…

On a map, Ma’anshan looks like a satellite of Nanjing — and geographically it nearly is, sitting just across the provincial border from Jiangsu on the south bank of the…

Most foreign travelers blow through Shandong chasing the headline names — Confucius in Qufu, the springs of Jinan, the beer and beaches of Qingdao. Dezhou rarely makes that first list,…

Ankang sits in the southern sweep of Shaanxi, where the Han River cuts a wide green valley between the Qinling to the north and the Bashan range to the south….

Shangluo sits in the southeast of Shaanxi Province, where the Qinling Mountains drop out of the highlands and the land turns to folded green hills and clear river valleys. Most…

Xianning lies about an hour south of Wuhan by high-speed train, tucked into the hills where Hubei begins to rise toward the Jiangnan highlands. The city brands itself as a…

Heihe sits on the north bank of the Amur River, which locals call the Heilongjiang, and looks straight across the water at the Russian city of Blagoveshchensk. Few foreign travelers…

Guyuan sits in the southern stretch of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, where the dry Loess Plateau rises into the green shoulders of Liupan Mountain. This small city almost never appears…

Tongliao sits in the eastern reach of Inner Mongolia, where the Horqin Grassland rolls out toward the horizon and the rhythm of life still follows the seasons of herding. It…