Cities

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…

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…