Lodging & Dining

I ate my first bowl of thick, unsweetened plateau yogurt in Lhasa in September 2025, served in a wooden tub with a drizzle of local honey for RMB 15, and…

I spent three nights inside the walls of Pingyao in October 2025, sleeping in a converted courtyard residence that was older than the country I flew in from. The bed…

I slept in a canvas tent in the Tengger Desert in September 2025, and at 2 a.m. the sky was so dense with stars that I could read the camp’s…

I first understood the appeal of China houseboat stays the night I slept on a converted barge on Qiandao Lake in October 2025. The wind dropped after sunset, the water…

I have slept in a bamboo cabin on stilts in Moganshan and a raised wooden loft above a Xishuangbanna stream, and both nights taught me the same thing: China’s forest…

I have spent the last three springs chasing China’s calm water rather than its skyline, and the stays that stuck with me were the ones where I could roll out…

Ten years ago, recommending China ski resort hotels to a foreign client meant explaining that the “resorts” were mostly crowded beginner hills with concrete blockhouses for lodges. That has changed…

The first time we sent a client to a Chinese seafood market, he came back convinced he had been scammed — the crab he picked from the tank weighed different…

Few things signal “you are really in China now” like the first time a staff member slides a sealed plastic cup across the counter and you realize the drink in…

Every China huangjiu guide has to start by clearing up the confusion, because nine out of ten travellers who ask us about Chinese alcohol are thinking of baijiu — the…