Lodging & Dining

Shenyang surprised me. I went expecting a grey industrial stopover and found a city with a genuine imperial heart — the former capital of the Qing dynasty, full of tiled…

There is a particular kind of tiredness that only arrives after a long ridge hike, and the best cure I have found is a hot shower and a window looking…

The first time I slept in a yurt, I woke up at 4 a.m. to the sound of wind moving across open grass and a sky so dense with stars…

Quanzhou was the great port of the Maritime Silk Road, and its old town still hums with the food of a thousand years of trade — Fujianese, Southeast Asian, and…

Kunming is the gateway to Yunnan, and its food is the most botanically playful in China — they eat flowers, foraged mushrooms, and a dizzying range of rice noodles. I’ve…

I caught my first breath of Xining at 2,275 metres and immediately understood the food: at this altitude, you eat for warmth and fuel. Qinghai sits on the Tibetan plateau’s…

I flew into Haikou expecting beach food and found something gentler: an island kitchen built on coconut, free-range chicken, and the cleanest seafood I’ve eaten in southern China. Hainan’s food…

I arrived in Luoyang on a grey March afternoon with one mission: eat my way through the cradle of Chinese civilization. Henan sits at the geographic heart of China, and…

A proper Hubei cuisine guide has to start with a correction. Most foreign visitors who “eat Hubei food” have actually only eaten Wuhan food — the hot dry noodles and…

When clients email me asking about the best hotels in Dalian, I almost never start with a name. I start with a map. Dalian is a long, narrow peninsula city…