Lodging & Dining

Most visitors to China eat in Beijing. Then they cross one provincial border — fifty kilometres, a single train ride — and find that the kitchen next door has been…

Picking where to stay in Turpan is a decision about heat, not about luxury. Turpan is one of the lowest and hottest inhabited places on earth — the basin floor…

The first stall The first time I stood at a night-market stall in Xi’an, a man was spinning a disc of dough into a paper-thin pancake over a screaming burner,…

A map that isn’t really one Chinese food in the West means a handful of dishes that bear little resemblance to what you’ll actually eat here. The real map is…

I came to Yanbian for the border scenery and stayed for the food. Within an hour of landing in Yanji, I was sitting at a low table with a brass…

The first time I stepped out of Lhasa airport, the thin air hit me like a wall — and then the view of the Potala Palace glowing at dusk rewired…

When travelers ask me about the easiest place in mainland China to combine a serious tropical beach holiday with world-class service, I always point them to Sanya. Tucked at the…

Jiayuguan is the kind of stop travelers overlook on a map and remember for years afterward. This is the western terminus of the Great Wall, where the Ming dynasty’s ramparts…

On a trip with a three-year-old and a six-year-old, I learned that the most important thing about a Chinese family room is not the room but the floor below it….

The first Peking duck I ate in Beijing, China was at a centuries-old roast house near Qianmen, and the waiter carved the skin tableside into exactly 108 slices. That ritual…