Travel Destinations - China

Shanghai: a manic metropolis seemingly on the brink of anarchy yet safer than many provincial western towns. I was smitten for a while, but it was not to last. The very things about the city that once made me feel alive began to test my patience. Friends said Shanghai and [ read more ]

Around three years ago – thanks in no small part to 111 Miss World wannabes – the world woke up to the fact that China had beaches. Proper beaches. Suddenly it was fashionable and fun to be beside the Chinese seaside. Out with visions of litter-strewn tidal froth, in with [ read more ]

There is a sleepiness to Beihai, a sense of a place forgotten, that gives the visitor an all too rare sense of genuine discovery. Perched on a bay off the Gulf of Tonkin, subtropical Beihai sells itself as a beach town. Lovely Silver Beach is a great reason to visit, [ read more ]

The map calls it the 214, but then modern cartographers lack the romantic instincts of their 'Here be dragons' forebears. Locals call it Dian-Zang Lu, the Yunnan-Tibet Highway ('Dian' being an ancient name for Yunnan, and 'Zang' the Chinese word for Tibet).

But Dian-Zang Lu has an alternative meaning in [ read more ]

You've gone without hot water for two weeks in darkest Yunnan, you've slept under the stars in Tibet, you've just stepped off a 36-hour train from Chengdu, and when someone says 'pedicure' you ask which part of a yak they're talking about. Roughing it is as good for the budget [ read more ]

They call this land Zhongyuan, but they don't agree exactly what the'zhong'(middle) means. For some, Zhongyuan is a simple geographical term – the middle plains. Others see it in its historical context as the origin and centre of life. Indeed, modern-day Henan province, in the Yellow River basin of the [ read more ]

27 year-old Tan Longwu favours hip skateboarding t-shirts and rides around his western Jiangxi hometown on a new motorcycle. "We were able to buy that last year," he says. "We have been doing very well lately." Tan, his family and his neighbours have all been cashing in on a major [ read more ]

We may be in the middle of one of the most intensely spiritual festivals of the Tibetan calendar but 11-year-old Xiao Ji has money on his mind. "Hmm, from England?" he muses as he helps me on to his creaky wooden stool. "The English have pounds – and those little [ read more ]

There is something almost suspiciously tranquil about Gulangyu. Admittedly, there are plenty of getaways in China that are free of highrises, noise and traffic jams. But not many are also free of one of the nation's most everyday sights: the bicycle.

Just a short ferry trip from Xiamen in Fujian [ read more ]

Chinese food is the original fast food. Within minutes of ordering, a scattering of dishes will have landed, rapid-fire, on your table – always hot, nearly always fresh. It's a unique eating experience, with sizzling meats and glistening vegetables arriving in no particular order and disappearing quickly down several gullets [ read more ]

People, it seems, are the great paradox of China. In a nation of 1.3 billion people, employers cry that human resource challenges – specifically, finding the right people – is their biggest problem. So it is too, for the collectors of contemporary Chinese art. Currently the darling of the art [ read more ]

If you find yourself in Taipei on a cold winter's day, the first day of spring not even visible on the horizon, you may want to jump on the first available train out to Hsin Peitou for a hot spring spa. The volcanic mountains, lush tropical scenery and health-giving sulphur [ read more ]

We sat on tiny stools in his old wooden house, timbers blackened by years of soot, eating crunchy fried soya beans and a tasty fish and noodle stew.

"Drink some more!" urged old Mr Lu, refilling my bowl of home-brewed mijiu from a plastic fuel canister.

As the evening progressed, [ read more ]

A puzzle: I'm in the Pearl River Delta, yet surrounded not by flats and factories but by lush green hills. The city I write from is known as the 'hometown of overseas Chinese'. In 1997 it was awarded the United Nations Habitat Scroll of Honour. And owing to its most [ read more ]

Chengde, the summer retreat of the 18th century Qing emperors, was designed to be part stately pleasure dome, part manifestation of nation-building propaganda. It's open to everyone now, but the job descriptions still hold.

Chengde the town, a friendly place and small enough to get around on foot, offers no [ read more ]

The Forbidden City provides audio tours. For a small price, you can rent Roger Moore's soothing voice to relate edifying facts and amusing anecdotes about the palace as you reconnoitre its nooks and crannies.

I love it. Because my idea of fun is to rent the audio tour and retreat [ read more ]

My old travel diary tells me that I have been to Jingdezhen before in 1996. February 3 to be precise. I stayed a day, changing buses between Lushan and Huangshan. And yet this time, rolling back into town on my bicycle nearly 10 years later, the place seems wholly unfamiliar. [ read more ]

Glancing at a map, Si Guniang Shan (Four Girls Mountain) looks to be no more than a hop, skip and a jump out of smog-choked Chengdu. Ask the tour operators clustered around the Traffic Hotel, a dilapidated backpacker outpost on the banks of the Nanfu River, and they'll probably tell [ read more ]

When it comes to working with water, China knows a thing or two. Two of the world's six longest rivers are contained entirely within its borders. China has the longest and oldest canal on the planet. Its most celebrated explorer, Zheng He, was building ocean-going fleets while the Portuguese were [ read more ]

On a late July afternoon, the interior of Shanghai Circus World is quiet, the air sluggish and hot. Construction materials lie in scattered, dusty piles. The faded red seats ringing the stage sigh with age. The whole place looks ready to give it all up and go home.

But the [ read more ]

Urban Asian chaos is becoming a consumer art form in Hong Kong's Causeway Bay. Cuddled by the green sweep of Victoria Park, peppered with ramshackle apartments, and lined on its far edge of Hennessy Road with a seedy red light district that melts into Wan Chai, CWB has always been [ read more ]

On the road again at the wheel of his new Fiat Palio, Chengdu artist Luo Fahui can't resist a bit of nostalgia. "When I travelled in west China twenty years ago, I could buy a donkey for 20 yuan," he says with a smile. "A cart only cost twenty more [ read more ]

Have you ever been asked to keep a secret? Moreover, have you been asked and known that you're going to break your word and tell someone else?

Mount Genyen is a case in point. I've said nothing by disclosing the name. The area is virtually uncharted for 100 kilometres in [ read more ]

Beijing is a rock and roll town, and it doesn't take a night in a sweaty, smoke-filled live venue to figure it out. You can feel the yaogun (rock and roll) in the air: sandstorms, after all, are so rock. You can see it in the crumbling hutongs; in the [ read more ]

On the shelves of the Xinhua Bookstore in Yinchuan, the title of a Chinese paperback catches my eye: Searching for a Forgotten Kingdom. The cover shows a stupa atop the ruins of a city wall, and a strange dome-shaped tomb in a vast, arid plain. The book is part of [ read more ]

My first dreams of China involved immortal kung fu masters in flowing robes. When they weren't meditating on mountains cloaked in perpetual mist, they flew from peak to peak.

Needless to say, my first impressions upon reaching China were rather different. But for some reason I stubbornly held on to [ read more ]

In the beginning I was an enthusiast, but the nine years since I first came to China have seen my appetite for curly roofs and rebuilt-last-week 'antiquities' gradually wane. It has been a while since I have shelled out for the privilege of dressing up as Genghis Khan and posing [ read more ]

You don't usually hear the words 'Shenzhen' and 'culture' in the same sentence. I was dubious myself when I found a large, glossy book in my room at Shenzhen's Crowne Plaza promising to introduce me to genuine chunks of Ming architecture inside one of China's most prefabricated cities.

I can [ read more ]

So you've arrived in Shanghai: global headline generator and current darling of the lifestyle glossies. You took the Maglev from the airport. You've done the Bund, Jinmao and Xintiandi. There's the Oriental Pearl Tower, isn't it funny-looking. Now you're dutifully shuffling across Yu Yuan's zigzag bridge. People are pushing you. [ read more ]

The Siberian wind whistles as the snow starts to fall. Ravens wheel overhead or perch in the white birches, craning their necks for prey. In the distance the peaks of Longmen and Tianhuo are shrouded in cloud. Tadpoles teem in the warm streams, darting through the thriving algae and the [ read more ]

A man wrestles a mountain boar to the ground. A housewife collects wild vegetables for dinner. A pair of hunters armed with rifles wade upriver, searching for squirrels and deer.

It's not how the world imagines Taiwanese life – but like nine-tenths of Sanmin's inhabitants, all these people are Taiwanese [ read more ]

Two hours northwest of picturesque Guilin, a gentle climb up from the river valley and into the mountains, waits the dragon. His arched spine, hewn centuries ago from a mountain ridge by the Zhuang and Yao peoples, still forms the backbone of their society. His skin changes chameleon-like with the [ read more ]

China's tourism industry likes 'top five' lists: top five famous mountains, top five famous shopping streets, top five places for eating barbecued chicken, that sort of thing. The town of Li Ling in Hunan Province features in none of these lists. That is its charm. It is a place that [ read more ]

Karst, shmarst. The best landscapes in and around Guilin and Yangshuo are made of rock, but they aren't the camel hump, mini mountains that make the area famous. No, these ones are manmade: the sculptures that cover the grounds of Yuzi Paradise. The first one appears at the main gate, [ read more ]

Sunlight streaming through coloured glass into a dim, hushed church is an almost holy experience regardless of one's faith. The muffled light tends to reveal those specks of dust that float suspended in the air, refracting light in an eerie way.

St Ignatius cathedral, like those specks of dust, is [ read more ]

Sixteen-year-old Zhu Tong loves skateboarding and belting out punk rock riffs on his bass guitar. But while most of his peers are grappling with English grammar, Zhu is mastering the art of Arabic. While they dream of studying in Harvard or Cambridge, Zhu has set his heart on being accepted [ read more ]

It seems an unfortunate coincidence that one of the world's slowest chairlifts should find a home at Yabuli, one of the world's coldest ski resorts. Passing through nearby Harbin, Heilongjiang's provincial capital, the numbing weather had a certain novelty value. But out here on the exposed slopes, with the thermometer [ read more ]

Travelling through the exotic Shangri-La territory of southwest China is an exhilarating experience. And one that's beginning to be enjoyed by more and more travellers, both from China and abroad, since Zhongdian was named the official Shangri-La in 2001 by the Chinese authorities. The combination of clean, crisp mountain air, [ read more ]

Shanghai's bar culture has deep roots. The present crop of chic city bars may at first seem to be nothing more than make-up on a city's new face but, look again, and you'll find glamorous drinking haunts have long been a part of the Shanghai scene.

Skip back to the [ read more ]

Every cosmopolitan society in a hot climate has its heat retreat. The Imperial British in India had Simla, in Kenya they had Mount Kenya itself. New Yorkers have the Hamptons. Canadians have Whistler (though whether they are escaping the heat or the rain is a moot point). And we all [ read more ]

Beijing is manic: ancient and modern, lazy and hurried, ringed with jammed arteries, yet a flying pigeon's paradise in its quiet heart. But for ten weeks every summer and fall, after the new cricket hatch, none of these contradictions seem to matter. Gathering around square porcelain trays to bet [ read more ]

When night fell, I found the tattered blanket and bamboo floor more comfortable than expected. Sleep came quickly, and sunrise came just a fraction later. Early morning in that particular mountain village was quiet and calm. A gentle breeze carried cool mountain air through the modest house. The smell of [ read more ]

Xiamen is one of modern China's best-kept secrets. Foreigners began trading through the tantalising island-port in the 1600s and have remained enchanted by its beauty ever since. With kilometres of clean white beaches, perfect weather and some of the best seafood in the country, its no wonder so many of [ read more ]

In 1964 an anthropologist called Michael Piessel made his way to a sleepy town high in the mountains of western Sichuan Province. Here he met the Khampa, a fiercely independent and proud nomadic race who made their living herding livestock across the vast, barren grasslands.

The Khampas stood a good [ read more ]

Four years and counting. As the Olympic flame passes from Greece to China, Qingdao – the host city for the sailing events at the 2008 Beijing Games – can barely hide its excitement. The whole city is gripped by Olympic fever.

In preparation, China's favourite seaside city is undergoing a [ read more ]

"I am here to save my husband," the old woman said. Clouds blew through the doorway and eddied about her tiny bound feet.

"Where is he?" I asked.

"Hell," she said. "He is in hell." She drew a photograph from her bag and tipped it into the light: a bony [ read more ]

The wet grasslands and reed beds stretch into the distance, an undulating expanse of flatness broken only by the occasional ridge of trees, or a spiral of smoke rising from a cluster of fishermen's homes. The only movements are those of the wildlife: cranes gliding across the lake, searching out [ read more ]

Would you be interested in joining a survey trek to Gongga?

"My first reaction when I heard the offer was, "Where?! It sounds like a place named by club wielding Cro-Magnon."

Wary of being packed off to a prehistoric theme park, I put the word out to my friends who [ read more ]

Securely harnessed and staring 233 metres down from the Macau Tower, one thing becomes obvious. Macau's landscape isn't just changing; it's growing. Land reclamation projects have almost doubled the territory, from 14 to 27 square kilometres, in just over 20 years.

With that thought logged, I pick my way along [ read more ]

The people of Chengdu have long been labelled lazy. To this accusation they lean back in their bamboo chairs, take a take a leisurely sip of tea and smile. As their entrepreneurial countrymen along the Eastern coast toil ambitiously, the Sichuanese enjoy a much slower pace of life. After all, [ read more ]

Heavy drops of rain puncture the surface of the steaming pool as the distant mountains dissolve into mist. A sparse flute tootles over a PA system hidden in the dripping greenery, and the sound of cascading water drifts on the winter's breeze. The weather outside may be frightful but, in [ read more ]

Candace Bushnell, author of Sex and the City, is in the lobby of Sheraton Sanya Resort, wearing her best Manolo Blahniks and waiting for her limo. She is here, along with Jackie Chan, Brian Ferry and a host of other tuxedoed celebrities, to choose the 53rd Miss World beauty queen. [ read more ]