North China
4 cities
✦ Guide is live Tianjin
Next door to Beijing: the Tianjin Eye and Haihe cruise, villa streets, an Italian quarter, time-honored snack brands and a seaport that is a 240-hour entry point.
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✦ Guide is live Datong
50,000+ Buddhas carved into a sandstone cliff, a temple hung off a vertical rock face, the world's tallest wooden pagoda — and a floodlit Ming wall you walk for free at night.
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✦ Guide is live Pingyao
China's most complete ancient walled city: the courtyard where banking was born, a magistrate's court that still holds trials, a show you walk through, and a kang-bed room in a 200-year-old courtyard.
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✦ Guide is live Beijing
The Forbidden City at dawn, the Great Wall by bullet train, lacquered Peking duck carved tableside — and a ¥2 hilltop sunset over 9,000 imperial rooms.
Read the Beijing guide →East China
6 cities
✦ Guide is live Hangzhou
A free UNESCO lake at midnight, Longjing tea on misty hills, a 1,700-year-old temple in the forest, and canal-side bars where a cocktail costs less than a London coffee.
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✦ Guide is live Huangshan
A sunrise over the sea of clouds from a summit hotel, the 1,000-year-old Welcoming Pine, the UNESCO villages of Hongcun & Xidi, and stinky-mandarin-fish Hui cuisine in old Tunxi.
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✦ Guide is live Nanjing
392 steps to Sun Yat-sen's tomb, a lantern-lit Qinhuai River cruise, duck five ways before lunch, and the longest ancient city wall on Earth — all at mid-tier Chinese prices.
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✦ Guide is live Qingdao
Draft Tsingtao from the 1903 brewery (in a plastic bag), a German old town of red roofs and church spires, spicy clams by the sea, and a Taoist mountain of granite cliffs an hour away.
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✦ Guide is live Shanghai
A free colonial waterfront facing a sci-fi skyline, soup dumplings eaten in the right order, plane-tree streets made for an aimless bike, and 23-minute bullet trains to UNESCO gardens.
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✦ Guide is live Suzhou
Nine UNESCO gardens, 800-year-old canal streets, an I.M. Pei masterpiece, Kunqu opera at dusk, and Squirrel Fish at a 260-year-old restaurant — all 25 minutes from Shanghai.
Read the Suzhou guide →South China
6 cities
✦ Guide is live Quanzhou
22 UNESCO sites, almost all free: a 686 AD temple with China's tallest stone pagodas, a 1009 mosque, viral flower-crown villages built of oyster shells — and a visa-free transit rule that covers all of Fujian.
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✦ Guide is live Guangzhou
Three-hour breakfasts of shrimp dumplings, a glass lift up the 600m Slim Waist, a Pearl River cruise past a candy-stick skyline — and a bullet train to kung-fu temples 20 minutes away.
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✦ Guide is live Guilin
Cruise through karst mountains printed on China's money, cycle rice paddies in Yangshuo, eat ¥5 noodles that ruin you for noodles forever, and sleep in a 660-year-old rice terrace village.
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✦ Guide is live Sanya
China's Hawaii: white-sand bays, a coral snorkel island, a 108m sea Guanyin, pick-your-own seafood — and a 30-day visa-free rule that even covers US passports.
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✦ Guide is live Shenzhen
The world's biggest electronics bazaar, a 547m sky deck, 13km of bay boardwalk with Hong Kong across the water — and a land border you can walk across.
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✦ Guide is live Xiamen
A car-free UNESCO island, the prettiest campus in China, satay shacha noodles, a seaside bike road, and Hakka earth-fortresses a day-trip away.
Read the Xiamen guide →Southwest China
9 cities
✦ Guide is live Guizhou
Huangguoshu Waterfall, Xijiang Miao Village and Guiyang's free museum, with time-slot bookings and unclear passport rules to plan around.
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✦ Guide is live Jiuzhaigou
A Y-shaped valley of turquoise lakes in Tibetan Sichuan, a reservation system you have to plan around, and Huanglong's coloured pools next door.
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✦ Guide is live Shangri-La
Tibet without the permit — a 60-ton golden prayer wheel, a Little Potala monastery, an alpine national park, and a free nightly bonfire dance, all in Yunnan's Kham at 3,300m.
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✦ Guide is live Dali
A 1,300-year-old Bai old town, a highland lake you cycle around on a flat car-free path, a cloud-walk 2,600m up the mountains, and indigo tie-dye you make with your own hands.
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✦ Guide is live Kunming
Eternal spring weather, a 270-million-year-old stone labyrinth, Asia's largest flower market at midnight, and wild mushroom hotpot you can only eat four months a year.
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✦ Guide is live Lhasa
Pilgrims prostrating at the Jokhang, the Potala against the mountains, monks debating at Sera, sweet milk tea for pennies, and a turquoise sacred lake over a 4,790m pass — Tibet, done the only way it can be: on a guided permit tour.
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✦ Guide is live Lijiang
A glacier cable car to 4,506m, an 800-year-old Naxi maze of lanterns and canals, a snow-mountain mirror pool, and a Zhang Yimou show on the peak — and a Yunnan city you can fly straight into on the 240-hour visa-free transit.
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✦ Guide is live Chengdu
Pandas at sunrise, face-changing opera at night, numbing-spicy hotpot in between — and an afternoon doing nothing in a 100-year-old teahouse.
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✦ Guide is live Chongqing
A monorail through a 19-storey tower, Hongya Cave lit up gold over the river, a 4-minute cableway across the Yangtze, and hotpot served the way the dock porters first cooked it — at the city that invented it.
Read the Chongqing guide →Northwest China
2 cities
✦ Guide is live Dunhuang
A thousand years of cave painting at the Mogao Caves, a camel ride over singing dunes to a crescent-shaped desert spring, the ruined gates at the edge of ancient China, and lamb skewers at the night market.
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✦ Guide is live Xi'an
The Terracotta Army at dawn, cumin-lamb roujiamo in a 1,000-year-old lane, a 14 km bike ride on top of the city wall, and a free Tang-dynasty light show the size of a stadium.
Read the Xi'an guide →Central China
4 cities
✦ Guide is live Changsha
Hunan's capital: a free Mawangdui exhibition, a free mountain and river island, stinky tofu streets and easy day trips, with reservations to plan around.
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✦ Guide is live Luoyang
The Longmen Grottoes lit gold at night, China's first Buddhist temple, a Shaolin kung fu day trip, a free Tang-dynasty light show, and a 1,300-year-old imperial Water Banquet for ¥63.
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✦ Guide is live Wuhan
Yellow Crane Tower over the Yangtze, a ¥1.50 ferry across China's greatest river, 2,400-year-old playable bronze bells in a free museum — and cherry blossoms that draw millions every March.
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✦ Guide is live Zhangjiajie
The floating peaks James Cameron turned into Pandora, a glass elevator up a 326m cliff, Heaven's Gate at the top of 999 steps, the world's highest glass bridge, and Tujia waterfall towns.
Read the Zhangjiajie guide →