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CHINA
China
From the Terracotta Army and the Forbidden City to Jiangnan gardens and the Tibetan plateau, discover China along six themes: ancient capitals, imperial architecture, water towns, ethnic frontiers, city life and landscapes.
City guides
Start with a city
Every city guide has a timeline, stories of local figures, must-see sights, festivals and local etiquette.
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西安 · 古称长安
Xi'an
4 places
Chang'an, a thousand-year capital: the Terracotta Army, the Wild Goose Pagoda and six-hundred-year-old walls
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北京 Beijing
Beijing
4 places
Eight centuries as an imperial capital: the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven and the Summer Palace
南京 · 古称金陵
Nanjing
3 places
Splendour of the Six Dynasties and the founding of the Ming: Zhong Mountain, the Qinhuai and the Jiangnan Examination Hall
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苏州 · 古称姑苏
Suzhou
1 places
Cradle of Wu culture: gardens, canals and Kunqu opera
杭州 · 南宋称临安
Hangzhou
3 places
Capital of the Southern Song and West Lake: the lake of Bai Juyi, Su Dongpo and Lady White Snake
ལྷ་ས། · 拉萨
Lhasa
2 places
'Place of the Gods': the Potala Palace, the Jokhang and the Barkhor circuit
Cantonese dim sum
'One pot, two pieces': a pot of tea with two dim sum — Guangzhou mornings begin in the teahouse.
Butter tea
A highland drink churned from tea, butter and salt — the first cup a Tibetan home offers a guest.
Nanjing salted duck
'Jinling's duck dishes are the best in the land': dry-cured, brined and simmered, with pale skin and tender meat.
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Dongpo pork
Red-braised pork belly named after Su Dongpo, the signature dish of Hangzhou cuisine.
Yangrou paomo
Tear the bread into fingernail-sized pieces yourself, then hand it to the cook to simmer in lamb soup.
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Peking duck
From a Yuan court recipe to the old shops of Qianmen: six hundred years of duck rolled in pancakes.
The Li River, Guilin
'The river is a blue silk ribbon, the hills are jade hairpins': fishing lights are the last memory of fishing life on the Li River.
Jiuzhaigou
A 'fairy-tale world' of emerald lakes and terraced waterfalls, a highland paradise of Tibetan and Qiang culture.
Zhangjiajie National Forest Park
3,000 stone peaks rising from the ground — the model for Avatar's floating mountains.
Huangshan (Yellow Mountain)
'After the Five Sacred Mountains, you'll never want to see another mountain' — the origin of Eastern landscape aesthetics.
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Chen Clan Ancestral Hall, Guangzhou
A jewel of Lingnan architecture, the pinnacle of brick carving, woodcarving and plaster sculpture.
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Hongya Cave, Chongqing
Eleven storeys of stilt houses lighting up the Jialing River — a magical night view of the mountain city's terrain.
Kuanzhai Alley, Chengdu
Echoes of the Qing-dynasty 'Little City' and old Chengdu's slow life in a cup of gaiwan tea.
The Bund, Shanghai
A museum of world architecture facing Lujiazui — one river to understand a century of China's modernisation.
Fujian Tulou: Tianluokeng cluster
The Hakka 'four dishes and a soup': a clan epic in giant rammed-earth buildings.
Ganden Sumtseling Monastery
Yunnan's largest Tibetan Buddhist monastery, known as the 'Little Potala Palace'.
Kashgar Old City
A 2,000-year-old Silk Road hub, with everyday Western Regions life in its maze of lanes.
Dali Old Town
Echoes of the Nanzhao and Dali capitals: 'wind, flowers, snow and moon' between Cang Mountain and Erhai Lake
Lijiang Old Town
A 'Suzhou of the plateau' without city walls, a living museum of Naxi Dongba culture.
Potala Palace
A landmark of faith on the snowy plateau, the pinnacle of Tibetan architecture.
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Mogao Caves, Dunhuang
The 'Louvre of the East', carved over more than 1,600 years — a visual epic of Silk Road civilisations meeting.
Confucius Temple and the Qinhuai River, Nanjing
The Jiangnan Examination Hall bears witness to a thousand years of imperial exams, and the Qinhuai lantern festival carries on Nanjing's eleganc…
Hongcun
A Huizhou merchant village laid out in the shape of an ox, with horse-head walls reflected in South Lake and Moon Pond — a location for Crouchin…
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Wuzhen Xizha
A fully preserved Jiangnan water-town district: an evening in Xizha and Mao Dun's former home explain the modern transformation of Jiangnan mark…
West Lake, Hangzhou
A lake layered with Bai Juyi, Su Dongpo and the legend of Xu Xian and Lady White Snake — an open-air museum of Chinese literati aesthetics.
Humble Administrator's Garden, Suzhou
Ming official Wang Xianchen's 'government of a humble man': one garden distils the literati philosophy of 'seeing the large in the small'.
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Chengde Mountain Resort
More than a summer retreat: the political stage where Qing emperors won over Mongols and Tibetans and performed the unity of the empire.
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Summer Palace
Kunming Lake and Longevity Hill embody the Chinese garden philosophy of 'made by man, yet as if created by heaven'.
Temple of Heaven
Where Ming and Qing emperors worshipped Heaven in 'harmony between heaven and man' — the triple roof of the Hall of Prayer is a mathematical poe…
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The Palace Museum (Forbidden City)
The largest palace complex in the world, whose central axis distils six centuries of imperial ritual and craftsmanship.
Qingming Riverside Landscape Garden, Kaifeng
A Song-dynasty market town rebuilt from the scroll 'Along the River During the Qingming Festival', bringing the splendours of Dongjing back to l…
Pingyao Ancient City
China's best-preserved ancient county town, where the Rishengchang draft bank bears witness to the Shanxi merchants' financial legend of 'remitt…
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Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum, Nanjing
The joint tomb of Zhu Yuanzhang and Empress Ma, where stone beasts on the Sacred Way and autumn plane trees form Nanjing's most poetic imperial …
Longmen Grottoes
The smile of the Vairocana Buddha, distilling the evolution of sculptural aesthetics from the Northern Wei to the High Tang.
Xi'an City Wall
The largest and most complete ancient city wall surviving in China.
Big Wild Goose Pagoda and Da Ci'en Temple
Where Xuanzang translated the scriptures — 'signing beneath the Wild Goose Pagoda' carries a thousand years of scholars' longing to pass the exa…
Terracotta Army
Three pits estimated to hold more than 8,000 figures — the most vivid monument to a centralised empire.