City guide · Shanghai Municipality
A 1920s waterfront of colonial banks facing a science-fiction skyline, soup dumplings you eat with a straw, and 20 million people moving like clockwork.
Reviewed by our Beijing team Updated 2026-10-10
The short version
City guide
Photographs from the coast, and what other travellers wrote afterwards.
I first went to Shanghai fifteen years ago. I remember the Bund, of course, and the Song Qingling house, but what stuck was the sound of the ship horns on the Huangpu. My father held me up on the railing and said, listen — the boat is crying.
BadLMadV, 'Beautiful Shanghai, Easy Water Towns'
I've been to Shanghai more times than I can count, always rushing in and rushing out, and all I ever saw were towers and shopping malls. Then a work trip put me in a residential building for a week, and I finally understood that the Shanghai knack for making every yuan count comes from something else entirely — they take everything seriously. Really seriously.
米色书虫, 'Shanghai to Xitang'
Stand on the Bund at 7am and you get the city to yourself: joggers, old men with birdcages, and the 52 stone facades of the old foreign concessions glowing pink in the low sun. Turn around and Pudong is a wall of glass — the Oriental Pearl, the Jin Mao, the Shanghai World Financial Center — rising straight out of the river like it was ordered from a catalogue of the future. Nowhere else on earth do 150 years of colonial banking and 30 years of breakneck construction stare at each other across 500 metres of water.
Step one block back from the river and the scale collapses into something human. Shikumen lanes — the stone-gated terraced houses that housed most of old Shanghai — still run behind the tower blocks, and Tianzifang and Xintiandi have turned them into galleries, bars and design shops. The trick is to wander without a map: an alley off Taikang Road, a staircase in the old French Concession, a plane-tree tunnel over Wukang Road where the light comes through in coins.
Then there is the eating. Shanghai food is sweet and glossy — braised pork belly the colour of mahogany, eel sizzling in hot oil, hairy crab in October — but the everyday city runs on snacks: shengjianbao fried crisp in a giant pan, xiaolongbao you bite open to let the steam out, a bowl of curried beef noodle soup at 2am. Budget CNY 40 for a proper sit-down meal, half that for street food, and plan your day around which neighbourhood you want to eat in.
Shanghai
Seven things that are worth rearranging a day for.
Highlights
The Bund is the one sight nobody skips, and rightly so: 52 buildings in every European style line the Huangpu's west bank, and across the water Lujiazui's towers — Oriental Pearl, Jin Mao, Shanghai World Financial Center — light up like a circuit board. Walk it after dark, then take the ferry or the sightseeing tunnel to the Pudong side and look back.
Shikumen was the traditional Shanghai way of living — stone gateways, narrow lanes, neighbours' laundry overhead. Mass redevelopment has demolished most of it, so what survives is genuinely finite. Go now, walk slowly, and photograph the doorways.
Tianzifang is a shikumen block in Luwan turned into shops, galleries, teahouses, open-air cafes and craft workshops by artists like Chen Yifei. Come with a camera and no plan; the fun is getting lost. Stay out of the residential doors, and respect the shops that ban photography.
Xintiandi keeps the shikumen shell and pours in flagship stores, bars and restaurants. Step through one doorway and you leave 1930 for a fully modern interior — the contrast is the whole point, and the nightlife here barely stops.
Nanxiang Mantou Dian at Yuyuan has been steaming xiaolongbao for over 100 years. Nip the skin, dip in vinegar with ginger, and eat. The queue is long, the ground floor takeaway is cheaper than the upstairs tables, and the second floor is cheaper than the third.
Itinerary
Puxi heritage on foot, one big night on the river, then a half-day in Pudong. Book the Oriental Pearl and the Bund ferry the day before — both sell out on weekends.
Start in the old city, eat lunch at Yuyuan, then walk the Bund from late afternoon until the lights come on.
Stops: City God Temple (Chenghuang Miao)Yuyuan GardenNanjing Road EastThe Bund
Shanghai Museum is free and worth half a day; Madame Tussauds is in the same square; finish with dinner and a bar in Xintiandi.
Stops: Shanghai MuseumMadame TussaudsSite of the First CPC CongressXintiandi
Take the Bund sightseeing tunnel or the ferry to Lujiazui, ride the Oriental Pearl, and end at Jin Mao's 88th-floor deck at dusk.
Stops: Oriental Pearl TowerJin Mao TowerLujiazuiNanjing Road for last shopping
Skip the towers, or do one, and spend the rest of the time in lanes, temples and a water town that most visitors never reach.
Wander Tianzifang in the morning, then walk Si'nan Road for the old villas and the Zhou Mansion.
Stops: TianzifangSi'nan Road villasZhou Enlai's Former ResidenceXintiandi
Jade Buddha Temple, then Xujiahui: the cathedral, the 19th-century library, and the old book quarter.
Stops: Jade Buddha TempleXujiahui CathedralZiKaWei LibraryXujiahui shopping
Fengjing is reachable by bus from the Jinjiang Park metro station in about 45 minutes on the expressway; go early, eat lunch by the canal, come back for dinner.
Stops: Fengjing Ancient TownHeping StreetNorth StreetQibao Old Street if you have energy left
Sights
Old town · half a day
A Ming-era classical garden — the city's famous "urban mountain forest" — wrapped inside the busiest bazaar in Shanghai. The garden itself is small and beautiful; the streets around it, the Nine-Turn Bridge and the Huxinting teahouse are where you'll spend most of your time. The City God Temple next door is where locals come to burn incense and where the xiaolongbao legend lives.
Tip Compare prices at three stalls before buying anything in the bazaar. The ground-floor takeaway window at Nanxiang Mantou Dian is cheaper than the upstairs tables, and the second floor is cheaper than the third.
Riverside · 2 hours, better at night
The Bund is Shanghai's signature walk: a hundred years of building turned a towpath into the 52-building "World Architecture Expo" on the west bank, with Lujiazui's skyline directly opposite. Come at dusk, walk north to south, then cross to Pudong by ferry or sightseeing tunnel and look back at the whole lit-up sweep.
Tip Walk it on a weeknight if you can — weekend evenings the promenade is shoulder to shoulder and you'll queue for every photo spot on the railing.
Lanes · 2–3 hours
An artists' quarter built inside a shikumen block: galleries, craft workshops, teahouses, open-air cafes and small design shops, all threaded through lanes you will absolutely get lost in. This is the warm, noisy, human side of Shanghai that the skyscrapers hide.
Tip Some shops forbid photography — some even ban it from outside the door. Buy a Tianzifang map at a shop; it doubles as a souvenir and stops you circling the same lane three times. Nearby Si'nan Road and Jianguo Middle Road are worth adding.
Pudong · 3 hours
The two icons of Lujiazui, facing each other across the street. Oriental Pearl has the 263 m sightseeing deck, a second sphere with the city history museum, and a third sphere higher still, plus Asia's highest revolving restaurant. Jin Mao's lift covers the ground floor to the 88th-floor deck in 45 seconds — they call it a time machine, and the view over both banks of the Huangpu and out to the Yangtze mouth backs it up.
Tip Go up Jin Mao at dusk rather than midday — you get daylight, sunset and the lit skyline in one ticket. Oriental Pearl runs an evening song-and-dance show, "Five Thousand Years of China," 19:30–20:30, at CNY 120/180/280.
People's Square · half a day
One of China's four great museums, alongside Beijing, Nanjing and Xi'an, and free. Twelve themed galleries, with bronzes, ceramics and painting and calligraphy as the headline collections, plus coins, jade, sculpture, seals and minority crafts. It sits on the south side of People's Square, so you can pair it with Madame Tussauds and Nanjing Road in one afternoon.
Tip Madame Tussauds is in the same square — CNY 150 full adult ticket, CNY 110 for students, CNY 90 for children under 1.3 m and seniors over 65, open 10:00–21:00 with last tickets at 20:00. The Chamber of Horrors is the part people remember.
Food
The city's signature bite, and Nanxiang Mantou Dian at Yuyuan has been steaming them for over a century. Order the crab-roe version, bite a small hole first, let the steam out, then dip in vinegar with shredded ginger. Around CNY 36 per person.
Shanghai's own invention, about 100 years old: half-leavened dough, pork and gelatin filling, fried in a flat pan and finished with sesame and scallion. Crisp bottom, molten soup inside. Yang's Fry Dumpling is the reliable chain; expect to pay CNY 12 or so.
Benbang cooking means dark soy, sugar and lard — braised pork belly, braised pomfret, braised eel. Tiny Lanxin Restaurant on Jinxian Road is the classic hole-in-the-wall for it, run by an elderly couple, roughly CNY 61 per head.
From September to November Shanghainese eat hairy crab obsessively. Chenglonghang Crab King on Jiujiang Road does a full crab banquet — crab-roe tofu, steamed crab, crab-roe shark fin — and the waiters will even pick the meat for you. Budget CNY 309 per person.
Two cheap street snacks worth hunting down: flaky pastry discs coloured and shaped like crab shells, and pork chop over chewy rice cakes. Shen Dacheng on Nanjing East Road does the rice cakes and sticky cakes well for about CNY 17.
Where to eat
Century-old dumpling house
The famous one, right beside the City God Temple, with a queue that never seems to move. The ground-floor takeaway counter is cheaper than the upstairs dining rooms, and the second floor is easier on the wallet than the third. If the wait defeats you, the Wujiang Road and Fuzhou Road branches sell the same recipe with far shorter lines. Note there is a minimum spend in the Yuyuan dining rooms.
Shengjian institution
Sixteen years old and still mobbed. The buns are big, the skins thin, the filling generous, and the soup oily in the best way. Regulars order shengjian plus a bowl of beef vermicelli soup as a fixed set. Expect to eat standing or perch on a stool.
Benbang home cooking
An unassuming little room run by a very friendly elderly couple, and the most honest red-braised pork in the city. The braised pomfret is sweet-sour with a slow chilli heat and a thick sauce; everything here is the 'oil and red sauce' style taken as far as it goes. Cash-friendly, no frills, arrive early.
Crab banquet
The Jiujiang Road branch — red lanterns, yellow timber, a parrot by the door and someone playing the erhu in the hall. The menu is almost all crab: crab-roe tofu, steamed hairy crab, crab-roe shark fin. It is not cheap and it is not subtle, but it is a proper Shanghai autumn.
Where to stay
Hostel in a 1933 warehouse
A converted Du Yuesheng warehouse on the south bank of Suzhou Creek, built in 1933 and the only Chinese building to win UNESCO's Asia-Pacific Heritage Award. It sits inside the Suzhou Creek art district, with Jiuzi Park behind it and birdsong in the morning. Dorms and doubles, decent wifi, a small garden for sitting and watching the city go by. The one real drawback: you will hear the metro rumble past.
Hostel beside People's Square
Tucked just west of the Shanghai Art Museum, eight minutes on foot from People's Square metro (lines 1 and 2) and a short walk from Nanjing Road. Traditional Chinese layout with a walled courtyard, so it is quiet inside even though the location is pure downtown. This is the one to book if you want to be inside the lilong neighbourhood feel without leaving the tourist core.
Reliable mid-range on the Bund
Three minutes' walk east to the Bund promenade, in the middle of the old banking district. Rooms are clean, compact and exactly what you expect from the chain — which is the point when you are spending all day outside. Business rooms and standards, all with the usual Jinjiang bedding and breakfast.
Getting around
Shanghai runs two international airports 40 km apart on opposite sides of the city. Pudong (PVG) takes almost all long-haul international flights — 73 international and 62 domestic destinations — while Hongqiao (SHA) is mostly domestic plus a few Japan and Korea routes. Airport enquiry line 96990; both are on the metro.
Four stations: Shanghai Station (the old 'New Passenger Station'), Shanghai South, Hongqiao Railway Station and Shanghai West (freight only now, skip it). Hongqiao is the one you want — it sits directly above Metro Lines 2 and 10 and is built for zero-transfer connections between plane, metro, coach and train.
The metro is the answer to almost everything. It is China's longest network, fares are distance-based, and you can walk from any station to any city-centre sight in under 20 minutes. Buy a three-day pass and stop thinking about tickets.
Shanghai is the starting point of several expressways and national highways, so driving in is easy — but the city does not make it free. Roughly 47 passenger piers and 1,611 long-distance coach routes link Shanghai to 660 places in 14 provinces.
Shopping
Invented by the Guo Ji Xing Long shop at the City God Temple and still the city's signature snack — the local boast is that you have not really been to Shanghai until you have tried them. Crisp, salty-sweet fava beans, cheap, easy to carry. Buy them at the Yuyuan shop or any supermarket.
A boiled-down candy of pure white sugar with almond, fritillary, pinellia and poria — a Tang-dynasty recipe that survives as a throat sweet. Two or three dozen varieties exist (hawthorn, rose, ham), all sold in the specialist pear-candy shops around the old town. The cough version is the one people actually buy.
A Ming and Qing craft unique to Shanghai: flat carving on fans, brush pots and vases, three-dimensional carving on bamboo root. The knife work is dense and precise, the patterns cool and pale. Serious pieces are not cheap — go to a proper studio, not a souvenir stall.
Seven families of textile craft live here — embroidery, drawn work, machine embroidery, embroidered clothing, printed cloth, carpets and art tapestries. Gu embroidery is the famous four-to-five-hundred-year-old school; hand-knotted wool carpets and silk rugs are the other classic buy. Tianzifang (Lane 210 Taikang Road, 021-5465 7531) is the easiest place to see good work in one afternoon, alongside the studios of Chen Yifei and Er Dongqiang.
Practical
Shanghai is not one price bracket but two: you can eat well for CNY 15 or spend CNY 500 on dinner and both are normal here. The metro is the great equaliser — CNY 3–5 gets anyone anywhere, and every city-centre sight is within a 20-minute walk of a station. Carry small notes, keep your hotel's address in Chinese, and plan around the Monday closures above.
| Best months | March to May and September to November. Spring is mild and good for the outskirts; autumn brings hairy crab at its fattest and best. Summer is hot, wet and humid; winter is raw and grey. |
|---|---|
| Money | A bottle of water CNY 2, a Coke 3, a local Snow beer 6, a hostel dorm bed 55, a sit-down meal about 40 per person. Budget roughly CNY 1,000–1,500 for three days of comfortable travel. |
| Tipping | Not expected anywhere — restaurants, taxis and hotels included. Taxi drivers will round up rather than expect a tip. |
| Language | English is thin outside hotels and major sights. Have your destination written in Chinese characters, or use a translation app with the address already loaded. |
| Hours that catch people out | Yuyuan 08:30–17:00, last tickets 16:40. Shanghai Museum 09:00–17:00, last entry 16:00, free. Oriental Pearl Tower 08:00–18:00. Jin Mao Tower 08:30–22:00. Madame Tussauds 10:00–21:00, last tickets 20:00. Site of the First CPC Congress 09:00–16:00, closed Monday and Thursday. Xujiahui Cathedral only 13:30–16:00 Saturday and Sunday. Zhou Gong Residence 09:00–16:30, last entry 16:00, capped at 300 visitors a day. |
| Museum and temple tickets | Shanghai Museum free. City God Temple CNY 10 plus incense. Yuyuan CNY 40 high season, 30 low. Oriental Pearl CNY 100 (263 m deck), 135 (second sphere plus city history museum), 150 (third sphere), museum alone 35. Jin Mao CNY 88. Madame Tussauds CNY 150 adult, 110 student, 90 for under-1.3 m and over-65s. First CPC Congress site CNY 3. |
| Hospitals | Zhongshan Hospital, 180 Fenglin Road, 021-6404 1990. Huashan Hospital, 12 Wulumuqi Middle Road, 021-5288 9999. Changzheng Hospital, 480 Chengdu North Road, 021-8188 6999. |
| Emergency and help | Police 110, ambulance 120, fire 119. Airport enquiries 96990. Metro enquiries 6437 0000. Taxi dispatch 96965. Buy a CNY 5 bus and metro map at any Oriental newspaper kiosk — the cheap ones hawked on the metro for CNY 3 are pirated and full of errors. |
| Book with us | We arrange Shanghai private tours, airport transfers and multi-day Shanghai tour packages that pair the city with Suzhou, Hangzhou and the water towns — see our Shanghai tours for the full range of itineraries. |
Background
When the British arrived in 1843 the walled town had around 200,000 people and no riverfront to speak of. Foreign concessions carved out north of the old city built the Bund's 52 buildings, brought in running water, trams and electricity, and turned a county town into Asia's financial capital by the 1930s. That foreign-built skeleton is why Shanghai feels less like a Chinese city than a European port that happens to be in China — the plane trees along the former French Concession, the shikumen lane houses, the art deco apartment blocks are all products of that century.
Stand on the Bund and the skyline opposite you — Oriental Pearl Tower, Jin Mao, the Shanghai World Financial Center, and the 632m Shanghai Tower — was farmland in 1990. Pudong was a development zone created by decree, and it worked: the city hosted the 2010 World Expo and now runs the world's longest metro network. Locals measure the change by the fact that they used to say "I'm going to Shanghai" and now say "I'm going to Pudong." The old town still survives in pockets — Yuyuan, Qibao, Fengjing — but the tension between 700-year-old lanes and 30-year-old towers is the thing you actually came to see.
Before you go
Wong Kar-wai
The Hong Kong film that everyone insists is really about Shanghai, made by a director born in the city. Watch it for the cheongsams, the corridors, the stairwells, and the mood of a city that keeps its feelings behind closed doors.
Stella Dong
A readable history of the treaty-port years — gangsters, opium, tycoons and refugees — that gives the Bund buildings and the former French Concession streets their backstory before you walk them.
Zhou Xuan
The definitive Shanghai torch song, recorded in the 1940s and still the shorthand for the city's jazz-age reputation. Play it on the ferry from the Bund to Pudong at night and the skyline makes more sense.
The questions visitors ask us most about Shanghai, answered plainly.
Prices and practical details are reviewed every month by our Beijing team and updated the day a rule changes.
March to May and September to November. Spring is mild and the plane trees leaf out; autumn brings cool, dry days and the hairy crab season, which peaks in October and November. Summer is hot, humid and wet, and winter is raw and grey — neither is unbearable, but neither is the city at its best.
It swings both ways. A hostel bed runs about CNY 55, a bowl of noodles CNY 12, a metro ride CNY 3, and the Shanghai Museum and the Bund are free. But a Bund-view hotel room, a crab banquet or a tower observation deck can run into the hundreds. Budget CNY 1,000–1,500 for three days if you eat local and use the metro.
The metro Line 2 takes about an hour and costs under CNY 10, but note you must change trains at Guanglan Road, where the line switches from 4-car to 8-car sets. The maglev is faster and more fun — 8 minutes to Longyang Road for CNY 50, then transfer to Line 2 — and a taxi to the Bund runs CNY 150–190 depending on traffic.
Almost never. WeChat Pay and Alipay are accepted from street stalls to taxis, and both link to foreign cards. Keep a few hundred yuan in cash for small vendors and the occasional taxi that 'hasn't got change', and note that taxis start at CNY 14 for the first 3km during the day and CNY 16 at night.
Yes — it is the single best free thing in the city. Go at sunrise, between 6 and 8am, when the promenade belongs to joggers and the light hits the colonial facades side-on. By 10am it is shoulder to shoulder, and after dark it is spectacular but jammed; the Pudong side, opposite, gives you the classic postcard view of the old waterfront.
Start with xiaolongbao at Nanxiang Mantou Dian (about CNY 36 a head in the Yu Garden branch), then shengjianbao — pan-fried pork buns — at Yang's Fry Dumpling, which costs around CNY 12. For sit-down cooking try braised pork belly, eel in sizzling oil, or in autumn a whole hairy crab. The city's snack streets cluster around the old town, Yunnan South Road and Huanghe Road.
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City guide · 12 tours
126 km of Bohai coast in one municipality — a working port, two famous resorts, and the only desert dunes that meet this sea.
Yesanpo
City guide · 12 tours
Gorge country where the Taihang and Yan ranges collide — 52.5 km of canyon walls, a cave that spits fish, and a river to fall off.
Zhuhai
City guide · 12 tours
The delta's slow city: a 28 km promenade, 146 islands, oysters fattened where the river meets the sea.
Wuyi Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
Nine bends of clear water, red sandstone cliffs, and the tea that made a mountain's name.
Jiuzhaigou
City guide · 12 tours
108 mineral-blue lakes in one 55 km valley — the place that ruins water everywhere else for you.
Mount Siguniang
City guide · 12 tours
Four snow peaks, three valleys, and the friendliest 5,000 m mountain in China to stand on top of.
Hailuogou
City guide · 12 tours
A glacier that comes down to 2,850 m, hot springs in the forest, and Gongga Shan filling the sky above both.
Daocheng Yading
City guide · 12 tours
Three 6,000 m sacred peaks, glacial lakes at 4,600 m and twenty hours of road — the hardest, highest payoff in Sichuan.
Shunan Bamboo Sea
City guide · 12 tours
Seventy thousand mu of bamboo over twenty-eight hills, a red sandstone corridor under a closed green roof, and a banquet made entirely of bamboo.
Dujiangyan
City guide · 12 tours
Not a monument but a machine: three pieces of engineering with no dam, still doing their job after 2,270 years.
Qingcheng Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
The mountain where Daoism was organised, and the one Chengdu escapes to when the basin turns into an oven.
Qingdao
City guide · 12 tours
Red-tiled roofs, cold beer and a granite mountain that walks straight into the sea — the easiest good time on the Yellow Sea.
Mount Tai
City guide · 12 tours
1,545 metres, 6,290 stone steps and three thousand years of emperors — the one mountain in China that is also a document.
Jinan
City guide · 12 tours
A provincial capital with 700 springs under the pavement — people still queue at the spouts to fill their kettles.
Weihai
City guide · 12 tours
1,000 km of clean coast, a free bathing beach, the island where the Beiyang Fleet died — and thousands of wild swans every winter.
Qufu
City guide · 12 tours
One family, two thousand years of steles, and a ¥150 pass that covers the lot — the easiest serious day trip in Shandong.
Penglai
City guide · 12 tours
China's immortals' coast — a Song-dynasty naval harbour you can walk for free, a mythology nobody ever found, and the ferry to 32 islands.
Changdao
City guide · 12 tours
32 islands, one causeway, a ¥150 land pass, tens of thousands of gulls and nowhere you can drive — the place where everything happens by boat.
Nanjing
City guide · 12 tours
Capital of six dynasties, capital of the Republic, and the city that eats more duck than anywhere else on earth.
Suzhou
City guide · 12 tours
Two thousand five hundred years of canals, sixty surviving gardens, and a city that shuts its gates at half past five.
Zhouzhuang
City guide · 12 tours
Nine hundred years, fourteen bridges, one ticket — and a town that only makes sense before eight in the morning.
Tongli
City guide · 12 tours
Fifteen canals, seven islets, forty-nine bridges — and a town that still gets up at dawn because it lives here.
Wuxi
City guide · 12 tours
Taihu on one side, a Grand Buddha on the next hill, and ribs sweet enough to argue about — the most underrated city on the Yangtze delta.
Yangzhou
City guide · 12 tours
A city built by salt merchants who had more money than restraint — gardens, a narrow lake, and the best breakfast in China.
Zhenjiang
City guide · 12 tours
Three hills, one ferry landing, and an unreasonable share of Chinese literature — the Yangtze city people drive past.
Changzhou
City guide · 12 tours
A 2,500-year-old canal city that built a dinosaur park and refuses to apologise for it.
Wuzhen
City guide · 12 tours
A town that is two towns: the older, quieter East Zone and the lit-up West Zone you sleep inside.
Xitang
City guide · 12 tours
Nine canals, 122 lanes, one long roofed corridor — and a town that still works for a living.
Hangzhou
City guide · 12 tours
A lake in the middle of a city, a tea village in the hills, and two thousand years of getting the mood right.
Xixi Wetland
City guide · 12 tours
Ten square kilometres of marsh inside Hangzhou, and the only way into half of it is a boat.
Ningbo
City guide · 12 tours
A 7,000-year-old port with Asia's oldest private library, a free waterfront 20 years older than Shanghai's, and the best seafood before the islands.
Mount Putuo
City guide · 12 tours
A Buddhist island with no cars, three great temples and a ¥10 lunch that is the point of the place.
Qiandao Lake
City guide · 12 tours
A thousand islands that did not exist sixty years ago, and the cleanest big-lake water in China.
Shaoxing
City guide · 12 tours
Two and a half thousand years of water-town China, and Lu Xun's house is free.
Zhoushan
City guide · 12 tours
1,390 islands, one road bridge in, and a harbour that lands more fish than almost anywhere on earth.
Hengdian
City guide · 12 tours
A backlot the size of a town, where the palaces are copies and the film crews are real.
Yandang Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
A volcano that weathering turned into scenery — 500-odd sights of peak, cave and waterfall across eight scenic areas.
Zhejiang
City guide · 12 tours
One small, mountainous, absurdly rich province that holds a lake, two canal towns, a Buddhist island and a dead volcano.
Hong Kong Outlying Islands
City guide · 12 tours
Two hundred-odd islands, half an hour of ferry from the financial district, and not a car on three of them.
Hong Kong Shopping
City guide · 12 tours
A duty-free port where the tag starts lower, two citywide sale seasons knock a third off, and every mall sits on an MTR exit.
Macao
City guide · 12 tours
Four hundred years of Portuguese streets, a fake Venice under a painted sky, and the best egg tart in Asia.
Urumqi
City guide · 12 tours
The city furthest from the sea, with a snow range on its doorstep and dinner starting at nine.
Hong Kong SAR, China
City guide · 11 tours
A harbour skyline you already know by heart, dim sum trolleys at dawn, and 260 islands an hour from the neon.
Taiwan, China
City guide · 11 tours
Night-market alleys, high-mountain railways, and a coastline that changes character every hundred kilometres.
Qinghai Lake
City guide · 12 tours
A 4,400 sq km inland sea at 3,200 m, ringed by rapeseed gold, prayer flags and the best cycling road in China.
Mount Emei
City guide · 11 tours
A 3,099-metre Buddhist summit you can reach by cable car before lunch — and a mountain full of monkeys that will absolutely rob you.
Beijing
City guide · 11 tours
Six centuries of imperial red walls, a Great Wall you can climb before lunch, and the best roast duck on earth.
Taipei
City guide · 11 tours
A 24-hour bookstore, a night market that never stops sizzling, and a city that apologises when you bump into it.
North Xinjiang
City guide · 11 tours
Alpine lakes the colour of poured enamel, a village of log cabins under birch trees, and the last tear the Atlantic ever sheds.
Lanzhou
City guide · 11 tours
A city split in half by the Yellow River, where beef noodles are a breakfast ritual and the Silk Road still runs through the streets.
Mount Hua
City guide · 11 tours
Five granite peaks, one plank road bolted to a cliff face, and a sunrise that justifies the 2am start.
Dunhuang
City guide · 11 tours
A desert oasis where Buddhist cave art survived a thousand years and a crescent lake refused to dry up.
Gannan
City guide · 11 tours
433 kilometres of the Yellow River's first bend, a 3.5 km prayer-wheel circuit, and Tibetan grasslands almost nobody has commercialised yet.
Sichuan–Tibet Highway
City guide · 11 tours
2,142 kilometres of cliff-edge switchbacks, four of China's most beautiful mountains, and a road the Tibetans walk on their knees.
Kangding
City guide · 11 tours
The town that gave Asia its most famous love song, a 7,556m sacred peak on its doorstep, and the last real Tibetan town before the road climbs to Lhasa.
Lhasa
City guide · 12 tours
A city of prayer wheels and butter lamps at 3,700 metres, where the sun shines 3,000 hours a year and the world's highest palace watches over it all.
Nyingchi
City guide · 11 tours
Tibet's greenest corner — peach blossom valleys, a 7,782 m peak that hides from almost everyone, and the world's deepest canyon.
Namtso
City guide · 11 tours
A 1,920-square-kilometre sheet of impossible blue at 4,718 metres, ringed by snow peaks and prayer flags.
Chongqing
City guide · 12 tours
A vertical city of fog, cable cars and cliff-side stilt houses, where the火锅 never stops boiling and the night skyline outshines Hong Kong.
Qiandongnan
City guide · 11 tours
A thousand Miao households stacked up a mountainside, drum towers and wind-rain bridges in Dong villages, and a 600-year-old Ming garrison town on the road to Guiyang.
Libo
City guide · 11 tours
Emerald rivers threading through karst peaks, a 600-metre forest growing out of a riverbed, and China's largest wild plum grove.
Guiyang
City guide · 11 tours
China's summer capital at 1,100 metres, where the nights run on sour fish soup, street-side barbecue and mahjong that never quite stops.
Zhenyuan
City guide · 11 tours
A 2,000-year-old river town where the Wuyang River carves an S through the mountains and every lane hides a story.
Huangguoshu
City guide · 11 tours
Asia's biggest waterfall, and the only one on earth you can walk behind, above and around — plus 600-year-old Ming dynasty villages a short drive away.
Harbin
City guide · 11 tours
Minus 30 degrees, a frozen river you can walk across, and a cathedral built by Russians who never went home.
Yunnan
City guide · 11 tours
Snow mountains, tropical rainforest, twenty-five minorities and a plate of rice noodles — all in one province.
Zhangjiajie
City guide · 11 tours
Three thousand sandstone pillars straight out of Avatar, a glass skywalk bolted to a cliff, and a cable car that leaves from downtown.
Guangzhou
City guide · 11 tours
A 2,200-year-old trading port where dim sum is a religion, colonial islands sit beside 600-metre towers, and the food never stops.
Guilin
City guide · 11 tours
Karst peaks rising straight out of a green river, rice terraces carved into mountainsides, and the best bowl of noodles you'll eat in China.
Shenzhen
City guide · 11 tours
A fishing village that became a megacity in forty years — and it still has 500-year-old banyans, empty beaches and dim sum worth the border crossing.
Chengdu
City guide · 11 tours
A 3,000-year-old city where the schedule is tea, mahjong and hotpot — and the pandas are just the opening act.
Xinjiang
City guide · 11 tours
Snow peaks, grassland, desert and oasis — one-sixth of China, and the longest road you will ever ride.
Xi'an
City guide · 14 tours
Thirteen dynasties of emperors, a terracotta army buried for 2,200 years, and a walled city you can cycle in 100 minutes.
Qinghai
City guide · 11 tours
China's high-altitude blue heart: a salt lake you can walk on, a 3,200-metre sea, and yak butter tea at the roof of the world.
Tibet
City guide · 11 tours
A plateau the size of Western Europe where the sky starts at your feet, prayer flags carry the wind, and the roads run past 8,000-metre peaks.
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