When China gets cheaper, the itinerary is often getting better, not worse. A station hall that had been a wall of backpacks can suddenly show floor tiles again once the...
It is just past eleven at night at London Heathrow when a couple rolls their cases up to the Air China desk. On paper their China tour has not started...
Jiaohe at Sunset: Where Turpan’s Ancient Fortress Turns Into a Stage At the end of a Turpan [TOOR-pan] day, when the heat finally begins to leave the ground, Jiaohe Ancient...
No sign out front. Plastic stools on the sidewalk, a handwritten menu taped to a greasy wall, and a line of people in office clothes waiting for a table that...
The eyes reach you before the face does. Ten centimetres of bronze cylinder project outward from each socket, aimed at whoever stands in the dim gallery light. Nothing in this...
Stand at the base of the gorge and the Hanging Temple barely registers — a scatter of wooden buildings clinging to a wall of grey and ochre stone so vast...
At seven in the morning in Chengdu, a man in a white undershirt is already in his bamboo chair, lidded tea bowl beside him, mahjong tiles clicking. Three hundred kilometers...
At Liziba in Chongqing, phones are already up. A few hundred people crowd the viewing platform, all facing the same 19-storey apartment block — then a Line 2 monorail slides...
