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18 city guides · Asia

Cities in China (18)

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Beijing

Beijing (北京 — "Northern Capital" — China's capital since 1420, when the Yongle Emperor moved the Ming court from Nanjing) is the most historically layered city in East Asia: the Forbidden City (紫禁城 — the world's largest palace complex, 180 acres, 980 buildings, 9,999 rooms, home to 24 emperors over 500 years), the Great Wall (北京段 — the most dramatic and accessible sections of the 21,196km wall), and the Temple of Heaven (天坛 — where the emperor performed the ritual that connected Heaven and Earth) are three of the most important monuments in the history of human civilization. Modern Beijing (22 million residents — the political, educational and cultural capital of China) is a city of extraordinary contrasts: the imperial gray of the Forbidden City beside the new CCTV Tower (Rem Koolhaas — the most structurally audacious skyscraper in the world), the hutong (胡同 — the medieval lane network of courtyard houses dating to the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368)) beside the elevated highways. Beijing's food culture is centred on Peking Duck (北京烤鸭 — the dish that requires 65 days of preparation from the specific white Pekin duck breed, inflated, lacquered with maltose syrup and roasted hanging in a wood-fired oven) and the jianbing (煎饼 — the Beijing street breakfast: a crepe with egg, chilli paste, scallion and crispy wonton).

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Chengdu

Chengdu (成都 — "becomes a city," 2,300 years of continuous habitation) is the capital of Sichuan Province and the gateway to Tibet, the giant panda homeland, and the most distinct regional food culture in China: Sichuan cuisine (川菜 — one of the eight great culinary traditions of China, unique for its characteristic málà (麻辣 — "numbing and spicy") flavor profile created by Sichuan pepper (花椒 — huājiāo, the dried berry of the prickly ash tree, which creates a tingling, numbing sensation on the tongue (paresthesia) unlike any other spice in the world) combined with dried red chilli peppers). Chengdu has been designated a UNESCO City of Gastronomy and has more teahouses per capita than any other city in the world (the teahouse (茶馆 cháguan) culture of Chengdu — where locals gather for tea (specifically gaiwan cha, the lidded-bowl tea served in traditional teahouses), to play mahjong and to have their ears cleaned by the ear-cleaning barber who circulates between tables — is the most distinctive urban leisure tradition in Sichuan). The Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding (10km north of the city) is the most important panda conservation facility in the world and the only place outside the Bifengxia reserve where you can reliably see giant pandas in a semi-natural environment.

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Chongqing

Chongqing (population 9 million urban core, 32 million administrative municipality — the most populous municipality in the world and the most important inland port in China) is the most dramatically situated megacity in the world: built entirely on steep cliffs and mountains where the Jialing River meets the Yangtze River (the most important river confluence in China — the "confluence city" (the "Liangjiang Xinqu" — the "Two Rivers New District")). A municipality directly under the Central Government (one of only four in China alongside Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin — the most administratively elevated tier in China), Chongqing served as the wartime capital of China during World War II (1939–1945 — the "Spirit of Chongqing": the most heroic period in the city's modern history: Chongqing was bombed over 200 times by the Japanese Air Force (the most heavily bombed city in Asia during World War II) yet its population refused to abandon the capital). The Chongqing hotpot (the most internationally famous Sichuan/Chongqing dish: the most intensely spicy communal cooking broth in Chinese cuisine), the Hongya Cave cliffside architecture, the Jiefangbei (the most important commercial pedestrian district in western China) and the Three Gorges cruise (the most famous river journey in China) make Chongqing the most dramatically interesting megacity in inland China.

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Dalian

Dalian (大连 — population 7 million) is northeastern China's most cosmopolitan and most European-flavored city — the "City of Romance" (the most unusual nickname for a Chinese city: the result of decades of Russian and Japanese colonial architecture that left Dalian with the most distinctive non-Chinese urban landscape in the country). Built on the tip of the Liaodong Peninsula between the Yellow Sea and the Bohai Sea, Dalian boasts the most extensive and most beautiful urban park network in northern China (Zhongshan Square — the most impressive city square in Manchuria, with six grand boulevards radiating from a central circle of colonial-era buildings), the most important seafood market in northern China (the Xinghai Square fish market area), the most scenic coastal drive in the Bohai Rim (the Tiger Beach to Bangchui Island cliff coast), the Dalian Forest Zoo (the most open-range zoo in China), and the best beer festival in northern China (Dalian International Beer Festival — the largest outdoor beer festival in Asia). The city's unusually clean streets, extensive tram network (the last functioning historic tram system in China) and mild summers make it the most livable coastal city in northern China.

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Fuzhou

Fuzhou (population 8.3 million) is the capital of Fujian Province in southeastern China — the most historically Maritime-Silk-Road-significant single Fujian city and the most Lin Zexu-historically-famous single Chinese provincial capital (Lin Zexu — the most precisely opium-seizure-responsible and the most precisely 1839-Opium-War-precipitating single Chinese official: the most comprehensively anti-opium-policy single Qing Dynasty commissioner). The Three Lanes and Seven Alleys (the "Sanfang Qixiang" — the most completely preserved single Tang-Dynasty-era-origin urban residential heritage area in China), the Gu Shan (Drum Mountain — the most popular single Fuzhou mountain pilgrimage destination), the Yongquan Monastery (the most important single Buddhist temple in Fujian Province: founded 908 CE), and the most important Fuzhou export: the Fujian "Min" language (the most internationally influential single Chinese dialect in Southeast Asia: the basis of most overseas Chinese languages in Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Philippines — the most diaspora-important single Chinese linguistic tradition).

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Hangzhou

Hangzhou is the capital of Zhejiang Province in eastern China — a city of 12 million people on the southern shore of West Lake (西湖, Xī Hú — UNESCO World Heritage Site 2011), 180km southwest of Shanghai. Marco Polo, who visited Kublai Khan's China in the 1270s, called Hangzhou 'the most beautiful and magnificent city in the world' and described the West Lake, the silk workshops, the teahouses, and the canal traffic in terms that remain recognisable today. The West Lake (6.5 sq km of freshwater lake inside the city, surrounded by wooded hills, pagodas, causeways, and classical gardens) is the most culturally significant lake in China — it has been painted, poeticised, and landscaped by Chinese artists and scholars for over 1,000 years, and the Su Causeway (a 2.8km tree-lined walkway across the lake, built by the poet-official Su Shi (Su Dongpo) in 1089) is both an engineering achievement and a cultural monument. Longjing Tea (龙井茶, Dragon Well Tea — the most prestigious green tea in China, grown on the terraced hillsides of the Longjing village 5km from the city centre) has been the imperial tea since the Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE). Best months: March–May and September–November.

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Harbin

Harbin is the capital of Heilongjiang Province in northeastern China (Manchuria) — 10.5 million people on the Songhua River, the northernmost major city in China, 250km south of the Russian border. Harbin was founded in 1898 as a railway construction camp for the Chinese Eastern Railway (the Russian-built railway across Manchuria to Vladivostok), and the Russian population of the early 20th century (peaking at 100,000 in the 1920s, when Harbin was known as 'the Paris of the East' and had a Russian Orthodox cathedral, a Jewish community, and a cosmopolitan café society) left the city with a unique architectural heritage: Central Avenue (中央大街, Zhōngyāng Dàjiē — 1.4km of uninterrupted European-style buildings in Russian Baroque, Baroque Revival, Art Nouveau, and Eclecticist styles, the most intact early 20th-century Russian colonial streetscape surviving outside Russia). The primary winter attraction is the Harbin International Ice and Snow Festival (哈尔滨国际冰雪节 — January–February, the world's largest ice sculpture festival with building-sized illuminated ice structures carved from blocks of Songhua River ice). Saint Sophia Cathedral (a Russian Orthodox cathedral with a green onion dome, 1907, now a museum of Harbin architectural history) is the city's icon. The contemporary architectural landmark: the Harbin Opera House (哈尔滨大剧院, designed by Ma Yansong of MAD Architects, completed 2015 — a curved white structure on the Songhua River that resembles a glacier or a sand dune). Best months for the ice festival: January 5–February 28. Summer (June–August): warm (25–28°C), green, completely different experience.

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Hong Kong

Hong Kong is a city of extremes held in perfect tension — vertical glass towers against jungle-covered hills, British colonial courts buildings next to Qing dynasty temples, dai pai dong street food stalls beside Michelin-starred restaurants. The harbour is one of the great urban spectacles in the world. And three days is exactly enough to feel how Hong Kong works: the MTR, the Star Ferry, the Peak Tram, the temple incense, and the night market shopping.

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Lhasa

Lhasa (ལྷ་ས — 'Place of the Gods') is the capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region of China, at 3,656m altitude on the Lhasa River valley in the Himalayan Plateau — the highest-altitude regional capital in China and one of the highest cities in the world. Lhasa was the seat of the Dalai Lamas and the theocratic government of Tibet from the 5th Dalai Lama (1642) until the 1959 Tibetan uprising and subsequent Chinese military administration. The Potala Palace (the winter palace of the Dalai Lamas — UNESCO World Heritage Site; a 13-storey white-and-red fortress-palace rising 117m above the Lhasa valley on Marpori Hill; begun by the 5th Dalai Lama in 1645; completed 1694; contains 1,000 rooms, 10,000 shrines, and the tombs of 8 Dalai Lamas in solid gold chortens) is the defining image of Tibet and one of the most recognisable buildings in Asia. The Jokhang Temple (UNESCO; founded 641 CE by King Songtsen Gampo; the holiest temple in Tibetan Buddhism; the circumambulation route (Barkhor — the square surrounding the Jokhang) is the living heart of Lhasa where pilgrims prostrate themselves on the stone circuit around the temple). Visitors require a Tibet Travel Permit in addition to a Chinese visa. Best months: May–October.

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Macau

Macau (Macao; population 680,000 in the peninsula and islands) is a Special Administrative Region of China and one of the most extraordinary cities in the world — a 32.9km² territory on the Pearl River Delta, 65km southwest of Hong Kong, that was the first and last European colonial territory in China (Portuguese from 1557 to December 20, 1999 — 442 years of Portuguese presence, the longest European colonial occupation in Asia). Macau is the UNESCO-recognised Historic Centre of Macao (2005 — 30 buildings and public squares that constitute the most complete surviving ensemble of Portuguese colonial architecture in Asia, combined with Chinese traditional architecture in a unique Sino-Portuguese urban fabric). Macau is simultaneously the gambling capital of the world (the Macau gaming revenue has exceeded Las Vegas since 2007 — in 2013, Macau's gaming revenue was 7 times that of the Las Vegas Strip; the total gaming revenue was MOP 360 billion (USD 45 billion) in the pre-COVID peak year of 2019): the Cotai Strip (the reclaimed land between Taipa and Coloane islands: the site of the most concentrated collection of luxury casino-hotels in the world (Galaxy Macau, Venetian Macao, City of Dreams, Studio City, Wynn Palace)). The Portuguese culinary legacy: African chicken (galinha à africana), pastéis de nata (Portuguese egg tarts — the Macanese version is considered by many to be superior to the Lisbon original), and the Macanese fusion cuisine (one of the rarest and most historically complex fusion cuisines in the world). Best months: October–December.

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Nanning

Nanning is the subtropical capital of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in southern China — a green city on the Yong River that serves as the gateway to China's most dramatic karst landscape and to the ASEAN trade corridor linking China with Southeast Asia. The city itself is subtropical and leafy, with banyan trees lining the boulevards and longan fruit vendors on every corner, but it is primarily a base for the extraordinary landscape excursions that surround it: the limestone karst pinnacles of Guilin and Yangshuo are 3 hours north by bullet train; the Detian Transnational Waterfall (the world's largest cross-border waterfall, shared with Vietnam) is 3 hours west; and the Beihai silver beach coast is 3 hours south. Nanning is also the capital of the Zhuang ethnic minority — China's largest ethnic minority at 17 million — and the Zhuang Festival of Songs in March, when tens of thousands gather to sing traditional antiphonal folk songs, is one of China's most spectacular ethnic cultural events. The city's food reflects this southern identity: snail noodles (luosifen) from nearby Liuzhou, zongzi rice dumplings wrapped in bamboo leaf and the Guangxi rice wine tradition are all accessible in Nanning's extensive night markets.

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Shanghai

Shanghai (上海 — "on the sea," though the sea is actually 50km to the east via the Yangtze estuary) is the largest city in China (24 million residents in the municipality) and the financial and commercial capital of the world's second-largest economy: a city that in one generation has gone from the partially derelict former colonial concession city of the 1990s to one of the most dramatic urban landscapes on earth — the Pudong skyline (the Oriental Pearl Tower 1994, Jin Mao Tower 1999, Shanghai World Financial Center 2008, Shanghai Tower 2015 — four iconic skyscrapers built in 21 years) rises directly across the Huangpu River from the Bund (the 1.5km of Edwardian and Art Deco colonial bank buildings from 1910–1936 — when Shanghai was the most cosmopolitan and financially powerful city in Asia, the "Paris of the East," with British, French, American and Japanese concession zones each with their own architecture, police and law). The contrast between these two waterfronts — one of colonial imperial grandeur, one of 21st-century ambition — is the most striking urban image in the world. Shanghai's food is the most refined regional cuisine in China after Cantonese: xiaolongbao (the soup dumpling invented in Shanghai in the 19th century), Shanghainese red-braised pork belly, hairy crab (a Shanghai autumn obsession), and the dumplings and noodles of the Chenghuang Miao (City God Temple) area.

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Shenyang

Shenyang is the capital of Liaoning Province in northeastern China (Manchuria) and the largest city in the region, with a population of 9 million — the city where the Qing Dynasty was founded and from which its emperors set out to conquer China and rule it for 268 years (1644-1912). Shenyang (called Mukden in Manchu, the name that survived in European languages through the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 and the Mukden Incident of 1931) contains the Mukden Palace (the Shenyang Imperial Palace — a UNESCO World Heritage Site, built 1625-1636 by Nurhaci and Huang Taiji (the founders of the Qing dynasty) before the conquest of China; the palace is significant because it predates the Forbidden City of Beijing in its construction and because it represents the Manchu architectural synthesis of Chinese, Mongol and Shamanist elements that the purely Chinese Beijing Forbidden City does not show). The September 18th History Museum (the memorial to the Mukden Incident of September 18, 1931 — the Japanese Imperial Army's staged explosion on the Manchu Railway near Shenyang that served as the pretext for the Japanese invasion of Manchuria; the beginning of what China calls the "14-year War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression" (1931-1945); the incident is commemorated throughout the city every year on September 18 with air raid sirens at 9:18 am) is the most significant modern history museum in northeastern China. Shenyang is also the gateway to northeastern Chinese cuisine (dongbei cai — the hearty, pork-and-garlic-based cuisine of China's cold northeast, with the guo bao rou (the caramelised sweet-and-sour pork — the Shenyang version is the original), the sanxian dumpling (three-treasure: pork, shrimp and egg), the iron pot stew, and the Shenyang beer culture (northeastern Chinese beer consumption is the highest per capita in China).

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Shenzhen

Shenzhen is China's most remarkable urban story — a city that did not exist in its current form 45 years ago. In 1980, Shenzhen was a collection of fishing villages on the Pearl River Delta north of Hong Kong with a combined population of approximately 30,000; in 2025 the population is 18 million, making Shenzhen one of the ten largest cities in the world, the centre of China's electronics manufacturing and technology industry, and the richest city in China per capita. The transformation was created by Deng Xiaoping's 1980 designation of Shenzhen as China's first Special Economic Zone (SEZ) — a laboratory for market economics in a socialist state, where foreign investment was permitted, where factories producing goods for export could operate, where the Hong Kong commercial culture could be studied from next door. The result was the fastest sustained urban growth in recorded history: the city that took Rome 400 years to build, Shanghai 150 years, Shenzhen built in 40. Shenzhen is now home to Huawei (China's telecommunications giant), Tencent (WeChat, the world's most-used messaging app), DJI (the world's largest drone manufacturer, with 70% of the global drone market), BYD (the world's largest electric vehicle manufacturer by sales in 2023) and the largest concentration of electronics manufacturing in the world (the Huaqiangbei electronics market — the place where 80% of the world's electronic components are available for purchase, the source of supply for electronics repair shops and hardware hackers globally). Beyond the tech, Shenzhen has developed one of the finest contemporary art scenes in China (the OCAT Shenzhen, the He Xiangning Art Museum) and the Dafen Oil Painting Village (the village in Shenzhen's Longhua District where 8,000 professional oil painters produce an estimated 60% of the world's commercially sold oil paintings).

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Tianjin

Tianjin (天津 — "Ford of Heaven"; population 14 million city, one of the four direct-controlled municipalities of China along with Beijing, Shanghai and Chongqing) is China's fourth-largest city, 137 km southeast of Beijing (30 min by high-speed G-train), at the confluence of the Hai River (Haihe) with the Bohai Gulf. Tianjin's most distinctive urban characteristic is the extraordinary density of European colonial architecture from the Treaty Port era (1860-1945): during the 19th and early 20th centuries, Tianjin hosted 9 foreign concession territories (the British Concession (1861), the French Concession (1861), the American Concession (merged with British 1902), the German Concession (1895), the Japanese Concession (1898), the Russian Concession (1900), the Austro-Hungarian Concession (1902), the Italian Concession (1902) and the Belgian Concession (1902) — the most concession territories in any Chinese city), each with its own architecture, legal system, police force, municipal government and character; the result is the Wudadao (五大道 — "Five Great Avenues") district in the former British Concession: the most extensive surviving collection of early 20th-century European villa architecture in China (approximately 2,000 historic buildings in the British, French, Italian, Greek and Spanish styles built between 1900-1940). The Ancient Culture Street (Guwenhua Jie) preserves the traditional architecture of the Qing dynasty Tianjin marketplace. Tianjin is also the birthplace of two of the most globally distributed Chinese street foods: the Tianjin jianbing (the griddle-fried egg-and-sauce flatbread now sold throughout urban China and increasingly worldwide — jianbing stalls are found in New York, London and Sydney) and the Goubuli baozi (狗不理包子 — the Tianjin steamed bun brand established by the teenage cook Gao Guiyou in 1858; the name means "dogs won't even look at them" (the buns were so in demand that Gao ignored his customers with the singlemindedness of a dog ignoring people when eating) and the steamed bun chain now operates internationally).

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Wuhan

Wuhan (武汉; population 13.9 million; the capital of Hubei Province (湖北省); in central China at the confluence of the Yangtze River (the Chang Jiang — the longest river in Asia at 6,300 km) and its largest tributary the Han River (the Han Shui); the most important industrial, transport and educational hub of central China; connected by the Beijing-Guangzhou railway (the north-south axis of China's rail network) and the most recent high-speed rail lines making it the most accessible city in inland China) is a city of three historically distinct districts — the "three towns of Wuhan" (Wuhan Santouzhen): Wuchang (the historic capital of Hubei Province on the south bank of the Yangtze — site of the Wuchang Uprising (October 10, 1911) that began the Xinhai Revolution ending 2,000 years of imperial rule in China; the Yellow Crane Tower; East Lake), Hankou (the commercial centre and former colonial treaty port on the north bank of the Yangtze, east of the Han River — the district with the most European colonial architecture) and Hanyang (the industrial zone on the south bank of the Han River west of the Yangtze — the site of China's first modern integrated steelworks, built 1890 by Zhang Zhidong). Wuhan is historically celebrated in China for three things: the Wuchang Uprising (the beginning of the Republican revolution on October 10, 1911 — the most consequential single event in modern Chinese political history, ending the 267-year Qing dynasty and the 2,000-year Chinese imperial tradition), the Yellow Crane Tower (Huanghe Lou — one of the Four Great Towers of Classical China, the most poetically celebrated architectural landmark in China after the classical poems of the Tang dynasty), and the reganmian (热干面 — the "hot dry noodles": the alkaline wheat noodles tossed with sesame paste, sesame oil, scallion and pickled radish; the definitive Wuhan breakfast food consumed daily by millions of Wuhan residents and the most immediately identifiable regional food identity in central China).

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Xiamen

Xiamen (厦门; population 4.28 million; in Fujian Province (福建省) on the southeastern coast of China, facing Taiwan across the Taiwan Strait; known historically in European and colonial contexts as "Amoy" — the Hokkien/Minnan pronunciation of the city name; one of the five original treaty ports opened to foreign trade by the Treaty of Nanking (1842) after the First Opium War) is the most scenically beautiful coastal city in Fujian Province: the city is built on a series of islands and peninsulas in the Xiamen Bay (the bay formed by the Jiulong River estuary and the South China Sea coastline), with the most famous element being the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Gulangyu Island (鼓浪屿 — Gulang Yu: "Drum Wave Island"; named for the percussion sound the waves make striking the hollow rocks at the island's southwestern tip; the UNESCO inscription 2017 for "Historic International Settlement"): the 1.88 km² car-free island (no motor vehicles; no bicycles; pedestrian-only since the 1920s) immediately adjacent to Xiamen harbour that served as the international settlement for the foreign consulates and merchant communities of the treaty port era (1843-1943) and is now a remarkably intact architectural museum of Sino-European colonial architecture (the Sino-Portuguese (Minnan-Portuguese fusion architecture), the British colonial, the German colonial, the American Mission style and the Minnan Chinese vernacular houses (the Minnan bankers and returning overseas Chinese merchants who built the most opulent residences on Gulangyu from 1900-1930) visible side by side on the island's narrow lanes). Gulangyu is also known as the "Music Island" (音乐岛 — the most pianos per capita of any place in China: the highest concentration of pianos in a Chinese community resulting from the Western missionary music education tradition established on the island in the 1840s-1940s; the most famous Gulangyu-born musician is Lang Lang's teacher, the pianist Lin Ruihe; the Gulangyu Piano Museum (钢琴博物馆) holds one of the largest collections of historic pianos in Asia).

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Xian

Xi'an (西安; population 13.1 million; the capital of Shaanxi Province (陕西省) in the Wei River Valley of central China; the most historically significant city in China that is not currently the national capital) was the capital of China under 13 imperial dynasties — more than any other city in Chinese history — including the Zhou (771-256 BCE), the Qin (221-206 BCE), the Han (206 BCE-220 CE) and most famously the Tang dynasty (618-907 CE), during which it was the largest city in the world (population approximately 1 million) and the eastern terminus of the Silk Road (the trade route connecting China to Central Asia, Persia, the Arab world and ultimately the Roman Empire). The city was known as Chang'an (長安 — "Perpetual Peace") during its imperial period and as Xijing ("Western Capital") during the Northern Song dynasty before the name Xi'an was adopted in 1369. The defining discovery of modern Xi'an is the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor and the Terracotta Army (the Bingmayong — 兵马俑): the archaeological complex 35 km east of the Xi'an city centre, discovered accidentally in March 1974 by local farmers digging a well (the farmer Yang Zhifa, who was later employed by the museum as a book-signer for visiting foreign dignitaries, is the most famous accidental archaeological discoverer in history), that contains the burial army of the Emperor Qin Shi Huang (秦始皇 — the "First Emperor of Qin", 259-210 BCE; the unifier of China in 221 BCE after 15 years of warfare against the six rival Warring States kingdoms): an estimated 8,000 life-size terracotta soldier figures (each unique, each originally painted in vivid colours that oxidised within minutes of exposure to air), 130 chariots, 520 horses, 150 cavalry horses and thousands of bronze weapons buried in three pits. The Xi'an City Wall (the Chengqiang — 城墙; the most complete and best-preserved ancient city wall in China: 13.7 km circumference, 12 m height, 12-14 m top width; built 1370-1378 under the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) on the foundations of the Tang dynasty imperial city walls; the complete circuit of the wall is walkable on foot (4-5 hours) or by bicycle (1.5-2 hours) and provides the most comprehensive view of the historic city centre from above) and the Xi'an Muslim Quarter (回民街 — Huifang: the most vibrant and atmospherically dense street food and Islamic heritage district in northern China, centred on the Beiyuanmen Street and the Great Mosque (Qingzhen Dasi — the largest mosque in China built in the Chinese architectural tradition rather than the Arabic style)).

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