Destination Guides
Destination guides for China: city-by-city itineraries, top sights, food, neighborhoods and practical tips for first-time visitors.
Destination Guides7 min read2026-09-06Macau: A Living Specimen of Four Centuries of East-West ConfluenceIn 1557 the Portuguese were granted permission to settle here, and Macau became Europe's earliest settlement in East Asia — the baroque façade of the Ruins of St. Paul's, the incense smoke of the A-Ma Temple, Macanese cuisine and Portuguese egg tarts together compose China's earliest sample of "East-West hybridity." In 2005 the Historic Centre of Macau was inscribed on the World Heritage List in its entirety, and this small city is also one of the most densely populated places on Earth.
Destination Guides4 min read2026-09-06Attraction Tickets and Reservations in China: Real-Name Purchase with Your Passport, Free Admission, and Ticket-Grabbing TacticsPopular attractions across China now widely use real-name reservations, and your passport number is your ticket. The Forbidden City releases tickets 7 days in advance, the National Museum of China is free but hard to book, and Shanghai Disneyland and Universal Studios Beijing scan your passport at the gate — here are the booking channels, the best moments to grab tickets, and what to do if you enter a wrong passport number.
Destination Guides7 min read2026-09-06Beijing: Three Thousand Years Along the Central AxisFrom the ancient city of Ji to Dadu of the Yuan dynasty and on to today, Beijing counts more than three thousand years of urban history and more than eight hundred years as a capital. In 2024, the "Beijing Central Axis" was inscribed as a World Heritage site, making this 7.8-kilometer backbone of the capital the key to understanding the city — the ritual order of the Forbidden City, the street life of the hutong, and the studied precision and easygoing ways of Beijing culture, all in one read.
Destination Guides7 min read2026-09-06Chengdu: The Land of Abundance That Has Kept Its Name for 3,000 YearsChengdu is one of the few major Chinese cities that has never moved its site or changed its name since it was founded: the Sun Bird of the Jinsha ruins, Li Bing's Dujiangyan irrigation system, the Shu Han kingdom of the Three Kingdoms era, and jiaozi (the world's first paper money) all happened here. Teahouses, Sichuan cuisine, giant pandas, and a park city beneath snow-capped mountains — one read to understand Chengdu's past and present.
Destination Guides7 min read2026-09-06Dali and Lijiang: Cangshan, Erhai Lake, and the Tea Horse RoadThe two faces of northwestern Yunnan: Dali is the old land of Nanzhao and the Dali Kingdom, where the Bai people's tie-dye (zharan) and three-course tea grew up between Cangshan (the Green Mountains) and Erhai Lake; Lijiang is the home of the Naxi people, where Dongba pictographs and Tea Horse Road markets nurtured a World Heritage old town. Plateau light, slow time, and layer upon layer of peoples make this China's most 'faraway' destination.
Destination Guides4 min read2026-09-06China Quick Reference — Voltage and Outlets, Tap Water, Tipping, Toilets, and Emergency NumbersWhich plugs fit China's 220V outlets, whether the tap water is drinkable, if you should tip, what public toilets are like, and what 110/120/12345 each are — skim this before you fly and 90% of the "didn't see that coming" moments are covered.
Destination Guides7 min read2026-09-06Chongqing: The 8D Mountain City Between Two Rivers and the Cyberpunk CapitalFew megacities on Earth are built like Chongqing, with the whole city stacked onto mountains: a monorail threading straight through an apartment block, rooftops doubling as streets, the Yangtze River Cableway gliding across the sky. From Jiangzhou, capital of the Ba kingdom, to wartime capital during the war of resistance and finally China's youngest province-level municipality — 3,000 years of history, dockside hotpot culture, and the magic of a three-dimensional city, all in one read.
Destination Guides6 min read2026-09-06Guilin and Yangshuo: The Long Scroll of Karst Scenery“Guilin's scenery is the finest under heaven” — a verdict handed down since the Southern Song, and a description of the most classic karst peak-forest landscape on Earth: the Li River threading like a green silk ribbon among thousands of peaks. This guide explains how 300 million years of limestone was carved by water into the “standard portrait” of Chinese scenery, and covers the Zhuang homeland, the fishing lights, and the view printed on the back of the ¥20 banknote.
Destination Guides6 min read2026-09-06Hangzhou: West Lake, Liangzhu, and a Digital CityThe city Marco Polo called “the most beautiful and magnificent city in the world” now holds three cards at once — the cultural landscape of West Lake, Liangzhu’s five-thousand-year proof of civilization, and the digital economy that grew out of Alibaba. The charm of Hangzhou is that poetic Jiangnan and cutting-edge technology coexist between the same lake and hills.
Destination Guides6 min read2026-09-06Harbin: “Oriental Moscow” and the City of Ice and SnowA city born of a railway: when the Chinese Eastern Railway broke ground in 1898, Russian engineers built an “Oriental Moscow” to European blueprints — onion-domed churches, the granite “bread-stone” paving of Central Street (Zhongyang Dajie), and the bread and red sausage of the Russian émigrés. Today Harbin is famous for the Harbin Ice and Snow World, and the 2025 Asian Winter Games together with the “Erbin” phenomenon have carried China's northernmost provincial capital back to the top of the charts.
Destination Guides8 min read2026-09-06Hong Kong: A Century and a Half of East Meets West on the Shores of Victoria HarbourFrom the British occupation of 1841 to the handover of 1997, the two shores of Victoria Harbour took 170 years to grow into an international metropolis where Chinese and Western ways intermingle: silk-stocking milk tea in cha chaan tengs, the ding-ding and the Star Ferry, the golden age of Cantopop and Hong Kong cinema. The key to understanding Hong Kong is that “East and West blended here into a logic of its own.”
Destination Guides4 min read2026-09-06Booking Hotels in China — Platforms, What to Do If You're Turned Away, and Accommodation Registration Rules (2026)Since 2024, the authorities have made it clear that hotels may not refuse overseas guests on the grounds of “no foreign-guest qualification,” yet in reality some small guesthouses still cannot register passports. This guide covers booking channels, which hotel types are hassle-free, how deposits are handled, and your registration duties when staying in a guesthouse or at a friend's home.
Destination Guides7 min read2026-09-06Shanghai: A Haipai City Between Shikumen Houses and SkyscrapersA city that leapt from county town to the greatest metropolis of the Far East after the Opium War: the world architecture of the Bund, the shikumen of the longtang alleys, the plane trees of the former French Concession, the skyline of Lujiazui. Shanghai's history is short but extraordinarily dense — to understand it is to understand how modern China met the world.
Destination Guides6 min read2026-09-06Shenzhen: From Fishing Village to Tech Capital in Forty-Five YearsIn 1979 Shenzhen was still a county town; today it is a global innovation hub with nearly 20 million permanent residents and an average age just past thirty. It has no ancient monuments, yet it is where China shows you "the modern" at its fastest — the "Shenzhen speed" of a floor every three days, the birthplace of Tencent, Huawei and DJI, and a United Nations of regional cuisines created by migrants — a city with no burden of nostalgia.
Destination Guides7 min read2026-09-06Suzhou: 2,500 Years Inside Its GardensIn 514 BC Wu Zixu built the Helü Great City, and Suzhou's old town has stood on the same spot ever since — its 'dual chessboard of roads and canals' is a city plan found nowhere else on Earth. Gardens, Kunqu opera, pingtan, Su silks and embroidery, and a top-ten-GDP industrial metropolis share one city: Suzhou has made refinement an everyday habit.
Destination Guides5 min read2026-09-06Which App Should You Use for Travel in China? Why Foreign Apps Fall Short, and What PandaTrip DoesGoogle services blocked, Google Maps data outdated, TripAdvisor listings no longer updated, and local apps built for Chinese-speaking users — the information problems travelers face in China come in three layers. This article explains the causes and how each PandaTrip feature responds.
Destination Guides7 min read2026-09-06Xi'an: Capital of Thirteen Dynasties and the “Living Chang'an”The royal heartland of the Zhou, Qin, Han, and Tang dynasties, the starting point of the Silk Road, and the home of the Terracotta Army and the Ming city wall. No city in China matches Xi'an's depth of history, yet its real magic is that the ancient capital never died: street life at the foot of the ramparts, the smoke and sizzle of the Muslim Quarter, and the High-Tang fantasy of the Tang Dynasty Ever-bright City (Datang Everbright City) all breathe inside the same city.
Destination Guides6 min read2026-09-06Zhangjiajie: The Real-Life Floating Mountains of Avatar and the Gateway to XiangxiA shallow sea of 380 million years ago was uplifted and eroded into more than 3,000 pillars of quartzite sandstone — the peak forest of Zhangjiajie's Wulingyuan is a landscape found nowhere else on Earth, inscribed as a World Natural Heritage Site in 1992; in 2010 one pillar was renamed “Hallelujah Mountain” after Avatar (2009). This guide explains how the geological miracle was forged, and the Xiangxi culture of the Tujia people who live among the peaks.