China Travelers Recommend

After spending a night in a city of 11 million people you’re probably going to want to find some peace and quiet. At the same time, you just arrived in Chengdu so you won’t want to travel too far to get away. At 35 miles outside of the city center, the forested wilderness of Mt. Qingcheng is just the right distance for planning your escape. The preferred trekking destination of choice for local Chengdu residents, the summit of the most sacred mountain in Taosim is reachable via a 4 hour climb past ancient temples and lonely caves. You’ll want to be up early in order to reach the Giant Panda Breeding Center, easily Chengdu’s most famous attraction, for the 9am feeding time—the best chance you’re going to have of seeing active giant pandas. After learning about the curious mating techniques of captive giant pandas, take a taxi back into town for a gander at the famously strange sculpture at Qingyang Palace.

No visit to Xian’s ancient wonders would be complete without seeing the city’s symbol, the Big Wild Goose Pagoda (AD 652) and the old City Walls. Built in 1370 during the Ming dynasty, the walls are part of only a handful of ancient city walls still standing in China. A fascinating blend of Chinese and Islamic architecture, the Great Mosque is one of the largest in China. The mosque is still an active place of worship, so you’ll have to admire it from the courtyard. Next stop, Little Goose Pagoda. First constructed in the Tang Dynasty, the pagoda is a square brick construction with dense eaves and a missing top, which was shaken off by an earthquake! A visit to the 14th century Bell Tower and the Drum Tower will enlighten you as to how the ancient Chinese kept order and marked the beginning and the end of each day. You can visit all these sites, plus the Shaanxi History Museum on a full-day sightseeing tour.

Beijing's hutongs are a glimpse - fast disappearing - of what the city used to look like before the skyscrapers started munching the skyline. A hutong is a narrow alleyway formed by joining together courtyard residences. When you hear people speak of 'the hutongs', they will often be referring to the neighborhoods formed by these alleys. Development has destroyed many of these traditional neighborhoods, but some have been preserved, most notably those around the Bell Tower and the Drum Tower. These hutongs, close to the Forbidden City, are the spacious and orderly kind that would have belonged to aristocrats and top-ranking officials. Beijing's poorer hutongs are far more haphazard and cramped, but are still an important part of the city's history. Each hutong has its own name - sometimes many layers of names - and its own set of stories.

Beijing is a wonderful mixture of the ancient and the modern, the past and the present. If you only have one day, do the essentials. Tiananmen Square dates from 1417 and has witnessed some of the most pivotal moments in China’s history, including the 1989 protests. It’s also the site of Mao’s Mausoleum, a place of pilgrimage for Chinese tourists. The queue for entry looks lengthy, but moves fast and entry is free. Nearby the Forbidden City has over 1,800,000 sq km of gardens, palaces and halls of relics dating back to 1407. Home to 24 emperors over five centuries, the Forbidden City opened to the public in 1924. Then see the other side of Beijing, the hutong, narrow, winding residential streets full of real life and communal-style living. Getting lost in the labyrinth is half the fun. No visit to Beijing is complete without seeing The Great Wall of China. An impressive 6,300 km of engineering miracle, it was built to protect China from the rampaging Mongols.