Best Culture in China

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Hands-on cooking classes and cultural workshops in a restored courtyard near the Drum Tower.

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The Ming emperor's prayer hall - a blue-tiled masterpiece, one of the most photographed sights in China.

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The world's oldest jazz band - average age over 80 - playing swing in a 1929 Art Deco lobby.

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Eight thousand life-sized warriors frozen in battle formation - the greatest archaeological site in China.

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A 1,300-year-old mosque built entirely in Chinese courtyard style - one of the world's great cultural fusions.

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See dozens of giant pandas up close - including cubs - in a bamboo forest research base.

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Chengdu's beloved evening of Sichuan opera, puppetry, and the legendary face-changing act.

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One of China's great Buddhist temples, wrapped in mist and carved-rock grottoes at the foot of Feilai Peak.

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The V&A's Chinese outpost in Shekou - design galleries stacked in Pritzker-winner Maki's concrete terraces.

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A cliff of glowing stilted houses that has become Chongqing's most photographed night view.

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The commuter cable car locals still ride across the Yangtze - now a front-row seat over the city.

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A light rail that passes straight through an apartment block - the world's most famous train station.

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The finest example of Lingnan architecture in existence - a shrine wrapped in ten thousand carvings.

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A leafy island of colonial mansions where Guangzhou's treaty-port past is preserved in amber.

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A city built entirely of ice: 500,000 cubic meters of sculpted frozen architecture, lit like a dream.

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The green-domed Russian cathedral that has become Harbin's skyline signature.

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An American-run heritage compound in Xizhou that turns China's countryside into a classroom.

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Three thousand-year-old pagodas in front of Cangshan's peaks - the most iconic silhouette in Yunnan.

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A forest of 270-million-year-old limestone pillars - one of China's first UNESCO World Heritage sites.

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Kunming's oldest temple, built around a tranquil lake with a pavilion at its heart.

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A 108-meter Guanyin statue rising from the sea - one of the tallest statues on earth.

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The literal 'end of the earth': the seaside rocks where Chinese poetry goes to finish.

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The grand marble memorial to modern China's founding father, set against a forested mountain.

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The tomb of the Ming dynasty's founder, guarded by a spirit path of stone elephants and camels.

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Glide past lantern-lit pavilions on the river that made Nanjing famous - the city's classic night out.

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The masterpiece of Chinese garden design - water, rock, and pavilions composed like a landscape painting.

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I.M. Pei's final masterpiece: a museum of white walls, black lines, and stones borrowed from the gardens.

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Hear China's oldest opera in the city that gave it birth - 600 years of melody in a garden hall.

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China's beer story told inside a working 1903 brewery - ending, of course, with a fresh pour.

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Qingdao's 1892 pier and octagonal pavilion, extending into the Yellow Sea like a finger pointing at history.

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The largest intact colonial district in China - 2,000 villas on tree-lined lanes.

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The ferris wheel built on a bridge over the Hai River - a 120-meter rotation above old Tianjin.

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Tianjin is the home of xiangsheng, China's stand-up comedy - and the teahouse is its cathedral.

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A car-free island of colonial villas, piano museums, and winding lanes - Xiamen's UNESCO gem.

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A thousand-year temple at the foot of Wulao Peak, with the sea behind and incense always rising.

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The quartzite pillars that inspired Avatar - one of the most surreal landscapes on earth.

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A 7.5km cable car to a mountain with a hole punched through it - and a glass skywalk along the edge.

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The world's longest glass bridge - 430 meters suspended over a 300-meter canyon drop.

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A jade lake in a green amphitheater, crossed by singing boats in the morning mist.

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The classic 80km cruise through the karst peaks that appear on the 20-yuan note.

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The Dragon's Backbone: rice terraces carved into mountainsides for 700 years, glowing gold at sunrise.

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A 240-million-year-old cave of stone forests and grottoes, lit like a cathedral of light.

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The 1,300-year-old fortress palace that is Tibet's spiritual and architectural summit.

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China's largest mosque, at the heart of Kashgar's old town since 1442.

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Watch porcelain being made exactly as it was under the Song dynasty, in a working imperial kiln.

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One of China's great Tang-era temples, its twin stone pagodas guarding a thousand years of maritime trade.

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The fishing village where women wear living gardens on their heads - and visitors are welcome to join.

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A Ming-era canal town where Yiwu's traders built their mansions - half a day of quiet lanes and river life.

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Thousands of red monastic houses climbing a valley wall - the most astonishing Tibetan Buddhist settlement on earth.

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The 'last pure land on earth': three sacred peaks and turquoise lakes at 4,000 meters.

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Rolling yak pasture with the holy Yala Snow Mountain on the horizon - the classic Kham landscape.

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A 100-kilometer karst canyon with a skywalk over the abyss - Hubei's great outdoors showpiece.

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The reconstructed fortress of Enshi's Tujia chieftains - nine floors of carved timber and ethnic history.

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The tulou roundhouses of the Zhangzhou hills, set around a lantern-lit canal town.

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A thousand-year city of stone gates, arcade streets, and snacks that never left.

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China's oldest surviving library, built in 1561 - a scholar's garden of books, ponds, and quiet.

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One of the world's great Buddhist cave complexes - 51,000 statues carved into a sandstone cliff.

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A temple bolted to a cliff face for 1,500 years - gravity-defying, literally.

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The world's oldest and tallest wooden building - a 67-meter pagoda that has stood without a single nail since 1056.

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The Hani people's 1,300-year staircase to the sky - the most extraordinary terraces on earth.

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The 'Little Potala' - a golden-roofed monastery complex on a hill above Shangri-La.

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Shangri-La's Tibetan old town, centered on the world's largest prayer wheel.

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The rainbow mountains: striped cliffs of mineral color that look painted by a god with a grudge against minimalism.

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A thousand years of cliff-carved temples, including the 33-tier sky cave that climbs inside the rock.

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A 34-meter reclining Buddha inside a temple that has guarded the Silk Road since 1098.

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The largest transborder waterfall in Asia, tumbling over the China-Vietnam border.

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Guangxi's quiet answer to Yangshuo: karst peaks reflected in rice paddies, seen by bike.

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A thousand years of Buddhist art carved into a desert cliff - the greatest cave complex on the Silk Road.

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Singing sand dunes frame a crescent-shaped spring that has survived a thousand years of desert.

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Beijing's most famous teahouse: opera, acrobatics, and face-changing acts with a cup of jasmine tea.

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Shanghai's 'No. 1 Teahouse', perched on the Nine Zigzag Bridge in Yu Garden since 1784 - a tea ceremony and a time machine.

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English-taught cooking classes, calligraphy workshops, and wet-market tours on Huaihai Road.

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A Xi'an hanfu studio that dresses you head to toe in Tang-dynasty silk, hair and makeup included, then sends you out to the lanterns.

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The nine-story Tang pagoda that became the symbol of revolutionary Yan'an, glowing gold above the river at night.

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A candle-lit hutong school near the Lama Temple running cooking, kung fu, calligraphy, and tea workshops for foreigners.

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The 350-year-old temple of Chinese art supplies on Liulichang, where masters buy their brushes, ink, and paper.

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The story of a boy's path to kung fu mastery, told with a cast of 40 martial artists - no language needed.

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Beijing's most energetic crosstalk comedy club, packing a 200-year-old art form into sold-out nightly shows.

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Shanghai's 120-year-old house of brushes and ink, where painters buy their tools and collectors bid on masters.

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A garden-calm teahouse chain in leafy Shanghai neighborhoods, where tea is brewed properly and time slows down.

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A leafy French-concession villa devoted to aged pu'er tea, with vintages poured in drawing-room luxury.

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A teahouse built over the water of West Lake, pouring Longjing among lotus flowers and visiting egrets.

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Hangzhou's grand old teahouse, where locals spend entire afternoons over tea, mahjong, and plate after plate of snacks.

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A grand old Chengdu teahouse where Sichuan opera, tea, and ear-cleaning all happen at the same table.

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Watch 2,000-year-old Sichuan brocade looms still clacking in Chengdu, then shop the weavers' own showroom.

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The state workshop behind Chengdu's museum-grade lacquerware, where artisans carve and polish pieces for decades.

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A 160-year-old teahouse on Guanqian Street where Suzhou's business has quietly been done over pots of Biluochun.

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Two centuries of Suzhou pingtan - sung storytelling with pipa and sanxian - performed nightly in a historic book house.

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The teahouse where Tianjin's crosstalk comedians have trained for decades - nightly comedy in a room that laughs with you.

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Choreographer Yang Liping's tribal dance epic, performed nightly with drumming, bronze masks, and 70 dancers from Yunnan's villages.

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China's most famous outdoor show - ten thousand spectators, a mountain for a stage, and the empire's greatest love story.

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The legendary ceramics studio at the heart of Jingdezhen, where travelers throw their own pots and the Saturday market draws artists from everywhere.

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UNESCO-listed string puppetry from the city that invented it, performed by masters whose fingers do the acting.

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Zhang Yimou's river-wide stage: 600 performers, karst peaks as scenery, and the Li River as the floor.

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A full Tang-dynasty city block rebuilt for immersion - rent the hanfu, dine on Tang recipes, and watch actors live the year 744.

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A walled Song-dynasty city on Hangzhou's edge, where you eat, dress, and watch the greatest show in Chinese theater.

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Beijing's most foreigner-friendly Peking opera house, where silk robes, painted faces, and sword dances take the stage nightly.

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The red-brick meeting hall where the Long March turned - the most consequential political gathering in modern Chinese history.

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The mountain pass where the Red Army won its first great victory - and where Mao wrote one of his most famous poems.

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The four river crossings that saved the Long March - battlefields, memorial halls, and the red cliffs that gave the river its name.