China
3 selected citiesAbout China
Three Chinese cities running on three different logics: imperial Beijing, riverfront Shanghai and commercial Guangzhou, plus what to verify officially before you book.
Before you go
Entry is the item to settle before anything else is booked. Chinese entry requirements depend on your nationality, the documents you hold and the date you travel, and the only reference we treat as authoritative is the National Immigration Administration. Verify it yourself before buying a ticket, and never plan around an outdated note or the experience of a traveller holding a different passport, because those two cases can differ completely.
Choose a city
Everything you need about the city appears here, without opening another page.
Beijing
Why visit Beijing?
Guangzhou
Why visit Guangzhou?
Guangzhou is the southern commercial city, and it appears in far fewer Gulf itineraries than it deserves. Three areas are approved for comparison here: Yuexiu, Tianhe and Liwan. Yuexiu is the oldest of the three and the one most tied to the city's history and its museums. Tianhe is the business, exhibition and modern-life centre, the district most travellers see if they come for work and never look further. Liwan is the heritage layer, with its lanes, its restaurants and an unmistakably Cantonese character. Three areas here mean three genuinely different versions of the same day, which is why the neighbourhood decision should come before the hotel decision.
Four sights are treated as core editorial entities in our Guangzhou guide. Canton Tower is the clearest visual marker of the modern city. The Chen Clan Ancestral Hall is a piece of architectural craftsmanship that consistently receives less time than it warrants. Shamian Island stands apart from everything around it architecturally, and it reads as a separate register within the city. The Museum of the Nanyue King takes visitors back to a layer far older than Guangzhou's contemporary industrial image suggests.
The official tourism body publishes a destination portal for Guangzhou, useful for confirming site details before you book. Our editorial note: business visitors tend to reduce this city to a single district, when two well-ordered days are enough to see a completely different city from the one the average work trip delivers.
Shanghai
Why visit Shanghai?
Shanghai wears its changes on its facades, and the three approved areas compress that story neatly: The Bund, the Former French Concession and Pudong. The Bund is the riverfront frontage, defined by early twentieth-century architecture that still sets the city's most recognisable line. The Former French Concession is the quieter layer, with shaded streets and lower buildings that reward slow walking more than any itinerary does. Pudong is the opposite bank, where the towers and the contemporary skyline sit. Choosing between them is not a choice of standard but of vantage point: whether you want to look at the city or to be inside it.
Four sights anchor the guide. The Bund is a core editorial entity in its own right, distinct from the area that shares its name. Yu Garden works as a visual counter-argument to everything around it, a traditional composition dropped into a dense modern city. The Shanghai Museum is the structured way into what the street will not explain on its own, and Shanghai Tower is the highest vantage point from which the whole arrangement makes sense at once. The practical rule we apply here is to link your chosen area to the sights nearest it before booking, because that single step produces an itinerary-led stay decision rather than a decision driven by a marketing photograph.
In practice, a short distance across the river can mean two completely different days. That is worth thinking through before the booking is confirmed, not after.