Chinese Culture

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  Three Chinese Museums Worth Building a Trip Around

  One museum sits over an excavation that is still running, one surveys a province that ruled China for a thousand years, and one was designed by I.M. Pei in his ancestral city. How to plan a China trip around Sanxingdui, Shaanxi History Museum and Suzhou Museum.

  2026/10/12

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  How to Read a Classical Chinese Garden: Suzhou and Shanghai in One Afternoon

  Chinese classical gardens are not parks but engineered pieces of perception. Here is the five-move grammar behind the nine UNESCO-listed gardens of Suzhou and Shanghai's Ming-dynasty Yu Garden, plus an honest plan for seeing them in an afternoon.

  2026/10/12

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  Chinese Stage Arts: Acrobatics, Face-Changing, and Kung Fu on Tonight's Bill

  From the split-second mask work of Sichuan opera to two-thousand-year-old acrobatics and kung fu theater, here is what China's stage arts are, where they came from, and which cities stage the best versions tonight.

  2026/10/07

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  Jiaohe and Gaochang: The Silk Road Cities Time Left Behind

  Jiaohe and Gaochang were two of the wealthiest cities on the ancient Silk Road, built on a river island and an open desert plain in the Turpan Basin of Xinjiang. Both were abandoned by the end of the fourteenth century, and both were inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 2014.

  2026/10/05

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  Xi'an's Ancient City Wall: Cycling the Ming Ramparts of the Silk Road Capital

  The Ming city wall of Xi'an is a complete 13.74-kilometer rectangle of rammed earth and gray brick, and the best way to see it is from a bicycle. Here is what the wall is, how it was defended, why it survived, and how to plan the ride.

  2026/10/02

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  Longmen Grottoes: 100,000 Buddhist Figures Carved into Limestone

  Some 2,300 caves, nearly 110,000 Buddhist figures, and 2,800 inscriptions fill one kilometer of limestone cliff at Luoyang. Here is how to read four centuries of Chinese stone carving in one afternoon.

  2026/09/30

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  The Great Wall of China: How It Was Built, and Which Section You Should Walk

  The Great Wall is not one wall but many, built and rebuilt across more than two thousand years. Here is how it was engineered, what survives, and how to choose between Badaling, Mutianyu, and Jinshanling for your own visit. Includes verified figures from China's National Cultural Heritage Administration.

  2026/09/28

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  Pingyao: A Living Ming and Qing County Town Behind Its Own Walls

  Pingyao is a walled Ming and Qing county town in Shanxi that people still live in: 6,162.68 meters of brick wall, a street grid laid out in 1370, and Rishengchang, the 1823 draft bank that made the town China's banking center. Covers Shuanglin and Zhenguo temples plus practical notes for a first visit.

  2026/09/25

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  Dunhuang and the Mogao Grottoes: Buddhist Art at the Crossroads of the Silk Road

  Cut into a cliff outside Dunhuang are 735 caves holding about 45,000 square meters of Buddhist murals and more than 2,000 painted sculptures, made over a thousand years at the crossroads of the Silk Road. Here is what is inside, what was found in 1900, and how to visit a site that now admits 6,000 people a day.

  2026/09/23

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  The Terracotta Army of Xi'an: What 50 Years of Archaeology Have Revealed

  Farmers digging a well in 1974 broke into an army of painted clay soldiers buried for two thousand years. Here is what fifty years of excavation at the Terracotta Army in Xi'an has actually established, and how to see the site well.

  2026/09/21