Where to go in China: neighborhood breakdowns, China Railway transit links, and daily budgets in CNY (¥).
China's monumental capital aligns 600 years of Ming and Qing imperial palaces along its UNESCO-listed 7.8 km Central Axis—from the Temple of Heaven to the 9,999 rooms of the Forbidden City and the Drum & Bell Towers—while the forested battlements of the Mutianyu Great Wall snake across mountain ridges 70 km north.
Where 1920s Art Deco banks along the Bund face the 632-meter twisted glass spire of Shanghai Tower across the Huangpu River, China's most cosmopolitan metropolis connects in just 25–45 minutes by 350 km/h high-speed rail to the classical UNESCO gardens of Suzhou and willow-fringed West Lake in Hangzhou.
Eastern terminus of the ancient Silk Road and imperial capital of 13 Chinese dynasties (including the Qin and Tang), Xi'an guards the 2,200-year-old subterranean army of 8,000 life-sized Terracotta Warriors and the world's most complete 14th-century city wall.
UNESCO City of Gastronomy and China's most laid-back provincial capital, Chengdu is where mornings begin watching giant pandas munch bamboo shoots, afternoons unfold over ¥15 jasmine tea in bamboo chairs at People's Park, and a 75-minute bullet train rockets you to the 3D neon mountain metropolis of Chongqing.
Immortalized on the back of the ¥20 RMB banknote and in centuries of classical Chinese ink-wash landscape scrolls, the emerald limestone karst pinnacles lining the Li River and Yulong River between Guilin and Yangshuo offer China's most poetic countryside.
More than 3,000 vertical quartz-sandstone pillars—many rising over 300 meters out of swirling subtropical mist—inspired the floating Hallelujah Mountains of James Cameron's <em>Avatar</em> inside UNESCO-listed Zhangjiajie National Forest Park (Wulingyuan).
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