The sheer diversity of China’s terrain takes you from noisy cities fizzing with energy to isolated mountain-top Ming-Dynasty villages where you can hear a pin drop. Pǔdōng’s ambitious skyline is a triumphant statement, but it couldn’t be further from the worldly renunciation acted out in Tibets distant monasteries.

​

Curator of the world’s oldest continuous civilization, China will have you bumping into history at every turn. But it’s not just a museum of imperial relics: the frisson of development that has left China’s coastline glittering with some of the world’s most up-to-the-minute cities propels the land on with a forward-thinking dynamism.