Cities for every pace.

The capital is vast, formal and surprisingly gentle once you step off the ring roads. Give it four days: one for the palaces, one for the Wall, two for wandering.

Dunhuang is a small town at the end of the Hexi Corridor, with the Mogao Caves on one side and the singing dunes on the other. It is far from everywhere and worth the journey.

Shanghai is the easy entry point: signage in English, a metro that goes everywhere, and neighbourhoods built for walking. Three days is enough for the city; add Suzhou or Hangzhou as day trips.

Suzhou's gardens are small, perfect and best seen one or two at a time. Stay a night in the old town rather than day-tripping, and see them at opening before the groups.

Nanjing was the capital six times and keeps the scale of one: a thirty-kilometre city wall, boulevards under plane trees, and Purple Mountain rising at the east gate. An hour from Shanghai, and a different tempo.

Xiamen is the gentlest city on the south-east coast: a walkable island of arcaded streets and seafront paths, with Gulangyu, a car-free island of colonial villas, five minutes away by ferry. Come for the pace, not a checklist.

Qingdao is the seaside city of the north: a hilly German-built old town of red tiles and granite, beaches along the bay, and Laoshan's Taoist mountain at the end of the coast road. Three hours from Beijing and a different climate.

Harbin grew up around a Russian railway and still looks it: onion domes, cobbled Central Street, sausage and black bread. In winter the river freezes and the city builds a town out of ice. Summer is green and mild and nobody comes, which is its own argument.

Datong was a Northern Wei capital in the fifth century, and the caves they carved at Yungang are the earliest great Buddhist art in China. Add two Liao-dynasty monasteries in the old town and the Hanging Temple an hour away.

Luoyang was capital to thirteen dynasties and keeps the best of it on the edge of town: the Longmen Grottoes along a river cliff, the White Horse Temple, and a museum of what was dug up in between. Ninety minutes from Xi'an by train.

Shenzhen was a county of villages and oyster beds until the zone was drawn in 1980; it now holds eighteen million people, almost none of them born here. Give it two days: one for the coast and the old walled towns the city grew around, one for markets, art and the crossing to Hong Kong.